CSFS launches Educational Blog – launch
Welcome to the first CSFS Educational Blog. 
Aiming to support and contribute to Learning, Teaching and Training within forensic science education, the Blog will be available regularly on the CSFS member platform. If you are interested in contributing to the Blog, please email H.Tidy@tees.ac.uk
Professor Tim Thompson, Teesside University
As I am sure many of you will have seen, our universities have been caught up in the current culture war being played out across various media outlets – and it has the potential to engulf those of us who teaching forensic and crime scene science too. Some of this criticism aimed at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is probably justified, but much is not. The debates, including new building construction, the humanities and creative industries, VC salaries, casualisation of the work force, are many and varied but fundamentally all connected. Ultimately, if you force higher education into a market driven system, you can’t then start to complain when market forces kick in. Part of this HE debate focuses on so-called ‘mickey mouse’ degrees – courses some feel do not offer much to the country, or crucially, do not offer a monetary return on monetary investment. This is where we get drawn in. This idea of ‘value-for-money’ has been measured in different ways, and Graduate Outcomes is one approach. This measure highlights the proportion of graduates in specific kinds of graduate employment after completing their degrees. For the current dataset for forensic science, this proportion in graduate employment varies from 82% to 30% (with a mean of 59%; out of 27 eligible universities). In comparison, the national range for all subjects combined is 95% to 50% (with a mean of 69%; from 130 HEIs).
I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has said to me that we shouldn’t recruit onto forensic degrees because there aren’t enough jobs out there. It’s a nonsense argument, and one that I have already addressed elsewhere. It’s an argument that removes all agency from the student and is a simplistic deterministic view that suggests that people only work in the subjects that they study. It ignores the importance of widening participation and social mobility, such as engaging first generation HE students – something forensic science is very good at. It also confuses education with training. In the forensic sciences, this distinction (and there is a distinction) can get blurred and isn’t helped when much of the discussion of education within forensic science focuses on technical standards. We have a series of Component Standards ourselves, and many of them stipulate knowledge of processes or methods. The QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for the Forensic Science (the most recent review of which was Chaired by our own Brian Rankin and well supported by the Society) is a bit broader and addresses a more traditional set of graduate expectations. Now, this is no different from many professional bodies who have a duty to uphold the practice of their profession, but it should force us to ask what we as a Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Body (PSRB) can do to address these pressures being placed on our partner HEIs and student members.
It’s just over 22 years to the month since I worked on my first forensic case. It was an incredible experience which helped kickstart my career. A few years after this I took an academic position, and I loved developing lessons and courses and working with students. The impact you can have on individual students is not to be underestimated. As my career continued, I started thinking about how I could reach and hopefully impact the lives of more students, and this is what has taken me into senior HE leadership. I have shifted from having responsibility for a class of 12 students to over 7,500 learners across a range of disciplines. While I miss the day-to-day interaction with students, this change of role has given me a broader perspective on how to approach pedagogy. What can we in the forensic sciences learn from these other disciplines?
There are differences. We know that most students who apply for, say nursing, want to be nurses. Very rarely is nursing studied out of pure interest. Not so with forensic or crime scene science. The question I propose then is whether our Component Standards limit the future employability options of those who study forensic science and have a negative effect on HEI metrics by being too focused on practice that most students won’t do after graduation. The answer, of course, points us towards another question: who a body like the Chartered Society ultimately serves?
Many forensic science academics pride themselves, quite rightly, on the quality of their teaching and their student engagement. We have seen much positive change over time. For example, when I started out as a Lecturer the amount of research-informed teaching in the field was minimal. The number of staff teaching in crime scene science with a PhD was tiny. Not so now – although this does raise a separate debate about whether these academics have the necessary experience of practice, the flipside being, of course, is that we need also to ensure that those who move from practice to HE maintain their currency and contemporary understanding.
Other changes have been much more rapid. Our disciplines responded fantastically to the pressures and restrictions of COVID to support our students and colleagues. I’ve written previously highlighting the challenges of converting practical courses into online versions and the global nature of that challenge; the #RemoteForensiCSI team have also been active in supporting staff through this period; the special issue of Science & Justice ‘The Future of Teaching, Training and Learning in Forensic and Crime Sciences’ has a plethora of excellent articles exploring a variety of learning and teaching issues, some of which have been a direct response to the lockdowns. But if we cast our eyes across to other vocational fields, we can see that these responses are there too – and arguably developed from a more mature engagement with pedagogy.
Which is why the Society is launching a new monthly series of posts. We want to share ideas and good practice, but mostly we want to spark discussions and debates. The posts will be written from the contributors’ perspectives and therefore do not necessarily represent the views of the Society. We invite everyone to contribute to the discussions. Some posts you may agree with, others you may not, but we hope that they’ll all make you think and reflect upon this vital part of the Society’s work.