Stylus Publishing (VA) Building Teaching Capacities in Higher Education: A Comprehensive International Model

This book is the culmination of three years' work by teams from eight institutions in five different European and North American countries. The teams included faculty developers, professors, and graduate students interested in developing and disseminating a more profound understanding of university-level pedagogy. The purpose of the project was, first, to conceptualize what an internationally-appropriate, formal academic program for faculty development in higher education might look like, taking into account differing national contexts, from national standards for faculty development (U.K. and Scandinavia), almost universal institutional support (North America) to virtually no activities (France). The intention was to create and nurture a community of practice, enriched and informed by a range of expertise and different higher education traditions, cultures, and languages. To so, the book begins with a section of five case studies that describe current practice in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France and Switzerland. The second purpose was to define a common curriculum, or core course with common foundations, for faculty and graduate students, based on a distributed learning model. The final section of the book presents a concrete concept map used to define the curriculum, and to educational developers with useful tool for furthering their work, and explains the rationale for redefining faculty development as educational development. This book offers practitioners around the world with a framework and model of educational development that can serve a number of purposes including professional development, monitoring and assessment of effectiveness, and research, as they meet increasing demands for public accountability. For North American readers it offers insight into the vision and aims of the Bologna Process with which they may need to engage to maintain international competitiveness. Review Faculties in theological education who have taken interest in recent books on clergy formation in the U.S. will benefit from asking the core questions developed on the educational development competency map. It is clear that the field of faculty development in theological education in the U.S. would benefit from broader international comparisons, particularly as religion flourishes across the globe.-- "Teaching Theology and Religion" (6/1/2012 12:00:00 AM)Includes case studies of faculty development models in Canadian, Belgian, Swiss, Danish and French universities.-- "The Chronicle of Higher Education" (6/1/2010 12:00:00 AM) About the Author Alenoush Saroyan is Associate Professor at the Centre for University Teaching and Learning and the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University. Cheryl Amundsen is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University.