My University Forced Me Into Teaching Training. It Was All Dry ‘eduspeak’

Shortly after I began my tenure as a lecturer at a British university, I received an email inviting me to enroll in a year-long course designed to enhance my abilities as an educator. As someone with years of experience teaching undergraduates in another country, I preferred to learn by doing and gain practical experience in the classroom. I never heard any of my colleagues express a desire for formal teacher training, nor did I believe it was necessary. As it turns out, there was a good reason for that.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a firm believer in lifelong learning and professional development, and I’m always eager to embrace new ideas. Unfortunately, the course I took – which is accredited by the Higher Education Academy – failed to deliver either of these things. Instead, it was dominated by theory and what I call "eduspeak" – jargon that had little bearing on my everyday experiences as a teacher.

Over the course of a year, I can’t recall a single practical teaching technique I learned. Instead, the course emphasized the constant need to evaluate our students so that we could demonstrate our effectiveness to others. It felt like the training was designed to reinforce the increasing emphasis on customer service that I see pervading British universities today.

As a consequence of this disappointing experience, I found myself avidly reading teaching magazines and websites. Every week, my fellow university educators dispensed excellent advice on innovative ways of assessing students, navigating potentially controversial topics in class, and so much more. I learned far more from these columns than from the formal lectures in my teacher training.

Though the UK is far from alone in pushing formal accreditation for educators, there are similar schemes in place throughout Ireland, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries as well. The European Science Foundation urges every European country to adopt these teacher training programs. The ESF argues that, with tuition fees rising rapidly, professors must master the art of satisfying student demands. This pressure is particularly acute in countries that use teaching quality rankings, such as the UK’s highly regarded "teaching excellence framework." There, students are viewed almost as consumers of an educational product that must be pleasing to them.

If we must make formal teacher training a requirement – and I’m not convinced that’s necessary – then we must take practical steps to ensure it is more useful for lecturers. Teachers should have access to guidance from seasoned classroom professionals, and the training should be tailored to today’s learners. A case study approach that focuses on working through challenging classroom issues would be welcome, as would demonstrations on incorporating new tools like polling software into our teaching methods.

At present, courses like the one I took may not do enough to make new lecturers more reflective, effective educators. At the end of my course, I had a nice certificate and lots of encouragement to continue the process. However, I’ve retained little in the way of practical knowledge. Ultimately, I came away from the experience feeling like the primary goal was doling out new titles to add to our names, rather than genuinely deepening our knowledge and skills as teachers.