,
25 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
"Novelty value social bollocks" <male colleague describing my research to entire new intake of undergraduates
I was given the research methods course to cover at short notice after staff member who'd taught it died and nobody else wanted to teach it
The course I inherited had been passed down to several tutors prior. It wasn't great.I'd also not enjoyed my methods classes as an undergrad
So now I had the chance to overhaul a methods course and make it useful, interesting and even fun.Luckily I got a great year of students too
The course ran for a year. A colleague covered all the stats/quant analysis. I taught an introduction to a variety of methods, plus ethics
Every week we learned about different approaches,tried them out in classroom or around the campus. Methods = tools for your researcher kit
I wrote, delivered, marked the work for the course. Plus other modules, lectures, dissertation supervision and pastoral care, so a lecturer
but in a mostly all men psych department the woman PhD student with the chronic illness + controversial research interests wasn't a lecturer
instead my research wasn't taken seriously, my interest in multiple methods viewed with suspicion, pay=term time only,lowest assistant grade
I took it because I needed cash,wanted the work experience,and was promised if I did well could be promoted. Bet you can guess what happened
end of year, students very pleased with course. Department decides to appoint new lecturers. I was told couldn't apply as doing PhD
new lecturer appointed,takes over my methods course,I'm allowed to assist him. He only teaches quant,lab based experiments+stats using excel
the students can't cope with learning multiple skills, so they eventually master excel but don't have any understanding of methods or stats
in all this I discover this lecturer, a man who's doing my course less well but for way more money and job security is being unprofessional
he tells the students only experiments and quant approaches are good, that social science is rubbish,and my research in particular is a joke
numerous students tell me after one lecture how he'd been laughing and describes my research as 'novelty value social bollocks'.
on another occasion he introduced me to visiting staff as "Petra - she'd think she'd succeeded if her research was on Richard and Judy"
I did challenge his conduct with the HoD who did nothing. Belittling women for doing women-focused research seemed to be acceptable
when it came to the students doing their dissertations there was a marked quality difference between the ones who'd had my course, and his
I'd forgotten this until I read that piece today on devaluing women in academia, but it was something that annoyed me so much at the time
silver linings and all that,I grew to love teaching methods,I'm good at it,I wrote a book (twice) about it.I help others get research done
I've no idea what ever happened to Mr Novelty Value Social Bollocks but I sincerely hope he's improved his professional skills by now
ps should add for context this was in dept that wanted menstruation taught in 'abnormal psychology' and didn't want FGM/C covered at all
& in one lecture where I took in a speculum so students could see what one looked like HoD appalled 'you surely need a licence for that!'
my small acts of rebellion were to increase women-focused courses, critical psychology, and challenging the racism of psychology
