TY - GEN
T1 - Supporting early-career academics in the UK computer science community
AU - Crick, Tom
AU - Davenport, James H.
AU - Hayes, Alan
AU - Irons, Alastair
AU - Prickett, Tom
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 ACM.
PY - 2021/1/7
Y1 - 2021/1/7
N2 - The early career of a computer science academic in the United Kingdom (UK)-as with most other disciplines-is challenging in terms of balancing research aspirations, learning and teaching responsibilities, wider academic service commitments, as well as their own professional development. In terms of learning and teaching development, this commonly involves working towards Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (now known as Advance HE), either by direct application or via successful completion of an accredited institutional taught postgraduate course. Typically, if a course is required (often as part of their academic probation), the focus will be general higher education learning and teaching pedagogy rather than specifically focused on computer science and cognate areas. The formal institutional course requirements are normally supplemented by mentoring from within their department from experienced academic colleagues. Thus, the quality of development for an early-career academic will be enhanced in part by the strength of the community of practice operating within the department and the communities of practice that exist at a national and international level, often through professional bodies, learned societies and sub-disciplinary groupings. This paper presents the work-in-progress to address some of these structural, cultural and community challenges at both the institutional and national level in the UK, based on empirical themes collected from a workshop held at UKICER'20. We identify a number of specific actions and recommendations to supplement the current formal institutional requirements with enhanced national-level academic practice support and professional development, alongside local and regional professional mentoring.
AB - The early career of a computer science academic in the United Kingdom (UK)-as with most other disciplines-is challenging in terms of balancing research aspirations, learning and teaching responsibilities, wider academic service commitments, as well as their own professional development. In terms of learning and teaching development, this commonly involves working towards Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (now known as Advance HE), either by direct application or via successful completion of an accredited institutional taught postgraduate course. Typically, if a course is required (often as part of their academic probation), the focus will be general higher education learning and teaching pedagogy rather than specifically focused on computer science and cognate areas. The formal institutional course requirements are normally supplemented by mentoring from within their department from experienced academic colleagues. Thus, the quality of development for an early-career academic will be enhanced in part by the strength of the community of practice operating within the department and the communities of practice that exist at a national and international level, often through professional bodies, learned societies and sub-disciplinary groupings. This paper presents the work-in-progress to address some of these structural, cultural and community challenges at both the institutional and national level in the UK, based on empirical themes collected from a workshop held at UKICER'20. We identify a number of specific actions and recommendations to supplement the current formal institutional requirements with enhanced national-level academic practice support and professional development, alongside local and regional professional mentoring.
U2 - 10.1145/3437914.3437977
DO - 10.1145/3437914.3437977
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85099454627
SN - 9781450389594
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
SP - 33
EP - 36
BT - Proceedings - 5th Conference on Computing Education Practice, CEP 2021
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 5th Conference on Computing Education Practice, CEP 2021
Y2 - 7 January 2021 through 7 January 2021
ER -