Certificate in Tertiary Level (University) Teaching
Rationale
The Certificate in Tertiary Level (University) Teaching is a pilot programme of the Instructional Development Unit and the Department of Liberal Arts, Faculty of Humanities and Education. The programme was developed for two primary reasons:
- to satisfy a general need by workshop participants for a more structured and certifiable teacher training programme; and
- as a special request from the Department of Liberal Arts
The self-assessment process, conducted in preparing for the quality review of the department, revealed that for Literatures in English there needs to be a fair mechanism for selecting quality tutors and that tutors need to be equipped with teaching skills applicable to tertiary level.
Tertiary level teaching qualifications are becoming a requirement for those wishing to engage in teaching at this level. Centres for teaching and learning support/professional development centres/instructional development units are increasingly offering structured programmes not only to incoming staff, for whom such qualifications are compulsory, but also for all teaching staff at their institutions. In some cases, such qualifications become a departmental requirement. However, the move to credentialling is important for even more fundamental reasons. One reason is the growing understanding that although the tertiary level teacher may be proficient in a discipline, teaching others requires more than the knowledge of a discipline. The tertiary level teacher must be knowledgeable about teaching and learning. This knowledge is required for the teacher to be able to deconstruct and package or re-package the discipline constructs and practices in a way that facilitates the learning of the discipline. Another reason for teacher training relates to teaching as professional activity. Teaching of itself is a discipline with its own concepts, tenets, methods, research – epistemology, if you will – which must be made known to those who engage in its practice. These are valid reasons for ensuring that prospective and practicing teachers at any or all levels are appropriately informed and developed in terms of their competence to teach effectively.
A Certificate in Tertiary Level (University) Teaching offered at this time by The UWI is timely, and can develop the experience and expertise to strengthen the area of quality teaching at a time when there is very rapid expansion of tertiary institutions. Inevitably, questions of standards and monitoring mechanisms will arise and the university must be able to play a leading role in credentialling and addressing issues of standards and quality of tertiary level teaching. Appropriate credentialling of teaching at the tertiary level seems necessary for the selection of good tutors and to ensure quality teaching. This programme is proposed as a pilot for increasing expertise in the development and implementation of such programmes through feedback and evaluation. The University will thus be better placed to lead the thrust for more universal certification of this type, and for building monitoring mechanisms that can be structured around this pilot programme.
next > Goals and Programme Implementation Strategy
|
