Teaching duties PhD candidates

Teaching duties PhD candidates

Teaching activities may be of interest for both PhD candidates and their chair groups. Teaching experience can be very useful for PhD candidates to further develop and improve their didactic skills.

Please note that difference should be made between two categories of PhD candidates regarding teaching duties:

A. Research assistants (PhD candidates with an employee status)

PhD candidates with an employee contract at Wageningen University should be regarded as scientific staff members with research and education tasks. However, the main task of a PhD candidate is to carry out PhD research but they may be asked to fulfil teaching activities, for example supervising MSc thesis students, lecturing, and assisting in practical classes. These teaching activities should contribute to the development of the didactic skills of the PhD candidate. The maximum time a PhD candidate may spend on teaching is 10% of their overall workload. The teaching activities should be recorded /documented in the Training and Supervision Plan (TSP) with clearly identified learning goals. In exceptional cases a chair group can make an appeal to a PhD candidate to spend more than 10% on teaching duties. In those cases an extension of the employee contract is compulsory to compensate for the extra time.

B. Bursary PhD candidates (PhD candidates not employed at Wageningen University such as Sandwich and Guest PhD candidates)

Bursary PhD candidates do not have a teaching obligation, but they are allowed to perform teaching activities and gain practical experience as part of their education and training programme if they want to develop their teaching skills. Here too teaching activities such as for example supervising MSc thesis students, should be recorded /documented in the Training and Supervision Plan (TSP) with clearly identified learning goals.