Building academic staff teaching competencies: how pedagogic continuous professional development for academic staff can be organised and developed in research-intensive universities

The quality of teaching and the pedagogical development of teaching staff is a key issue in higher education. However, university faculty, particularly in research-intensive universities, mostly identify themselves as researchers, and this understanding will to a large degree be supported and reinforced by the universities influenced by league tables based on research performance. While many universities are recognising the importance of a focus on improving teaching, the general value system—from hiring requirements to promotion criteria—and the whole institutional culture still revolve around research. Research is the hard currency and within such a framework teaching competence development will always be difficult to put high on the agenda, be it the agenda of the individual teacher or the university itself. The current chapter considers how two universities—the University of Copenhagen and the University of Edinburg—are responding to this challenge. In the case studies offered, key factors that influence policy and practice with respect to teaching within the institutions are identified, along with their strategies to systematically build teaching competence.