Becoming a teacher in higher education: Creating an academic development program to catalyse doctoral students' professionalization

Abstract

This paper focuses on exploring the intellectual basis for establishing an academic development program for international doctoral students in social sciences and humanities in Central Europe so as to cultivate a reflective scholarly approach to teaching early on in their academic career. The program conceptions and practices are embedded in the notion that a scholarly approach to teaching integrates the understanding and demonstration of knowledge about teaching and necessitates a continuous learning process about teaching through reflection and through conducting research on teaching in the various disciplines. In particular, taking on board the domains of teaching knowledge which derived from the kinds of reflections on teaching (cf. Kreber & Cranton, 2000; Mezirow, 1991), instructional, pedagogical and curricular knowledge and continuous reflection at the level of content, process as well as premise, are represented in an integrative manner in our overarching program principles and pedagogical strategies. As we see, professionalization of doctoral students' teaching practice in higher education (cf. Lueddeke, 2003) is particularly important in the context of enhanced faculty mobility and internationalization. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the literature and practice on establishing academic development programs, especially in academic environments with low institutional support for teaching and lack of formal requirements for professional development.

Pedagogue students’ opinions on ideal teacher interaction

“…During the most recent years, several researches have dealt with examination of the teacher-student relation system (e.g. Telli et al 2007;Wubbels 2014;Passini et al 2015;Misic et al 2021;Kanczné Nagy and Csehiová 2021). One of the most important findings of these was that good interpersonal relationships have a positive impact on learning both in and outside the classroom (Goh and Fraser 1998;den Brok et al 2004).…”