“Thank goodness I don’t have to teach anymore.” These were the words spoken by a senior colleague and former mentor upon hearing about the success of their grant application. They had been someone I had respected. Such comments, however, reflect an attitude that persists across many UK higher-education (HE) science departments. Our departments’ students, our own children even, studying across the UK at HE institutes deserve far better.

It is no secret in university science departments that lecturing, tutoring and lab supervision are perceived by some colleagues to be mere distractions from what they consider their “real” work and purpose to be. These colleagues may evasively try to limit their exposure to teaching, and their commitment to its high-quality delivery. This may involve focusing time and attention solely on research activities or being named on as many research grant applications as possible.

University workload models set time aside for funded research projects, as they should. Research grants provide universities with funding that contributes to their finances and are an undeniably important revenue stream. However, an aversion to – or flagrant avoidance of – teaching by some colleagues is encountered by many who have oversight and responsibility for the organization and provision of education within university science departments.

It is also a behaviour and mindset that is recognized by students, and which negatively impacts their university experience. Avoidance of teaching displayed, and sometimes privately endorsed, by senior or influential colleagues in a department can also shape its culture and compromise the quality of education that is delivered. Such attitudes have been known to diffuse into a department’s environment, negatively impacting students’ experiences and further learning. Students certainly notice and are affected by this.

The quality of physics students’ experiences depends on many factors. One is the likelihood of graduating with skills that make them employable and have successful careers. Others include: the structure, organization and content of their programme; the quality of their modules and the enthusiasm and energy with which they are delivered; the quality of the resources to which they have access; and the extent to which their individual learning needs are supported.

We should always be present and dispense empathy, compassion and a committed enthusiasm to support and enthral our students with our teaching.

In the UK, the quality of departments’ and institutions’ delivery of these and other components has been assessed since 2005 by the National Student Survey (NSS). Although imperfect and continuing to evolve, it is commissioned every year by the Office for Students on behalf of UK funding and regulatory bodies and is delivered independently by Ipsos.

The NSS can be a helpful tool to gather final-year students’ opinions and experiences about their institutions and degree programmes. Publication of the NSS datasets in July each year should, in principle, provide departments and institutions with the information they need to recognize their weaknesses and improve their subsequent students’ experiences. They would normally be motivated to do this because of the direct impact NSS outcomes have on institutions’ league table positions. These league tables can tangibly impact student recruitment and, therefore, an institution’s finances.

My sincerely held contention, however, communicated some years ago to a red-faced finger-wagging senior manager during a fraught meeting, is this. We should ignore NSS outcomes. They don’t, and shouldn’t, matter. This is a bold statement; career-ending, even. I articulated that we and all our colleagues should instead wholeheartedly strive to treat our students as we would want our own children, or our younger selves, to be treated, across every academic aspect and learning-related component of their journey while they are with us. This would be the right and virtuous thing to do.  In fact, if we do this, the positive NSS outcomes would take care of themselves.

Academic guardians

I have been on the frontline of university teaching, research, external examining and education leadership for close to 30 years. My heartfelt counsel, formed during this journey, is that our students’ positive experiences matter profoundly. They matter because, in joining our departments and committing three or more years and many tens of thousands of pounds to us, our students have placed their fragile and uncertain futures and aspirations into our hands.

We should feel privileged to hold this position and should respond to and collaborate with them positively, always supportively and with compassion, kindness and empathy. We should never be the traditionally tough and inflexible guardians of a discipline that is academically demanding, and which can, in a professional physics academic career, be competitively unyielding. That is not our job. Our roles, instead, should be as our students’ academic guardians, enthusiastically taking them with us across this astonishing scientific and mathematical world; teaching, supporting and enabling wherever we possibly can.

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A narrative such as this sounds fantastical. It seems far removed from the rigours and tensions of day-in, day-out delivery of lecture modules, teaching labs and multiple research targets. But the metaphor it represents has been the beating heart of the most successfully effective, positive and inclusive learning environments I have encountered in UK and international HE departments during my long academic and professional journey.

I urge physics and science colleagues working in my own and other UK HE departments to remember and consider what it can be like to be an anxious or confused student, whose cognitive processes are still developing, whose self-confidence may be low and who may, separately, be facing other challenges to their circumstances. We should then behave appropriately. We should always be present and dispense empathy, compassion and a committed enthusiasm to support and enthral our students with our teaching. Ego has no place. We should show kindness, patience, and a willingness to engage them in a community of learning, framed by supportive and inclusive encouragement. We should treat our students the way we would want our own children to be treated.