Professional Standards and Professional Values in HE

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Professional Standards and Professional Values in
HE

• Christine Smith, University of Salford

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Professional standards/professional values in HE

•  The UK Professional Standards Framework (UK PSF)
  for teaching and learning in HE is a descriptor
  based approach, whereby HE institutions determine
  their own criteria in the application of the
  framework. In order to demonstrate application of
  the standards, six areas of activity, core
  knowledge and professional values derived from
  the Higher Education Academys existing
  Accreditation Scheme are applied to learning
  outcomes and assessment activities within an HE
  institutions professional development programme.
  This presentation focuses on the UK PSF, but
  specifically on the professional values within
  the framework.
•  Professional values in HE for teaching and
  learning can be defined as cognitive
  representations of desirable abstract goals
  relating to teaching and support of learning that
  transcend specific situations but that are
  important to or valued within the HE academic
  context. Values are important for drawing our
  attention to important issues around, for
  example, equity and quality in the student
  experience. In the UK PSF they are articulated
  around notions of respect and commitment, such as
  a commitment to the development of learning
  communities. These professional values can also
  be described as the professional principles that
  guide decisions and actions for teaching and
  support of learning within HE academic practice.
  Whilst it is clearly fundamental that such values
  are implicit in a professional approach to
  teaching and practice, it is less clear how we
  can promote adherence to such values among a
  developing professional community. It is
  inherently problematic to suggest values are
  things which we could, or indeed should attempt
  to teach within professional development
  programmes, such as those for early career
  academic staff. There is also concern amongst
  some academic development practitioners that the
  professional skills and values associated with
  teaching diverse students are not well understood
  in the sector and that academic development
  programmes could do more to develop these.
•  In the Learning to Teach Inclusively project at
  the University of Wolverhampton, original video
  clips of authentic classroom practice have been
  developed as Open Educational Resources used to
  illustrate principles in practice and to provoke
  discussion around inclusive learning and
  teaching. The presentation will build on the
  project work to suggest and demonstrate how Open
  Educational Resources (OERs) could offer an
  innovative approach to encouraging engagement
  with the UK PSF. In particular the presentation
  will explore and reflect upon how we might employ
  OERs as authentic artefacts for promoting
  engagement with and exploration of the more
  abstract professional values of the UK PSF. It
  will consider the use of OERs for eg stimulating
  recall for prompting discussion and for
  critiquing professional practice. It will suggest
  this use of OERs with the intent of identifying
  and surfacing for inspection, in explicit ways,
  the tacit values and the extent to which these
  are underpinning teaching and the support of
  learning.

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Advance organiser

• The UK PSF and its professional values
• OERs as artefacts teaching-as-design (Goodyear
  Retalis, 2010)
• Taxonomies for learning technologies
• Tools for thinking, for communicating and for
  acting
• Exploring the video resources of the Learning to
  Teach Inclusively course
• Reflection and discussion

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UK PSF

• Sector wide standards for teaching and support of
  learning in HE since 2006
• Descriptor based framework for determining
  institutional criteria in its application
• Areas of activity, core knowledge and
  professional values
• Review in progress with revised version available
  from 2nd November 2011

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Professional Values in PSF

• Respect for individual learners
• Commitment to incorporating the process and
  outcomes of relevant research, scholarship and/or
  professional practice
• Commitment to the development of learning
  communities
• Commitment to encouraging participation in HE,
  acknowledging diversity and promoting equality of
  opportunity
• Commitment to continuing professional development
  and evaluation of practice

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Critiquing teaching of values

• Values as cognitive representations of abstract
  concepts
• Implicit in good professional practice and
  important to the HE academic context
• Transcending specific situations a way of
  being?
• Less clear how we can promote adherence to such
  values including among a developing professional
  community
• Problematic to suggest values are things which we
  could, or indeed should attempt to teach within
  professional development programmes
• Concerns have been raised that professional
  skills and values associated with teaching
  diverse students are not well understood
• Could academic development programmes do more to
  develop these? How might they?

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OERs and the Open Education movement

• The Open Education movement
• Open Educational Resources eg courseware and
  content in variety of formats software tools
  learning objects and open courses
• OERs to create, adapt and use
• Notions of convenience, effectiveness,
  sustainability and availability
• OERs as artefacts of authentic practice

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Teaching as design

• Design of good learning tasks
• Design and management of supportive learning
  environments
• Links especially to inquiry based learning
  contexts
• Good tasks, identifying tools and resources to
  make success of tasks, monitoring progress

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Taxonomies for learning technologies

• As media for accessing and for studying learning
  material
• As media for learning through inquiry
• As media for learning through communication and
  collaboration
• As media for learning through construction
• For learners assessment
• For digital and multimedia literacy

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Focus here on tools for

• Thinking
• Communicating and discussion
• Action

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Video example

• Watch the OER video
• Consider what values might be implicit in the
  example OER
• How you might use for yourself and/or with your
  learners thinking communicating acting other?
• Discuss in groups
• Reporting back in plenary

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OER video sharing stories

• http//player.vimeo.com/video/20017357

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To conclude

• Immersive environments and experiences
• Influencing practice
• Gaining experience and understanding for
  critique, for reflection and for action
• Open module FDOL to join to discuss these things
  further

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Thank you for your attention

• c.smith_at_salford.ac.uk

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Time for lunch I think!