I consider my Academic Identity, prior to embarking on PGCAP and writing the Personal Academic Development Plan (PADP), to have been very restricted. I focused solely on teaching, the “job description” and the “contract” obtained. (Boyd and Smith, 2016) I believed that as a lecturer of a clinical discipline, it was my role to transfer knowledge to my students in order to teach them how to become Dental Hygiene Therapists. The only mode of action was via lectures and my focus was on “practice” rather than “identity”. (Boyd and Smith, 2016)

For me to achieve status as a successful and accomplished academic, consideration and prioritising the role and identity of an academic requires “reflection”. (Boyd and Smith 2016) Areas that I recognise as my role within my academic identity are;

• To support and develop student learning

• Research responsibilities

To support and develop student learning

I have identified the need to create learning environments that allow students to build their own knowledge and understanding of the discipline. Regurgitation of facts, learned verbatim, is a demonstration of ability to memorise facts but does not verify understanding. Within my teaching I want to generate learning opportunities that support students to build their knowledge. The success criteria of this strategy will be measured by the students’ demonstrating their ability to respond independently and confidently to real time issues that patient cases present.

I have utilised Top Hat in my teaching this semester thus allowing students to share their ideas and opinions on subjects such as patient care and professionalism. Although we have very small cohorts and verbal discussion is easily achieved, I often find that the more confident students engage in discussion while others merely sit and observe. By employing Top Hat, I enable all students are to give input (anonymously) without fear of making mistakes publicly. My aim in using this teaching tool is to increase participation from all students in a non-threatening forum.

I have also developed a deeper understanding and appreciation of the importance of errors in learning and teaching process. Students strive to constantly impress and achieve perfection and fear any form of failure or negative feedback. Shifting mindset would benefit students learning if they are focused on accepting errors and failure as an integral part in the construction of knowledge.

Peer assisted learning (PAL) is an approach to learning and teaching in which students support one another through feedback and collaborative study. I benefitted from being paired with a colleague from the student association, at a PGCAP orientation course. Her role is to support schools, staff and students in the integration of PAL in the curriculum and timetable and she was willing to meet to discuss the how I might best utilise it. PAL would integrate well in clinical skill teaching as students are responsible for independently arranging sessions to practice technical skills such as restorative dentistry and give feedback to one another, thus improving communication skills and learning how to identify weakness and strengths in restorative dentistry processes. I plan to contact my peer this forthcoming semester and discuss with our team as to how we can best integrate PAL.

Research responsibilities

Boyd and Smith’s (2016) paper on researcher identity of higher education lecturers in health care professions reflects my insecurities with beginning research with little to no experience. The paper recognises that many health care professionals like me, enter academia from a successful career in patient care, rather than from further education such as a PhD.

My PT advised that through PGCAP I could begin to introduce research into my academic identity through “research your teaching” course. I have since completed the initial orientation for the course and feel confident that I can contribute to discipline development through my own research. I am also inspired to consider other data collection techniques such as collage making in response to a question. I noted from own experience of this technique that my answer to the question “what does PGCAP mean to me?” was significantly more in depth and enlightening than if I had been presented within a questionnaire.

In the time since first writing my PADP, I have had the opportunity to be a sub-investigator for a worldwide, randomised, double blind, placebo control trial (the Willow study). Although my role is quite far down the hierarchy chain, I hope to gain a lot of insight into the process of research, particularly areas of ethical approval which I have l ittle awareness and understanding of.

UKPSF dimensions – A1,  A2,  A4, A5, V2, K2, K4 and K5

References

Boyd, P. and Smith, C. (2016) “The contemporary academic: orientation towards research work and researcher identity of higher education lecturers in the health professions”, Studies in Higher Education, 41:4, pp. 678-695.