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Supporting Early-Career Academics in the UK Computer Science Community

Crick, Tom, Davenport, James H., Hayes, Alan, Irons, Alastair and Prickett, Tom (2021) Supporting Early-Career Academics in the UK Computer Science Community. In: CEP '21: Computing Education Practice 2021. ACM, pp. 33-36. ISBN 9781450389594

Item Type: Book Section

Abstract

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.

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More Information

Additional Information: [Conference] CEP '21: Computing Education Practice 2021, January 7 2021, Durham, UK
Depositing User: Leah Maughan

Identifiers

Item ID: 12979
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1145/3437914.3437977
ISBN: 9781450389594
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/12979
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3437914.3437977

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Alastair Irons: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-5174-6596

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 11 Jan 2021 11:24
Last Modified: 11 Jan 2021 11:30

Contributors

Author: Alastair Irons ORCID iD
Author: Tom Crick
Author: James H. Davenport
Author: Alan Hayes
Author: Tom Prickett

University Divisions

Faculty of Technology > School of Computer Science

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