This #Take5 is brought to you from Dr Steve Briggs, Director for Learning and Teaching Excellence at the University of Bedfordshire. Steve is a former ALDinHE Co-Chair and currently a member of the Committee for the Association of National Teaching Fellows. Over the last eight years Steve has championed and led work that serves to promote recognition for Learning Development Practitioners.
The potential to be hidden
Learning Development Practitioners play a crucial role in supporting student success and student outcomes. However, such contributions are typically part of integrated support structures as such raising the profile of the impact, value and reach of individual Learning Development Practitioners can be challenging within institutions. This may mean there is a real risk for Learning Development Practitioners to be overlooked when institutions are considering potential applicants for Advance HE’s National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS).
Underrepresented NTFS applicant groups
For the last fifteen years, the appropriateness of contract types for Learning Development Practitioners has been a recurrent topic for debate on forums such as LDHEN. Across universities there remains variation in terms of the type of contracts held by Learning Development Practitioners. For example, contracts could be academic, academic-related or professional service.
Advance HE equal opportunities monitoring data illustrates that teaching and learning professionals employed on professional service contracts are an underrepresented group in terms of institutional nominations for NTFS when comparing the percentage of staff working in professional services with the percentage of NTFS applications:
| Percentage of staff (HESA 2021-22) | Percentage of NTFS nomination 2023 | |
| Academic staff | 54.9% | 94.2% |
| Professional service | 45.1% | 5.8% |
As such Learning Development Practitioners employed on a professional services contract who aspire to apply for a NTFS may be particularly disadvantaged. This status could be further exacerbated by other personal and/or contractual characteristics that have been identified by Advance HE to be underrepresented amongst NTFS applicants:
- from an ethnic minority background
- with a disability
- working in college-based providers
- employed on a part-time basis
It is therefore recognised that many aspiring NTFS who are working as Learning Development Practitioners may benefit from additional guidance and support when planning how best to approach applying for a NTF.
In It Together project
Over the last three years, the Committee for the Association of National Teaching Fellows (CANTF) has worked in partnership with Advance HE to deliver the In It Together Project which seeks to support aspiring NTFS from underrepresented groups.
A key outcome from this work has been the launch of the NTFS Allyship scheme. This allows aspiring National Teaching Fellows to search for previous NTFS winners from the aforementioned underrepresented groups. These winners have expressed their willingness to support aspiring applicants from corresponding underrepresented groups through sharing their application journeys and tips for success.
More information about the Allyship scheme is available.
You can access a searchable list of NTFS winners (with an Allyship filter).
What’s in it for me?
Applying for a NTF, as with applying for SHEA and CeLP, takes time and energy that you may think you do not have, however it is a worthwhile and empowering process. Advance HE (2024, online) report three key benefits for NTFS winners:
“Achieving a National Teaching Fellowship is widely recognised in higher education within the UK as well as internationally as a mark of quality”.
“The award can help ‘open doors’ to new academic or career opportunities”
“Award winners join a national community of like-minded professionals who are passionate about teaching excellence”.
What being an NTF allowed me to do
I was awarded my NTFS in 2020 and my experience has mirrored these benefits. Since winning I have been promoted from the Head of a Learning Development team to a Director of Learning and Teaching Excellence. I have also had the opportunity to join the Committee for the Association of National Teaching Fellows which has been a fantastic experience in terms of expanding my professional network.
What being an NTF has allowed others to do
Experiences of how winning a NTFS has benefited other winners from the Learning Development Community:
A decade of NTF: Professor Debbie Holley
My award was ten years ago, and reflecting upon the experience, the setting of the award ceremony itself at Liverpool Cathedral, and sharing the evening with such amazing people has stayed with me since.
The warmth, generosity and support of the wider NTF community has influenced and supported my practice through the mailing list, through opportunities to share with others, the spaces for conversations, and latterly the privilege of being elected to serve on the ANTF national committee.
Having such a knowledgeable and evidence-based community to reach out to has enabled me, as my career progressed, to, I hope, co-create and develop inclusive, robust and transparent strategies at the institutions where I have worked. Above all, my National Teaching Fellowship means that it is the student, not the system, that remains at the heart of my practice.
And half a decade of NTF: Dr Helen Webster
I gained my NTF in 2019, and have found this recognition invaluable in my third space role as a learning developer. It lent me credibility as a ‘third spacer’ in what is often seen as the ‘purely academic’ sphere of education and reinforced my professional identity as a teacher rather than an ‘administrator’.
There has been much talk of late in our profession about how we raise our profile, and in a relatively junior, professional services role as head of a Learning Development team, the award allowed me to demonstrate that leadership in education can come from anywhere, and gained me the ear of senior management in a way that I wouldn’t have had access to otherwise.
This was very timely – the very next year, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and being in a position where I could help shape and support the university’s response to supporting its students was really useful.
But central to becoming an NTF is working with others, and networking with brilliant LD colleagues across the sector has been an enriching experience throughout my career. I would love to see more Learning Developers gain fellowship and the recognition they richly deserve, raising awareness of what our profession can do!
Over to you: Your suggestions
We would welcome your suggestions for how the In It Together Working Group can further support aspiring National Teaching Fellows within the Learning Development community.
To share your thoughts and ideas please contact steve.briggs@beds.ac.uk
Thank you for reading – and we look forward to hearing from you!
References
Advance HE (20204). National Teaching Fellowship. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/awards/teaching-excellence-awards/national-teaching-fellowship#Benefits
As Co-Chair of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education Steve led national work related to professional recognition and networking events including the introduction of the CEP and CELP scheme. Steve is a Chartered Psychologist, National Teaching Fellow (2020) and PFHEA.