Teaching outside your area of expertise: an opportunity for professional development

ABSTRACT

As professional demands in an increasingly competitive academic environment are growing, professors are often assigned to teach outside their area of expertise. This paper investigates the experience of teaching new courses that are outside a faculty member’s immediate area of expertise. Key questions concern the extent to which faculty members appreciate the opportunity to be content novices and whether they accept to appear as such in front of their students. This paper uses an online qualitative survey of 70 international faculty members from diverse academic disciplines. It also employs the computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) package NVivo (Version 12) to conduct a series of qualitative analysis. Our findings suggest a fluctuation in the faculty members’ responses about the importance of mastering the subject matter and the joy of teaching as a content novice. The study finally provides practical suggestions on how to succeed in teaching outside one’s area of expertise.

KEYWORDS:

• Expertise
• teacher credibility
• higher education
• classroom management
• teaching styles

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bouziane Zaid

Bouziane Zaid is Associate Professor of media and communication at the University of Sharjah. His research interests are in the areas of media policy advocacy, media law, public service media, digital rights, and corporate communication. He has presented his research in more than 20 countries in North and South America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Dr. Zaid has authored and co-authored two books, and numerous journal articles, country reports, and book chapters.

Cindy Gunn

Cindy Gunn’s main research paradigm is Exploratory Practice Classroom Research which focuses on the contributions of teachers and students to make the classroom a more productive learning environment.

Jana Fedtke

Jana Fedtke is Assistant Professor of English at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). Her research and teaching interests include transnational literatures with a focus on South Asia, gender studies, and postcolonial literatures. Dr. Fedtke’s work has been published in, for example, South Asian History and Culture and South Asian Review.

Mohammed Ibahrine

Mohammed Ibahrine, PhD, is Associate Professor at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). His book New Media and Neo-Islamism is published in its second edition (2012). His main research interests focus on technology and media, creative industries, and marketing, especially in North Africa and the Middle East.