‘Small changes make a huge impact for our students’

I have led the British Psychological Society's Higher Education Psychology Teacher of the Year Award (HEPTOTY) and Pre-tertiary Education Teacher of the Year (PEPTOTY) awards for the Division of Academics, Teachers and Researchers in Psychology (DARTP) since 2021. 

Since the award was introduced, recognition for teaching and scholarship-focused careers in academia has grown. I spoke with the finalists Dr Alex Reid, Dr Nilu Ahmed, Dr Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, Dr Andrew Holliman, and this year's winner, Dr Zayba Ghazali-Mohammed, to find out about their motivations to teach, their plans for the future, and advice to teaching and scholarship-focused academics. Congratulations to all, and thanks for the insightful responses. 

How did you become interested in teaching psychology as a career?

Nilu: I think I always wanted to be a teacher, and from about the age of 7 or 8, I was convinced that I would teach English. I came across psychology, and it sounded quite interesting, and I just fell in love. It tapped into something that felt so connected to me that I didn't realise I was so fascinated about. 

During my psychology teaching, I was struck by how the studies were all about very Western groups, and I couldn't see myself in there as much, but I knew I was really interested in it. I found this sort of conflict, and that is what kept me going. I wanted to do my post-grad studies to find out more, to try and think, well, do I need to specialise? Is there a space where I can find this? All of that sparked my curiosity, and it's still very much alive today. That's quite a rare thing in an academic career.

Zayba: I never actually thought about teaching psychology as a career. Like a lot of psychology undergraduates, towards the end of my dissertation, I started thinking about what I wanted to do and what it was that I enjoyed. I really enjoyed the dissertation, so I decided to do a PhD – that put me into the research track. But in doing so, I got to do a lot of different teaching posts, and during my postdoc, it was the teaching side that I enjoyed a little bit more than the research. The great thing about this post is that I can do both and not have to sacrifice the teaching.

Alex: I'm a trained sleep psychologist, and I did my PhD in York, and then a postdoctoral position in Swansea. I was originally invited back to York to undertake maternity cover for teaching at quite short notice, and I quickly discovered in this position that I was very much a 'people person'. By switching to the kind of format involved in a learning and teaching career, and exploring the requisite skillset, I found I developed a real taste for it very quickly, particularly in terms of the types of positive impact I could have. I discovered I was having a beneficial influence on students and thrived on all the different ways that I could get better at my job. It pushes me outside of my comfort zone in lots of very good ways that are rewarding.

Andrew:  I didn't have childhood aspirations of becoming a psychology teacher, but when I took psychology for an A-level, I knew it was something I wanted to explore further at university. This interest in psychology grew during my PhD. I remember one of my supervisors suggesting it would be beneficial to get some teaching experience during my studies, so I looked out for opportunities. My first teaching experience was on the Open University's 'Exploring Psychology' summer school programme. 

I remember being terrified at first – I was really out of my comfort zone. But this, and some other part-time teaching experience that followed, made me realise that I actually really enjoyed the role. As I became more experienced and skilled, I felt I was quite an effective teacher. And so, it was some point during my PhD where I first began to think that being a psychology teacher/lecturer could be something that would work well for me as a career.

Carolina:  For me, there were different steps before I actually settled on a teaching-focused career. I did my PhD in an area of cognitive psychology that can be applied to education. I looked specifically at the spacing effect. So, the effect of if you have the same study time, but you just distribute it in smaller pockets across time, your performance is better than when you cram. It was really important to me already that I investigate a topic that can be applied to the classroom, that can be applied to education. 

While I was doing my PhD, I also already had to teach, and I always enjoyed the teaching aspect: coming up with new activities to introduce students to something new, and to see how they respond to it. I already kind of thought, okay, this is something I really enjoy, being in a room with students and preparing the next generation of psychologists. 

What are your proudest moments in your teaching career? 

