A Study On Staff Development In Higher Education In UK

Staff development of higher education teachers is motivation of promoting the quality of higher education. Basically, the autonomous development and self-improvement of higher education teachers consist of the raising of their academic competence and development of their professional knowledge, skills and ethics. What is new in this dissertation is the tentative systematic study of the history, standards, organization, developing modes, basic principles and gradual systematic process of the professional development of higher education teachers in British.During the50th and the60th of the last century, British higher education transferred from elite education mode to mass education mode. Under that background, development of higher education teachers was put forward. By studying its history, this dissertation puts it into four periods:germination period, growing period, maturation period and professionalization period.Standards of teachers’ professional development is the important basis for their selection, evaluation and promotion of teachers. The UK Professional Standards Framework was published in2006and became the first standard of its kind. It reflects the requirement of professional development of higher education teachers. It discusses three factors:their working field, core knowledge and professional value owned by them. At the same time, this standard also lists four categories of typical teaching and assisted learning in higher education and the whole system of its features.The staff development can only be realized by certain organizations. In Britain, it began from the unorganized elite period featured by focusing on the development of individual teachers, the period of popularization during which the country played an role of organizer and carried out its plans, to the recent period characterized by the systematic development of various originations. Now it contains governmental organizations sponsored by Ministry of Education, such as Higher Education Funding Council for England, and agencies like Staff and Educational Development Association, and relative organizations and teacher centers in universities and colleges. They extert different influences to the professional development of teachers. Relying on other organizations, the government plays the role of macro-control. Relative organizations and teacher centers in universities and colleges provide training for the faculty and researchers, offer counseling and evaluation services for teachers, establish resource sharing platform and do theoretical research.As for the models of staff development, there are national project model, and partnership mode formed among schools. It can be realized by setting up curriculums centering around teaching practice, academic ability, administrative competence and personal development of teachers and adopting ways like face-to-face teaching, online study, network learning and teleconference. Concerning the problem of evaluation, it is based on the requirements of UKPSF. Besides, it comes from evaluations carried out in and out of organizations for professional development of higher education teachers, colleague evaluation and self reflection and evaluation by themselves.Over the past years, staff development has formed its unique characteristics. Factors like Policy support and guarantee, organization and modes with clear gradation, guiding and instructive role of its standards, feasibility and supervising role, effectiveness and variety of incentive mechanism, diversification and humanized nature are attached great importance to and emphasized. The future direction for the professional development of higher education teachers will be optimizing the systems, emphasizing its evaluation and enhancing teachers’ subjective consciousness.