Who do new undergraduates think we are?

'The image of the lecturer, as well as sexist (see para 19), was also predominantly ‘ageist’. Students had the image of lecturers as predominantly bespectacled, middle-aged and wearing unfashionable, or even worn-out, clothes. Leather patches were frequently mentioned and some students believed that their lecturers would be either scruffy, or at least not stylish in appearance. It is not entirely clear how this image has become fixed but it may derive from representations of ‘the learned’ in popular culture which strongly emphasize ‘otherness’, even ‘other-worldliness’. Certainly, students did not expect lecturers to be like them!'

An excerpt from Eric Evans' report on 'Rethinking and Improving Lecturing in History', available at the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology in summary and in full. Well worth a read, particularly for its comments on student expectations and means of developing effective, but individual, practice. Hat tip to Dr Virginia Davis.