Training for Academics

The bureaucratisation of higher education continues relentlessly. Times Higher Education reports on moves to make all UK academics undergo compulsory training. This is not a totally useless idea: a bit of training in teaching methodology would do no harm at all for all those unprepared graduate assistants, part-timers and new Ph Ds that make up an increasing proportion of the work force in European and American universities.

But the higher education establishment has more than this in mind.

Plans to revise the UK Professional Standards Framework were published by the HEA in November after the Browne Review called for teaching qualifications to be made compulsory for new academics.

The framework, which was first published in 2006, is used to accredit universities' teaching-development activities, but the HEA has admitted that many staff do not see it as "relevant" to their career progression.

Under the HEA's proposals, the updated framework says that in future, all staff on academic probation will have to complete an HEA-accredited teaching programme, such as a postgraduate certificate in higher education. Postgraduates who teach would also have to take an HEA-accredited course.

A "sector-wide profile" on the number of staff who have reached each level of the framework would be published by the HEA annually.


Meanwhile, training courses would have to meet more detailed requirements.

A comment by "agreed" indicates just what is likely to happen.
 

I did one of these course a couple of years ago. I learnt nothing from the "content" that I couldn't have learnt in a fraction of the time by reading a book. The bulk of the course was an attempt to compel all lecturers to adopt fashionable models of teaching with no regard to the need for students to learn content. The example set by the lecturers on the course was apalling: ill prepared, dogmatic, and lacking in substance. A failure to connect with the "students" and a generally patronising tone was just one of the weaknesses. Weeks of potentially productive time were taken up by jumping through hoops and preparing assignments. This is not an isolated case, I know of several other such courses in other institutions that were equally shambolic. I'm all for improving the qulaity of teaching, but this is nonsensical. The only real benefit was the collegial relations with academics from other deaprtments forged through common bonds of disgust and mockery aimed at this ridiculous enterprise (presumably designed to justify the continued employment of failed academics from other disciplines given the role of teaching the reast of us how to teach).