Zayba: I think it's got to be this award. But it's really the things that I've managed to achieve in the last sort of 24-28 months… that's me, colleagues, and the ideas I've worked with since being at Glasgow. The other was just some of the research that I described in the case study that was recently published, with three of my students. It has been lovely to see them have that opportunity to come away with from this project with the publication under their belts, without having graduated yet.

Alex: At the top of the list is really helping students to become the best version of themselves, and I get a lot of satisfaction seeing them thrive, particularly once we give them the opportunities or tools to do so. In terms of a specific initiative that I'm proud of, it was developing a scheme in our department to help students seek out paid scholarships to work with staff. The priority here was to help from an inclusivity angle for students who might not have had these opportunities, making sure the work was paid so that they're not being pulled in multiple directions with a second job. 

The scheme involved mentoring between former and potential candidates, in-depth training on interviews, and how to support them when they got shortlisted, alongside direct applications for funding. This resulted in scholarships being allocated to students over 14 projects, producing over 13 staff-student co-authored publications. 

Carolina: My proudest moments are always when I am working directly with students. When you teach them a specific concept and you see the room is really engaged, and they participate in those small activities that you do, and they have additional questions, and you teach them something, and then they use that information for new thinking, for doing something new, for applying the knowledge right away.

I also do a lot of work around giving students the opportunity to practice science or communication, be it through recording podcasts or through the Teaching Innovation and Learning Enhancement network, where I encourage students to write blog posts.

Andrew: Being a finalist of the Higher Education Psychology Teacher of the Year is truly one of them. When I think about what brings me most personal reward, it is not really a single moment, but an event that happens usually with individual students or small groups, when I feel I have made a real impact and have been effective in my role as teacher, educator, mentor, supporting them to strengthen, to develop, to become more competent and feeling that I played a major role in this development. That is the real buzz that I get. And just on that note, often the achievements that are most satisfying are those involving more challenging students who may be studying in the face of adversity. Helping students to achieve something and recognise that achievement, and begin to believe in themselves more than before, makes me very proud. 

Nilu: In terms of formal recognition, I received the 2023 innovative and inspiring teaching award from the University of Bristol. Reading those nominations from the students, about how I made them feel included around my decolonising and anti-racism work; that was lovely. It's the underlying things, when students thank me for advocating for them, for making spaces at the University of Bristol more inclusive. It can feel like sometimes, when you are activism-driven, that change isn't happening, because we want big change. But actually, small changes make a huge impact on our students. 

Then, of course, there's being a finalist, just that recognition that psychology has that transferability in every domain. That's the thing that keeps me really connected to psychology.

Can you tell me about your HEPTOTY case study?

Alex: We noticed that a lot of our students, particularly widening participation students, were apprehensive about entering the job market for various reasons, and unfortunately, a lot of it related to a lack of confidence and imposter syndrome. Consequently, we ran an initiative called 'The Graduate Voices Project' to develop some interview-based resources featuring alumni across the Faculty of Sciences to create a portfolio of videos that students could draw from for advice on various facets of employability. 

We wanted role models who have been in these students' shoes to provide a thread of relatability, and to hear about their challenges and how they've overcome them. We spend a lot of time in academia rightfully celebrating success and achievements, but maybe we should also spend time talking about how people have overcome challenges, because that should be celebrated too! I've also developed a toolkit on how to do this, should anyone want to emulate this project or run a similar initiative at their own institution.

Zayba: My case study is really the journey that I've had since arriving in Glasgow. This is the first sort of role where I've had a lot more agency in deciding how I teach and what it is that I teach. But I also felt quite strongly that as a person of colour, I wanted to give back a little bit more and improve the space to be more inclusive. There wasn't really a space for race equality things. And that's really where I set that up, and it was only through doing that. 

Lots of different things were achieved from that network – we were able to build those inclusive spaces, which then led to the student buy-in, the student support, and trust from students to then go off and do projects and scholarship around a lot of these ideas, particularly around decolonising psychology. It's that journey from how to build those inclusive spaces, and really the importance of having students involved in that process, which then led to that effective teaching. 

