Research For Teaching Others! - Part One
One area of PGCert study within the PhD is based around the examination of assumptions, and really how almost everything in terms of your research question is arguably an assumption. In my first post, I called my association with higher education a love affair, which might have been true for the first few post-rejection years of heady access to the hallowed halls of a true to form red brick institution with an excellent library, but after this, it became a misnomer. A twenty year relationship is something else entirely, more like an established friendship with cardigans, pipes and slippers supplied, all parties clearly knowing where they stand, and which boundaries they can reasonably push to try and get things done. There’s always surprises and changes with each year, as we gain interests (mobile phones with internet access were a shock!) and adapt to new things, but other elements of the association always seem to stay the same. This can lead to you not recognising the assumptions in your own relationship with learning.
When I left the University of Sheffield, I was a new mother, I had a degree, and I absolutely believed my appetite for learning was fulfilled. I had proven my point, and I had dropped none of my other commitments to achieve it. Go smug, angry Sam. It had been an experience, but I had some kind of post-graduation malaise that at the time, I actually did not attribute at all to completing the course. I thought I was just exhausted from all the life experiences, which I absolutely also was, given that both my child and I had almost died. Friends from the course talked about missing the classes and interaction; always happy with my own thoughts, I had no such issues; I swore never to involve myself in any kind of educative nonsense again, and put my nose back to the employment grindstone the second I recovered from my hospital stay, which expanded into two months, followed by months of home recovery, and then the rest of my basic maternity leave.
Repeated warnings from friends and family had failed to prepare me though, and returning to work as a new mother was not what I expected. Despite working in political institutions in sociological posts in the North, and openly discussing concerns such as the glass ceiling in terms of female employees, I had been a good worker and seriously well paid for my age and gender. Returning as a mother, my brains may as well have dripped out of my ears while I had been away. My comments were doubted in meetings I now simply sat in, that I had previously chaired. Progression stopped. Any request to leave early was expected to be related to my daughter.
Bullied into it by my mum, who by now had completed an Assessors course to deliver Care and Basic Skills Maths qualifications to adult learners, I joined her on an evening programme with Rotherham College of Arts and Technology (RCAT) to complete the Diploma of Teaching in Lifelong Learning (DTLLS). A new teaching qualification that was considered an underdog to the far more respectable PGCE, it could be delivered by either Colleges or Universities with the correct accreditation. RCAT was one of the few colleges that had seen the DTLLS as an opportunity. I had no real interest, was managing a new baby, and was flat out depressed. Mum insisted I snap out of it, providing a mental kick up the backside. “You are going to need another job, and you have a baby to pay for”, she hissed at me in absolute and justified rage at my wrung out washcloth state. It was 2008, the political landscape was changing, and I had effectively worked for Labour-driven employability projects for years. They were not expected to survive the next election. I was quietly given a tip off from another female colleague that I was earmarked for redundancy about six months later. When I left, my job was handed to my male second in command, trained by me, and two salary scale points down. It was my first experience of a reality I had bruited but perhaps not truly believed in, and my salary has never reached the same height since. Even at retirement, I still earned less than I did before becoming a mother, and I still chose job security and family awareness from an employer over salary and progression opportunity.
I was well known in the sector, and was offered another decently high level job fairly locally with a very cut throat company, which I took, but it meant travel to London at least twice a week. My daughter was a year old, I was speeding down the motorway every morning to hit childcare on time to avoid getting sacked, my marriage by this point was quite obviously struggling, and then I got out of my bed on the morning of my thirty-first birthday and threw up. I’m pregnant, I thought, more timed injections needed then and I’ll have to dump the London commute. A family member now had her own company delivering the core Care package to care homes around the UK, and now wanted to broaden delivery to offer maths and English. Mum would be writing the maths so she asked me to choose English as my subject specialism when given the choice on the DTLLS course. Rather than actually teach, I would help write the courses. My salary would drop, but my health would be far safer for the duration of my pregnancy.
This began a whole new area of my life. The pace, focus, financial value, and overall values all changed, and all of it hinged on education. Not just the education that I was undertaking now in the form of the DTLLS teaching qualification, but also in the education that we were looking at providing to others. I was not only researching, I was researching with people that I was working with every day, on subjects that we were delivering as courses, and that research was being delivered in class as Team Teach sessions, again by us. In my opinion, a teaching qualification is completely different from another form of HE qualification, as a work based qualification is utterly unlike a College-based qualification. They are completely different forms of learning. We were an early class on the course for RCAT, and one thing was certain. We were all adults, all very familiar already with different elements of the education system, and none of us were completely happy with the course; I am fairly sure that changes were made following our first year.
