Teaching in AGRO
Teaching at the universities must be given a higher priority, and the teachers’ pedagogical-didactic competencies must be raised.
That is the message in the new ministerial order on job structure (teaching) at the Danish universities, which can be found on https://ced.au.dk/vis/artikel/oeget-fokus-paa-styrkelse-af-undervisningskompetence. The ministerial order specifies that the universities are responsible for ensuring that all academic teaching staff have the necessary pedagogical-didactic competencies to carry out their specific teaching tasks and that the university must have a plan for how this ongoing competency development is to take place in a dialogue with the immediate manager. The ministerial order also prescribes that all who teach must maintain a teaching portfolio to document this, irrespective of academic position level and employment level. Compared to the previous ministerial order, the requirements for teaching competencies in connection with appointments have been tightened just as – and not least – an increased focus has been placed on an ongoing maintenance and acquisition of pedagogical-didactic competencies throughout careers. In the link above you can read more about the framework of the ministerial order and the didactic and collegial operative spaces. The operative spaces briefly describe the various competencies expected of the teaching levels (PhD, postdoc, assistant professor, associate professor and professor) in the two operative spaces.
Put in plain English, we must ensure that we are good at teaching and that we continuously develop and update our teaching competencies. In practice, this will be done, among other things, by creating, developing and maintaining an individual teaching portfolio in collaboration with the head of section and discussing it at the annual staff development dialogues (SDDs). In this context the faculty management team has decided that the heads of department must carry out an overall follow-up on the teaching portfolios in the SDDs at their respective departments. It must be done in relation to the following questions:
- Were teaching portfolios discussed at the SDDs?
- What has worked well?
- What has worked less well?
Throughout the entire career path from PhD up to professor, the volume, quality and competencies of teaching will be included in the scientific qualifications of the researchers on an equal footing with the number of peer-reviewed papers and the ability to attract projects. Consequently, it is important to take teaching seriously!
As a result of the new ministerial order, AGRO has set up a teaching committee, which reports to the management team. The committee consists of a chairperson, a representative from each section in AGRO as well as Birgit S. Langvad as secretary. The committee had its first meeting on 6 November 2024; the minutes of the meeting and the committee’s terms of reference can be found on: https://agro.medarbejdere.au.dk/udvalg-i-agro/teaching-committee. In contrast to the degree programme committee, the teaching committee is to consider topics that primarily concern practical teaching. However, there is still some overlap between the two committees which we need to clarify in the very near future.