The accreditation of teachers - who needs it?

This paper will look at the issues surrounding the accreditation of tertiary teachers and asks whether we should begin to address the need for such accreditation in Australia.

Last year Lee Andresen published the collated responses of Australian Academic Developers to a series of questions about the state, status and possible future organisation of academic development (AD) in this country (Andresen, 1995a). The issues surveyed concerned whether there should be professional qualifications for academic developers, whether there should be explicit standards of practice, whether there should be formal structures for advancing the interests of the AD community, and whether there should be some form of external course accreditation for postgraduate programs in higher education studies.

The debate is timely, but appears to be swinging round to a focus on the academic developers themselves rather than on the outcomes of their work (Andresen, 1995b). Rather than pursuing this line, which seems to have as its endpoint the requirement of a formal Institution, membership of which might require formal qualifications and/or designated experiences on the part of academic developers, it might be fruitful to change the focus. Instead of looking at gate keeping or credentialling the "separate" profession of AD, we might in this case take a broader perspective about what our work is aimed at achieving for the teaching academic. The role of academic developer has never been free from conflicts of interest and loyalty (Brew, 1995); we may get closer to resolving Andresen's questions through considering this separate and additional one.

I believe AD in its broadest sense is aimed at the development of academics in all their roles. That ADUs have a broader brief than educational development has been acknowledged for a long time now (Johnson, 1982) So "academic development" is not necessarily identical to "teaching and learning development," although the history of the inception and development of ADUs in Australia shows that the improvement of teaching and learning within an institution has been the raison d'etre for most of them, and remains the most important and visible sign of their functions. Their evolution in this area has resulted in the development in an increasing number of universities of formal courses, usually at Postgraduate Certificate level, in "higher education" - usually, unless specifically noted otherwise, concerned with teaching and learning at university level. While such courses are undoubtedly of more benefit for the neophyte academic teacher than the informal short courses most ADUs still offer (Martin and Ramsden, 1994), they are still based on the voluntary principle, or the gentleman amateur approach to the acquisition of skills, knowledge and understanding of their prime function as academics.

The inevitable corollary to the AD community's insistence that it is a separate profession is that there is a professional activity carried out by orthodox academics ie. teaching and the facilitation of student learning. If this is the case, for how much longer can or should tertiary teachers be able to teach free of any obligation to study, practise and improve their teaching? Why should society tolerate this situation? We would react with outrage if an engineer or a lawyer said that it was good enough to pick up their professional knowledge and skills when and if they wanted to. Indeed, we would take care to ensure that we only allowed professional services to be carried out on our behalf by accredited professionals. But university students have no such safeguards, and are at the mercy of staff who may or may not care to study and improve their skills and understanding of teaching.

It is interesting that this debate ie about whether academics should be accredited as teachers, in the way that other professionals including primary and secondary teachers are required to be accredited before they are allowed to practise, has become explicit in the UK where the academic union recently published a paper (AUT, 1996) which argued in effect that academics should look carefully at this issue before other institutions decided that this form of accountability should be imposed on the academic profession. The justification was succinct: "The link between quality, individual professional competence and standards, on the one hand, and professional qualifications on the other, is inescapable. The longer that the academic profession remains outside any framework of professional qualification, yet continues to extend its involvement in the education and training of other professionals, the more anomalous the position will seem."(P.2) The discussion was thoroughgoing and included issues like the assessment of competence ("a qualification...cannot merely involve attendance at approved courses", p.2) and the relationship between teaching and research.

There are good reasons why we in Australia should also be paying attention to this. The arguments for the need for professional accreditation are well known and include accountability to the public, the need to ensure quality control and standards in the delivery of the professional activity ( in this case, teaching in an era of mass university education), and as an indication that the professional body is ethical, self regulating and committed to continuous professional development. So in the first instance rather than distracting ourselves by arguing over our role and responsibilities as academic developers, we should look beyond this to a discussion of whether we should be instrumental in generating a debate about the need for the professional accreditation of all university teachers. In this respect the experience of the UK is very instructive.

