Support for Teaching Assistants and New Lecturers

Are you new to teaching Economics in Higher Education? Then this page is aimed at you.

The Economics Network can offer you subject-specific information and support to complement the information, support and development opportunities available to you via your local Staff/Educational Development unit. Our support is free of charge.

Have you been to one of our training workshops? Get access to related resources and the forum with your event code.

The Higher Education system in the UK

A separate briefing outlines the main features of the HE system that relate to economics.

Events

We run one day workshops for postgraduate teaching assistants and tutors in economics and two-day residential workshops for new and aspiring lecturers of economics.

Each delegate receives a certificate which maps the workshop activities and outcomes to the UK’s Professional Standards Framework. Example workshop programmes and certificates may assist institutions in determining how this subject-specific staff development complements institutional offerings:

• New Lecturer example certificate, example workshop programme
• Postgraduates who teach example certificate, example workshop programme

For example, Nottingham and Warwick universities exempt economics lecturers who attend Economics Network New Lecturer workshops from parts of their own New Lecturer training.

We have also mapped our activities against the UK Professional Standards Framework to help staff following the individual recognition scheme, and to demonstrate how our other activities may complement institutional staff development.

Advice

Our Handbook for Economics Teaching Assistants gives practical tips for teaching classes, with examples and case studies from Economics.

The Handbook for Economics Lecturers includes chapters on seminar activities and groupwork that you may find useful.

Our Reflections on Teaching section includes many different case studies. See Section 2.4 of the Handbook for examples. We welcome your own case studies of things you have done in your teaching: contact Dr Inna Pomorina.

Diaries, case studies and articles

Personal reflections from a graduate teaching assistant, hosted on this site by kind permission.

• The Student I Used To Be (PDF) - Nikos Nikiforakis, Royal Holloway College, University of London

The following case study was written by a graduate teaching assistant:

• Coaching Economics by Michael F. McMahon, London School of Economics

We also have a section for Lecturer Diaries written by new staff.

Reflections on Curriculum Development, Pedagogy and Assessment by a New Academic by Don Webber is an article in the International Review of Economics Education which also offers some interesting perspectives from a new member of staff.

Research and Teaching

We have six case studies in which academics describe how they see the relationship between research and teaching.

• Monojit Chatterji, University of Dundee
• Tony Brewer, University of Bristol
• Andrew Mearman, University of the West of England
• Todd Kaplan, University of Exeter
• John Sedgwick, London Metropolitan University
• plus the views of physicist Richard P. Feynman

The connection between research and teaching was a topic in our 2005 national Survey of Economics Lecturers.

Networking

Our monthly email update tells you about new resources, tips and events related to teaching economics.

Resources

Overview of Economics Network resources

Geoff Petty, author of "Evidence Based Teaching", has released a sample chapter on classroom management and discipline