Blog – Appraising and planning for the next year

Having blogged about the frustrations of almost but not quite funding applications from last year, I thought I’d take the opportunity to outline (in a blog so now it’s on the internet and I have to do it) my plans for this year (Yes I know it’s February). So this is me giving myself my annual appraisal- by blog.

I have always found an annual appraisal both a little scary and quite pleasant. It’s not dissimilar to PhD supervision or an upgrade in so far that you have to talk about what you have achieved over the last year and your planned work for the next. The meeting is facilitated by a line manager who gives you feedback and tweaks and approves your development plans. The review and plan (depending on your job) needs to cover both personal ambitions, skill development and broader development of the work or role you do. Appraisals are a pretty universal process across many professions including academia. The academic appraisal system tends to focus on academic and educational achievements, external impact and internal citizenship. For an ECR they are a great opportunity to consider how to move towards the next stage (promotion), what papers/funding to aim for as well as taking account of all the “other” stuff we do like teaching, being on committees and groups, any clinical work we do too.

A large focus of my appraisal will be publications. My goal from last year was to publish at least one 3* paper per year. That does depend on me knowing what a 3* paper should be. I fluctuate in my understanding of it. I know it needs to be original research published in an international journal, and preferably one with a reasonably high impact factor. It should also, where possible, be a larger study (several participants). Qualitative research counts just as much as quantitative – and ideally the more ground breaking, impactful and original the better. I feel like I have just put a load of adjectives together. I think some of my research is 3*, possibly? The results from my PhD – the first ever RCT (pilot) on speech and language therapy for primary progressive aphasia in 2023- with 18 participants – was “officially” published in 2023. Thought it was 2022 online. I also published a study describing four focus groups projects with four different types of rare dementia- bringing it together to identify practice implications in speech and language therapy- does that count? Or is it too qualitative? And a protocol – does that count? Must do more and better this year.

I have already told you about the funding stuff – one big disappointment from last year but I was awarded two small grants. This year I have already applied for two small ones. I think maybe I need to do some thinking about what to apply for beyond that. Possible one or two  main things – whether it’s the next stage of a part of my study or some funding for a group of international academic SLTs to collaborate on some work.

I did a course to become a an advanced systematic practitioner this year. I have always found leadership courses to be rather basic given their focus on basic communication skills. This was one of the courses I’ve been on to help me reflect on systems and team dynamics and leadership. I also went overseas to one of my mentors labs and I spent some time in Wales at Bangor University at another mentors research group. I learnt loads. Observerships are brilliant sources of training and education. I plan to do more work with my mentors this year, particularly focusing on developing my knowledge of health economics and implementation science. This will have a direct impact on the research I am working on for my fellowship. So it’s all intertwined.

I also went on some courses to support my supervision skills as I’ve embarked on a new phase of PhD supervision. I’m hoping to take on another PhD student later this year. I have taken on some more teaching too. This all counts. I really enjoy teaching – and I feel I get to be part of a different team that way. A team that talks about pedagogy of teaching and tries out new and different ideas to enhance student assessment and experiences.

My external engagement is ongoing in the bit of clinical work I do. What I really need to enhance is my ability to record the actual impact- to evidence it. I’m going to take some time out this year to build a log of sorts on this.

In terms in internal citizenship I have been running the Early Career Researcher seminars in our department for a couple of years now and have put my name down for two other committees. I’m particularly excited about one of the roles and plan to blog about it if it comes off.

That feels like a good summary and quite a lot of new goals for 2024, so I’ll be off so I can get on and actually set about doing them.

Author

Dr Anna Volkmer is a Speech and Language Therapist and Senior Research Fellow in Language and Cognition, Department of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London. Anna is researching Speech and language therapy interventions in language led dementia and was once voted scariest speech and language therapist (even her children agree).

Follow @volkmer_anna