The publication published by the European Science Foundation exposes current developments and challenges in the European Higher Education landscape. The authors establish a set of nine principles of good teaching and recommend that universities that strive for quality education offer educational development opportunities for their teachers.
The position paper underlines that "excellent teachers are made, not born; they become excellent through investment in their teaching abilities. Leaving teachers to learn from trial and error is a waste of time, effort and university resources."
The publication highlights six recommendations for important advances to be made toward the professionalisation of teaching and student learning:
- define professional standards for higher education teachers;
- measure teaching effectiveness and provide constructive feedback for academics;
- establish the institutional support base for educational development locally;
- promote the idea of the ´teacher researcher´ and recognise research on teaching as research activity and teaching excellence in hiring and promotion decision;
- allocate meaningful funding for educational development;
- establish a European forum within a currently existing institution that pools and shares resources and existing expertise.
The document aims at presenting the state-of-the-art in the field and increasing the visibility of the growing research on improving teaching abilities of scientists through teacher development programmes, in order to increase application of this research.
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