Pedagogic training for University teachers - A concept based on individual’s needs for personal development.

Paper in proceeding, 2013

Abstract— Traditional pedagogical training for University teachers implies attending courses on how students learn and maybe on general theories about pedagogy and teaching strategies. Pedagogical context and scientific reasoning is the area of study in many such courses. These courses are usually broad and theoretically disposed and performed in a centralized manner at the Universities, involving teachers from many different disciplines and backgrounds [1]. The individual needs of teachers for their personal development are not always met by these courses. The experienced teachers often need support on how to improve teaching in a much more subject and individual specific manner. In 2011 the department of Chemical and Biological Engineering used a teacher/researcher questionnaire to disclose the needs of teachers in their own perspective in order to find new methods for improvement of teaching and learning. The department discussed these expressed needs with an experienced teacher from another department to develop and execute a more individually tailored development scheme. Through these discussions a concept which contained a number of probable areas for individual development was suggested for the academic staff at the department. All teachers at the department were invited to participate. In the fall of 2011, 10 teachers were admitted and 6 of these participated fully. The experience and feedback from the evaluation showed that the majority appreciated the personal dialogue as a way to improve individual capabilities in teaching. This paper describes the development process of this project, the implementation of the individual concepts, as well as some features of the experience gained.