Teaching laboratory technician: Job description

A teaching laboratory technician works in all kinds of educational institutions including secondary schools, further education colleges and universities. Their tasks involve supporting the work of science teachers/lecturers and their students to ensure that they:

• make the best use of the time they spend in the laboratory;
• use equipment safely;
• accurately record the results of their work.

The role mainly involves providing technical support, ensuring that equipment is functioning properly and is ready to use, and that the right materials are available for particular lessons.

Sometimes laboratory technicians work closely with students to explain or demonstrate experiments or how to use equipment as well as helping teachers with a class and supporting individual students on research projects.

The role of scientific laboratory technician is similar to the teaching technician but they tend to work more in large public limited companies, in industry, hospitals, specific government departments or government-funded research institutions, environmental agencies and research.

Typical work activities

Specific activities vary according to the size and type of educational institution, e.g. experiments tend to be less complex in schools than in universities. The range of tasks usually includes:

• liaising with academic staff to discuss timetables, equipment requirements and work plans;
• running trials of experiments prior to classes and then demonstrating techniques for experiments;
• preparing equipment and chemicals before lessons - from test tubes to state-of-the-art microscopes;
• maintaining and repairing equipment and laboratory apparatus;
• record keeping, e.g. for students' practical sessions, tracking methods, results, etc;
• ensuring that equipment is properly cleaned and that chemicals, drugs and other materials are appropriately stored;
• cataloguing recordings and making them available when requested (if the department houses audiovisual resources);
• supporting the work of teachers in classes and laboratory sessions and giving technical advice to staff and students;
• working with individual students and supporting them on research projects;
• managing the stock control of chemicals and equipment;
• contributing to high-level research, if working at university level;
• ensuring that all health and safety procedures are understood and followed correctly;
• coordinating work in the laboratory to ensure efficient use is made of expensive pieces of equipment.

Senior and lead technicians tend to take on more managerial work. This may include budgeting and ordering resources, conducting risk assessments and carrying out staff supervision and training.