Abstract of my Doctor of Education (EdD) dissertation – available at: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/34169

Teaching-only academics now constitute a significant proportion of the academic staff in UK higher education. This thesis is a three-part study in which I sought to contribute to a more indepth understanding of the teaching-only academic role. I did this through an investigation of the career trajectories, perceptions, work-related experiences and academic identity constructions of teaching-only academics working in a research-intensive institution in the UK.

In the first part of the study I carried out a systematic review of the literature on teaching-only academics in the UK, Australia and Canada. In the second part of the study I investigated the virtual identity of teaching-only academics at the UK research-intensive institution. I did this by undertaking an analysis of how these teaching-only academics self-represented and projected themselves on their institutional webpages. In the third part of the study I carried out a life-history analysis of senior teaching-only academics in the engineering faculty of the case study institution.

A principal finding from this thesis, which is collaborated across all the three parts of the study, is that the teaching-only academic role is a non-homogeneous role comprising individuals who come from different backgrounds, have followed different career trajectories into the role, and have different academic identities. Findings from this thesis also suggest that whilst teaching-only academics were introduced as an institutional response to the demands of the RAE/REF, the very act of creating the role has further exacerbated the separation between research and teaching, and between undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. Specifically, undergraduate teaching within the case study engineering department now tends to be the responsibility of teaching-only academics, with research-and-teaching academics increasingly focussing on research and postgraduate teaching. This separation has implications for research-led teaching, particularly in research-intensive institutions.

The thesis also reveals that despite the pre-eminence of research, teaching remains important within the university, and individuals on the teaching-only academic role are able to accumulate substantial, and valued, teaching-related academic capital. This capital, in turn, is enabling them to secure and advance their positions within the same institution, and to pursue career advancement through seeking employment in other higher education institutions.