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National diary project requires HE teaching professionals

A project funded by the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme and led by the University of Kent’s Sally Fincher is asking teaching professionals involved in Higher Education to keep an anonymous diary on the 15th of every month for one year, starting 15 September 2010.

Known as the Share Project Day Surveys, the aim of these diaries is to learn more about the lives, beliefs, conditions of work, important issues and habits of ‘the everyday academic’.

The 15th was chosen as the diary date as one Saturday, in January 2011, and one Sunday, in May 2011, will fall within the survey period, thereby reflecting that academic life does not confine itself to the ‘standard working week’.

Information obtained from the diaries will contribute to the Share Project (full title: ‘To see ourselves as others see us: sharing and representing disciplinary classroom practice’), the general aim of which is to examine disciplinary teaching practice and its relationship to student achievement. Specifically, the project’s three focal areas are: sharing teaching practices across institutional (but within disciplinary) boundaries; evaluating representations of practice so that they are effective in documenting practice, making it available for future use and development by others; and investigating how (and why, and with what evidence) practitioners change their practice.

Sally Fincher explained: ‘We are researching how academics represent, share and change their practices. With the Day Surveys, we aim to collect material on the everyday lives and normal routines of academics and in particular what is significant to them - not what someone else thinks should be significant. We would like as many colleagues as possible, from whatever subject area, to tell us what they really do. Thinking, planning, preparation, lecturing, assessment, supervision, project-work, marking, examination. Anything that they do on that day - anything they care about on that day - is important and interesting to us.’

Summary newsletters, outlining what is on academics’ minds, will be sent to participants throughout the year, with findings published as they emerge.

Further information on the Day Surveys, including anonymity and privacy, is available at: www.sharingpractice.ac.uk/

Further information on the Share Project is available at:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/ntfs/ntfsproject_kent08

The Share Project partner is Janet Finlay from Leeds Metropolitan University. Consultants include: Isobel Falconer, Glasgow Caledonian University; Helen Sharp, Open University and Josh Tenenberg, University of Washington, Tacoma.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 9:48am 10 September 2010