Job Discussion Forums

[Mark100]

It is all very amusing really.

I wonder how useful Ph.D quals are when it acutally comes to teaching!

I am assuming this would be a teaching postition.

They are after all research degrees and often people very good at research are not very good teachers.

As for their use in the UAE this is just mind boggling.

Credentialism gone mad.

[abufletcher]

The positions in the UAE requiring a Ph.D. are not just EFL positions (or not entirely EFL positions). These are professorships where the individual is supposed to be able to teach specialist courses in linguistics, translation, TEFL methodology, communication studies, literature, etc.

I agree entirely that having a Ph.D. is wildly overkill for an EFL instructor position and to my mind less of a qualification than a CV full of recent conference presentations and/or practical papers. I'm not however willing to concede that having a Ph.D. automatically makes you a rotten teacher. A Ph.D. plus no teaching experience makes you a rotten teacher!