Training to teach adults

The main bugbear, if you did try teaching in schools, is the perpetual meddling of successive governments in the curriculum and assessment, taken to dizzying heights of late my Michael Gove (who must hold a massive grievance from his own schooldays if that might explain what is going on?). It means schoolteachers are under a great deal of stress. But I understand otherwise it can be difficult to take on children or adolescents if you feel they might be able to take advantage or unsettle you.

Also you would have to do a year's teacher training course, or go round the long way from classroom assistant.

So otherwise, as you say you need to explore the options for teaching adults. That's not without some training needs, most commonly a Cert Ed in post compulsory education, which can be done by day release from a full time teaching job, and is far less arduous.

One option is Further Education (FE) - primarily vocational training, but could include A Levels or undergraduate courses. FE means that while some teaching would be classroom based, some would be via packages such as distance learning and e-learning, which means writing the stuff rather than actually teaching, or a lot of practical based work/work experience based (going out to clients). Often it will be day release. The subject matter is less likely to be history, though some history courses may be available, and more likely to have some vocational element like commercial practice, media, beautician work/hairdressing, building trades, nursing qualifications etc.

The other downside of FE is bringing in commercial work - there's too much competition for conventional classes so you have to go out to companies offering training, or trying to bring students in. So you are often selling a teaching product.

A variant on FE is Agricultural College, where you might be involved in horticulture, conservation, garden design, animal welfare etc.  Again there may be some applied history opportunities like landscape management.

University teaching does not necessarily require a PhD to commence it, but posts are infrequent and competitive, so for the more established universities you would probably need experience as well as a PhD, and a clear academic theme.

Therefore your best chances are with the newer universities, either the former polytechnics or the former teaching colleges. My own experience was with the latter, so only really becoming a University lecturer in my last decade.

The trouble with universities is they have to be centres of excellence, and acquire international reputation. So their teaching staff are pushed into being intellectual ambassadors, either by means of a good publication record in their specialist subject in internationally recognised refereed journals, or have a good pedagogic reputation (teaching methods). In order for this to work you usually have to fit into a research cohort which means you cannot do what you want, but what the university sees as boosting their reputation.

The other bugbear, all the way from schoolteaching to university is marking. It isn't that easy. A lot of people fancy teaching, but half the job is assessment, setting assessed coursework and exams around a clearly defined curriculum. Many good lecturers cannot mark well, and good markers conversely are often poor at teaching, but you have to aspire to both.

So if you sought a university post you would probably have to register for a PhD to work on in your own time (not easy and lots of people never finish but manage to keep their jobs) and also a Cert Ed post compulsory, and probably research supervision training.

Posts aren't that often advertised due to cut backs, and they are usually within research cohorts and looking for people with established reputations. Going through the university job ads can be quite depressing, because they are often "just not you" because of some essential criteria you cannot match. You can go on any university website and look at current vacancies, but be prepared to feel your hopes being dashed. Or you can search sites like jobs.ac.uk, which I should have checked to see if that still runs.

So what can you do to break in? Well you either go in as a research assistant on a research project, which means spending some years doing the data gathering analysis for someone else's project, and trying to pick up some teaching experience along the way. Or register for a higher degree. Its the age old approach, if you're in the system it might open opportunities, and you get known.

The other thing to caution you about is that universities are ridiculously "bitchy". It is very aggressive and a lot of grudge bearing and spite can spoil things. My personal experience is it was worse than school. If you want to see real adult immaturity, university lecturers are a prime example. Also while universities have been particularly pressured to accommodate disabled students, they have very poor records for treatment of disabled staff, and the generally statistic is that, while disabled students form 10% of the student population, it is often less than 1% of teaching staff who are disabled. It sends the message you can study here but not work here.

Sorry if that looks bleak, but it may help give you a context. Don't assume it will be easy, but nevertheless opportunities do arise.  You need to be prepared to accept compromise, usually a bit to one side of what you would really have liked to teach.