Nilu: For me, it was quite a personal case study, and it was a lovely opportunity to reflect on my career, more than focus and home in on a piece of teaching. Because I think for me, my teaching is holistic and intersectional, and it pulls on different ways of working in different things that I do, and different aspects of the academic experience. 

And I think if you work from a decolonising position and lens, from global south positions, it's about context. The focus is on context and nuance and relationality, which is what I bring into the way that I teach, and the benefits of this is that it changes things across the system, but in very small ways. I found that being able to work with students directly has been impactful and I wanted to capture that in my case study by sharing feedback from students and how it has impacted their career choices as well. 

So, they have been exposed to something in the dental school that they wouldn't have been exposed to before working with communities like the refugee and asylum communities, and then they have taken that as their passion into their postgraduate studies and into their careers.

Carolina: Service learning is the teaching approach where students learn about specific concepts, research findings and then use that knowledge and apply it to solve a problem. In my case, students in the first couple of weeks learn about different learning strategies, the theories behind the strategies, different findings and boundary conditions around study strategies that are all informed by cognitive psychology. So, how we think, remember, forget information. Based on that, they come together in teams and create How-To-Study tutorials for pupils in local schools. Usually those are one and a half hour tutorials where students demonstrate the strategy to the pupils, and they come up with amazing creative activities that honestly, I wouldn't have come up with. They visit the local schools and get teaching experience. 

Andrew: This case study was really inspired by a recognition, a realisation that university for most students is a period of immense change – in terms of new learning environments, new social networks, novel assessments, and different expectations on student autonomy and self-determination. If this change is not managed successfully, it can threaten to negatively impact their university experience. There were two areas that I looked at here, at the start of university. One was the management of a transition mentoring scheme and the other, development of an orientation event designed specifically for Chinese international students. We also developed an assessment hub to support students to navigate their assessments, with resources on things like 'what is assessment and why do we assess', 'using feedback effectively', and understanding the marking criteria'. And finally, an innovation related to the final year of study where students do a psychology dissertation, involved the development and provision of a self-guiding navigation tool to assist students with topic selection. 

What are your teaching-related plans for the future?

Carolina: What I would like to do is more direct collaborations with students to co-create material and resources. I started doing this last summer when I worked with students to co-create labs for Level 2 psychology teaching, and that was a very positive experience, not only for the students, but also for me to see what ideas they come up with and how they implement this. In the future, I would like to work on a resource for study skills for students made by students. So, we have already different resources out there, and I've produced quite a few different ones, but there's a piece of the puzzle missing, and it's the student voice. I think it would make students more likely to use resources if they knew this was co-created by them.

Andrew: I think there are two things that come to mind here. First, I think that I need to continually upskill and personally develop in this ever-changing world to remain an effective psychology teacher. Second, I think another plan that has kind of progressed naturally is to try and influence learning and teaching on a wider scale. For example, I am interested in pursuing more senior leadership positions that have greater influence over teaching and learning, so that I can inform, learn as well, but also inspire and support teaching staff, to help optimise their teaching provision as well as the overall student experience

Alex: I've learned a lot from our students by listening to their various perspectives, but also, at the same time, helping them develop useful skills. I plan to continue doing this, and I'm presently working with 7 student interns at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels to develop a toolkit to give guidance on inclusive research practice, specifically to help disabled individuals be more involved in research. I've also noticed students tend to become highly engaged when they feel their work has an impact beyond assessment, so I intend to build partnerships with external charities to help give student work more relevance. For example, by helping these organisations analyse datasets via student projects, or developing promotional materials as part of an assessment.

Zayba: The project itself is really big, so I think the first thing is just to analyse all that data. I've been very careful in thinking about what I wanted to do with the outcomes of this study, to try and develop a learning teaching strategy around inclusive teaching, particularly around how to decolonise the curriculum.  We'll be taking a lot from this research to try and embed good practice, provide resources for staff, if they want to go on this decolonising journey, which hopefully they do. And then, also to evaluate some of those changes that we've been doing. And continue to work with students, to foster that and create more effective, inclusive teaching.