While in the UK last year I was invited to carry out a review of the Teacher Accreditation Scheme of the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA). This gave an unusual opportunity to examine such a scheme in some depth (Lublin, 1996). SEDA has, as far as I know, no more constitutional authority than HERDSA - ie. it is a professional association of university teachers and academic developers which exists independently of any government body concerned with university funding or regulation. While it operates a SEDA Fellowship Scheme for academic developers this is not necessary for membership of SEDA, nor is it recognised as a mandatory accreditation for developers although it has the potential to form the basis of any approach to this in the future. However, what is most interesting is the development by SEDA over the past few years of a scheme of teacher accreditation. This is done by the recognition by SEDA of courses of study for the preparation of academic teachers put forward voluntarily by individual institutions. Usually but not necessarily these courses lead to a formal award. The process of Recognition is such that it does not necessitate any uniform approach to content or process in these programs. Briefly, after an initial briefing and training session, a course coordinator needs to be able to demonstrate that they have designed a course which is infused with SEDA's Objectives and Learning Outcomes and its underpinning Principles and Values - this is the mapping exercise. SEDA appoints two Recognisers to work with the course coordinator. In turn, successful course coordinators become Recognisers for subsequent course Recognitions. When a course is Recognised the staff participants who successfully complete all requirements are awarded a Certificate of Accreditation by SEDA. The core requirement of all recognised courses is a portfolio whose contents demonstrate how the individual teacher has achieved the Objectives and how these are underpinned or infused by the Values(SEDA 1995).

The process of Recognition is essentially collegial, but carries with it the expectation of rigour in the development of the course via the mapping exercise. Politically the individual accreditation of teachers by SEDA has no official currency within the university sector, although it is interesting that in some universities it is beginning to be a requirement of appointment that the new staff member undertakes whatever courses are provided for new teachers in the institution. The powerful thing here is that SEDA has been proactive in this respect, acting from well thought out professional principles in its initiation of a scheme which has the potential to be adopted as a national scheme were the accreditation of university teachers to become a serious prospect. As it is, the Scheme is growing annually. Originally the "new" (ex polytechnics) universities were the major players, but increasingly the older universities are applying for Recognition; as of the end of 1995 there were 38 of about 110 UK universities which had Recognised programs or which were applying for Recognition. While there appears in UK to be no current move towards individual teacher accreditation becoming required or mandatory, it is possible that the idea will become less unpalatable to the academic culture as the culture itself changes and as more teachers become accredited as individuals.

I am not suggesting that Australian programs should apply to be recognised by SEDA or that we should adopt the SEDA Scheme of Recognition as such. But I think that there is little counter to the argument that eventually the accreditation of the professional activity of tertiary teaching must occur, in line with other professional accreditations which guarantee standards of performance in an independent and self regulating body of practitioners. I think also that there is much that the Australian AD community could learn from the SEDA experience in this respect, not the least being that talented, dedicated and expert academic developers can devise and implement a Scheme without necessarily having first resolved all the issues canvassed last year in the Andresen document. Perhaps the debate should begin.

References

Association of University Teachers (1996). Journal, January, 1996 Supplement

Andresen, L. (1995a). The profession's next step: what is it? A preliminary survey of stakeholders' viewpoints. Unpublished survey report.

Andresen, L. (1995b). Towards a professional identity, organisation and code of practice for academic development. HERDSA News, Vol7 No 3.

Johnson, R. (1982). Academic Development Units in Australian Universities and Colleges of Advanced Education. Evaluative Studies Program, CTEC.

Lublin, J. (1996). Review of the SEDA Teacher Accreditation Scheme: A Report to the Accreditation Committee. Unpublished report.

Martin, E. and Ramsden, P. (1994). Effectiveness and Efficiency of Courses in Teaching Methods for Recently Appointed Academic Staff. Evaluations and Investigations Program, DEET.

Staff and Educational Development Association (1995). Teacher Accreditation Handbook. SEDA.

Author: Jacqueline Lublin, Centre for Teaching and Learning, The University of Sydney. Email: J.Lublin@ctl.usyd.edu.au Please cite as: Lublin, J. (1996). The accreditation of teachers - who needs it? Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Proceedings HERDSA Conference 1996. Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/lublin.html