Pedagogical Training for Faculty Members

An article related to this post has been published in University Affairs.

Universities are key spaces to develop skills needed for a society and their success heavily depends on faculty members. Research confirms the positive effect of faculty training on students’ experience. However, research on specific skills, needed or wanted by faculty, is sparse. For example, many students suffer from mental health issues but faculty members rarely receive training on well-being and emotional support. Universities, and society as a whole, need to provide supportive environments for faculty and students. Improving educational environments requires more than just better training, but understanding faculty training needs and desires is an important step towards it.

 

While teacher education in K-12 can be highly regulated with dedicated training programs, university educators have a less regulated appointment and training process. This rather ad-hoc process has been a concern in academia as early as the 1960’s when Nowlis et al. stated “It is sometimes wryly noted that college teaching is the only profession requiring no formal training of its practitioners.” Recent research has continued this concern and investigated the challenges for preparing faculty members.

 

Existing literature confirms the positive effect of faculty training on their performance and students’ experience, the faculty’s need and interest in training, and increased needs with online teaching. However, research on the specific skills that faculty want and need is sparse. For example, in a previous study, we demonstrated that many students suffer from mental health issues related to their academic experience, but faculty members rarely receive training on well-being and emotional support. 

 

Back in 2021, I partnered with a couple of colleagues to run a survey on the needs and interests of university faculty members with regard to pedagogical skills. We asked respondents to self-rate their training and readiness for course design, delivery, assessment, educational technology, mental health and well-being, and emotional intelligence. 144 faculty members responded with a fair balance of gender, academic area, and employment level. Results showed that while course design and course delivery were rated as the most important skills, the respondents were less prepared and more in need of training for other skills both at the start of their career and currently. For training needs and interests, student mental health and well-being and educational technology ranked number one and two, respectively, followed by assessment and emotional intelligence. Assistant professors were higher than average on all needs except educational technology, and individuals identified as female were more interested in training than those identified as male.

 

The findings of this survey will be presented in upcoming publications and presentations. Here is a quick glance at the highlights of what we found about pedagogical skills, ranked in three categories:

 

Assumed importance

1- course design

2- course delivery

3- assessment

4- student well-being

5- emotional intelligence

6- educational technology

 

Training need at the start of the career

1- student well-being

2- educational technology

3- course design

4- assessment

5- emotional intelligence

6- course delivery

 

Training need now

1- student well-being

2- educational technology

3- emotional intelligence

4- assessment

5- course design

6- course delivery

 

According to our survey, while course design and delivery were considered important, faculty expressed a greater need and desire for training related to student mental health, well-being, and engagement. Even though the survey was based on faculty members at our university, we believe the results are applicable to other institutions and can help design better training programs.

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