Nilu: I've really enjoyed doing the pedagogical research around decolonising and inclusion because it's still new. And so, being able to devise new methodologies, using co-production with local communities with my students to plan things so that we work on it together, and we might not get it right the first time, we might have to do something different. My students wanted to understand how they could work better with patients who make inappropriate comments. 

I worked with my students to create a composite character of all the things that had been said, and we had an actor role play that patient, and we had the students work and talk about how it felt, how it felt to be a bystander witnessing this, do we intervene? I'm hoping that I can continue to build this in and look at the psychology of the interactions and the various intersections of power, privilege, race, and gender that can go on.

What advice would you give to teaching-focused academics who are starting out on their careers?

Andrew: I have learned through experience to not be afraid, to try new things and step out of your comfort zone. So much development takes place when you actually 'do it', so don't be deterred from the profession (or another experience) because you feel you do not have the skill set yet – a lot of it will come. It is when you put yourself in those positions and take those roles that make you feel a bit uncertain that you really grow, and you can surprise yourself with what you can achieve. I still cannot believe how much I have transformed, as quite a quiet introvert, to be able to lecture confidently in front of large groups. Embrace the challenge!

Nilu: Academia is really demanding, and the thing that mitigates against that is having something you're passionate about, and making that time for it. Whether it makes it into your curriculum straight away or not, that is irrelevant. It is that you make the time for it. And finding those safe spaces, those academics that you can go for a coffee with and talk about the ideas of what's going on for you, having spaces to debrief… it's really important to look after ourselves as well. Encourage people to find networks, contact potential colleagues. I always say, drop someone an email… it's always nice to have someone say, 'I read this', or 'I heard you speak, and I thought that was really interesting'. 

Alex: Make sure you 'close the loop' on any projects you've created – the dissemination of work, and just making sure you follow through on that final aspect. You can do a lot of fantastic and amazing work, so do it justice! Taking extra steps to communicate with others is important, not just in terms of impact, but also in terms of career progression. I would also say, log everything you do, even if it's just copying and pasting things into a series of bullet points in a document. This can be really useful for promotion, applying for grants or awards, and things of that nature. And the last bit of advice is just to take every opportunity to improve yourself, as long as you have the bandwidth. 

Carolina: We are very lucky in our school that we have many early career teachers who are very engaged, who bring in a lot of passion and energy to teaching. And I think because of that, I try to support early career teachers to set boundaries, to think about, okay, how can I help a student, where does my support end, and what resources can I share with students? Essentially: Where does my work start and where does it end, so that I have time to decompress and to re-energise before I come back to work? For me, the most important thing is to make sure that everyone is working within an environment where they can excel, and they can demonstrate their skills and develop professionally. In order to do that, they need to also rest and know where the boundaries are in regard to their responsibilities.

Zayba: I have been very fortunate to work at Glasgow and have the benefit of great mentors, who will sing your praises… great for boosting your ego and encouraging you to do things like apply for this award. Also, just knowing a little bit about how to navigate the space. If you've never been in teaching before, it can be a bit daunting and kind of knowing where to begin, and finding your own little piece of the pie, and knowing what your focus is going to be. 

That can take a little while sometimes, but having a good mentor can be really helpful in that respect. That's probably the biggest thing that I've benefited from is having good supportive colleagues and finding a mentor, whether that is someone you work with, or even if it's somebody outside of your institution who can offer advice and support in that area.

The HEPTOTY 2024 finalists' case studies are published in the latest edition of Psychology Teaching Review.

For more information about the HEPTOTY and PEPTOTY awards, go to the awards section of the Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology website.

To find out more about Zayba's, Nilu's, Alex's, Andrews', and Carolina's work, see: 

• The Graduate Voices Project (Alex Reid)
• Andrew Holliman
• Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel
• Nilu Ahmed
• Zayba Ghazali-Mohammed