The idea of professional development has gradually become an accepted and established part of teaching in higher education (Dearing, 1997; DfES, 2003; Browne, 2010). It is now the norm for new university teaching staff in the UK to complete a postgraduate certificate in Higher Education Practice, Learning and Teaching in HE, or Academic Practice as recommended or even mandatory initial professional development (Laycock & Shrives, 2009). While these certificate programmes (henceforth, PgCert) are now well-established in the sector and are valued for raising the profile of university teaching and educational scholarship (Shrives, 2012), it is not uncommon for learners to view them as a hoop-jumping exercise, and therefore adopt strategic approaches to get through the programme, resulting in disappointing learning gains. We present an analysis of the barriers to engagement that can cause PgCert learners to take such a hoop jumping approach to their programme, drawing from policy, literature, and participant views. We then propose a teaching and assessment model to address these barriers using an eportfolio approach. While eportfolio use is not new in PgCert programmes and staff development, for example being used notably at York St. John University where learners create a portfolio to evidence how they meet the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) and use it as an ‘aide memoire’ in a summatively assessed dialogue (Asghar, 2014), the challenges to engagement for our learners that the current study found lead us to propose a different portfolio approach. There is of course no single right way to design deep learning into a PgCert programme, but we hope that the research-informed eportfolio model presented here may be useful to other practitioners who seek, like us, to remove the hoops from reflective teaching practice.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)