Help teachers improve their skills or live with the consequences: Professional development for lecturers is vital–students deserve it and universities’ reputations depend on it
Time Higher Education
Comment piece by Professor Herb Marsh.
Professor Herb Marsh was recently invited to write an opinion article for the Times Higher Education supplement on why academics are critical about systems of teacher training and assessment.
Based on his research, the article (Help teachers improve their skills or live with the consequences: Professional development for lecturers is vital–students deserve it and universities’ reputations depend on it) argued that university teachers — unlike professionals in other fields (or school teachers) typically are not trained to be teachers, do not receive feedback about their teaching, do not undertake professional development during their career, and do not improve with experience.
Although a synergy between teaching and research is the rationale for the research university, research and teaching effectiveness are uncorrelated. However, systematic feedback from students’ evaluations of teaching coupled with consultation leads to improved teaching and is supported by research showing their reliability, validity, relative lack of bias and usefulness.
The article and a growing list of comments to it are available here.
