A set of standards is proposed for university teaching. Embedding these within the Higher Education Academy UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) would allow a more robust assessment of whether a university teacher has met a minimum acceptable threshold.
A teacher’s primary responsibility is to facilitate learning. In our view an excellent teacher is someone who does their utmost to ensure that every student reaches his or her potential. But what is the minimum threshold acceptable for a school teacher to be allowed to practise? In England the current criteria is laid out in the Department for Education’s Teachers’ Standards. These represent a demanding set of standards which Initial Teacher Training students and Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) are assessed against the latter in their first year of teaching while on probation.
So what changes when school students enter university and encounter a greater variety of styles of university teaching a greater number of university teachers and more importantly university teachers with a wider range of attributes and aptitudes for teaching?
