Introduction: The purpose of this programme was to strengthen university teachers’ quality in teaching, and for them to discuss and reflect on their own teaching and learning approach together with peers to organize and support student-centred learning at their home institution in Poland. The course is developed by two learning centres at Aarhus University (CESU and STLL) in collaboration with Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland and funded by the European Social Fund.
Structure: This teacher training programme is based on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and Learning Design as methods to professional and faculty development within teaching and learning at higher education. Teachers develop their pedagogical and didactical reasoning by designing a Learning Design to be implemented and evaluated at their home institution. Hence, an important part of the scholarly approach is adapting and implementing the newly acquired didactic knowledge into their own teaching and learning practice and hereby ensuring internalisation, personal experience and reflection. By this, we encourage teachers to become reflective practitioners, where the interaction between active experimentation, concrete experiences, reflective observations and abstract conceptualisation allows concepts of teaching and learning to enrich each other in relation to their own teaching and learning practice.
Indication of the didactic relevance: Learning Design and SoTL as methods appear to be useful tools for professional and faculty development in polish higher education. The preliminary findings of the teachers’ Learning Designs show that teachers’ pedagogic and didactic competences and reasoning are improved. It will be interesting to explore teachers’ own experiences, and if this approach to faculty development will have an effect on the teaching and learning approaches, as well as their principles of quality teaching at their home institution and with their colleagues.