The main bugbear, if you did try teaching in schools, is the perpetual meddling of successive governments in the curriculum and assessment, taken to dizzying heights of late my Michael Gove (who must hold a massive grievance from his own schooldays if that might explain what is going on?). It means schoolteachers are under a great deal of stress. But I understand otherwise it can be difficult to take on children or adolescents if you feel they might be able to take advantage or unsettle you.

Also you would have to do a year's teacher training course, or go round the long way from classroom assistant.

So otherwise, as you say you need to explore the options for teaching adults. That's not without some training needs, most commonly a Cert Ed in post compulsory education, which can be done by day release from a full time teaching job, and is far less arduous.

One option is Further Education (FE) - primarily vocational training, but could include A Levels or undergraduate courses. FE means that while some teaching would be classroom based, some would be via packages such as distance learning and e-learning, which means writing the stuff rather than actually teaching, or a lot of practical based work/work experience based (going out to clients). Often it will be day release. The subject matter is less likely to be history, though some history courses may be available, and more likely to have some vocational element like commercial practice, media, beautician work/hairdressing, building trades, nursing qualifications etc.

The other downside of FE is bringing in commercial work - there's too much competition for conventional classes so you have to go out to companies offering training, or trying to bring students in. So you are often selling a teaching product.

A variant on FE is Agricultural College, where you might be involved in horticulture, conservation, garden design, animal welfare etc.  Again there may be some applied history opportunities like landscape management.

University teaching does not necessarily require a PhD to commence it, but posts are infrequent and competitive, so for the more established universities you would probably need experience as well as a PhD, and a clear academic theme.

Therefore your best chances are with the newer universities, either the former polytechnics or the former teaching colleges. My own experience was with the latter, so only really becoming a University lecturer in my last decade.

The trouble with universities is they have to be centres of excellence, and acquire international reputation. So their teaching staff are pushed into being intellectual ambassadors, either by means of a good publication record in their specialist subject in internationally recognised refereed journals, or have a good pedagogic reputation (teaching methods). In order for this to work you usually have to fit into a research cohort which means you cannot do what you want, but what the university sees as boosting their reputation.

The other bugbear, all the way from schoolteaching to university is marking. It isn't that easy. A lot of people fancy teaching, but half the job is assessment, setting assessed coursework and exams around a clearly defined curriculum. Many good lecturers cannot mark well, and good markers conversely are often poor at teaching, but you have to aspire to both.

So if you sought a university post you would probably have to register for a PhD to work on in your own time (not easy and lots of people never finish but manage to keep their jobs) and also a Cert Ed post compulsory, and probably research supervision training.

Posts aren't that often advertised due to cut backs, and they are usually within research cohorts and looking for people with established reputations. Going through the university job ads can be quite depressing, because they are often "just not you" because of some essential criteria you cannot match. You can go on any university website and look at current vacancies, but be prepared to feel your hopes being dashed. Or you can search sites like jobs.ac.uk, which I should have checked to see if that still runs.

So what can you do to break in? Well you either go in as a research assistant on a research project, which means spending some years doing the data gathering analysis for someone else's project, and trying to pick up some teaching experience along the way. Or register for a higher degree. Its the age old approach, if you're in the system it might open opportunities, and you get known.

The other thing to caution you about is that universities are ridiculously "bitchy". It is very aggressive and a lot of grudge bearing and spite can spoil things. My personal experience is it was worse than school. If you want to see real adult immaturity, university lecturers are a prime example. Also while universities have been particularly pressured to accommodate disabled students, they have very poor records for treatment of disabled staff, and the generally statistic is that, while disabled students form 10% of the student population, it is often less than 1% of teaching staff who are disabled. It sends the message you can study here but not work here.

Sorry if that looks bleak, but it may help give you a context. Don't assume it will be easy, but nevertheless opportunities do arise.  You need to be prepared to accept compromise, usually a bit to one side of what you would really have liked to teach.