Last week I was teaching in the graduate-school of my
university. It was the end of term and all the undergraduates had gone home, so
it was just staff, post grads, and hard-core undergraduates left on campus. The
atmosphere, at times like this, is very different to term time. You have an opportunity for
conversations with colleagues and time moves at a more leisurely pace that is
more conducive to pondering the big issues that impact on my discipline. It seemed appropriate then that I
should be co-leading a workshop on ethics and research with Richard Keeble
following a session delivered by Jonathan Cooper. This session turned out to be
the most pleasurable teaching experience I'd had in a long time and I was keen
to understand why this was and why isn't all my teaching like this.
We were aware that the student group would have been through
an intensive week of lectures on methodology and the like, so we wanted to
provide a more interactive experience, which would stimulate the students to
consider their research in a different light rather than to provide
information. To this end we presented a set of 'ethical hypotheticals'. These
were issues that my co- presenter and I had encountered and that raised issues
that we thought had relevance beyond the confines of our own disciplines.
As I was leaving the room a group of participants were still
discussing some of the cases presented and the issues raised in the
session. This was what made the
experience pleasurable. The
students weren't watching the clock but were really engaged in the discussion -
to the extent that one student had to be asked not to refer to another's ideas
as 'ridiculous'. If only all
sessions inspired this level of passion. Thank you all who attended.
