Empirical report: Application of sandwich principle in teaching seminar for faculty development

Abstract

Throughout the last few decades, both college teachers and students have undergone extensive changes. Such changes have resulted in increasing demands on faculty to be creative and effective teachers, and successful researchers. Faculty development is recognized by many education organizations as an essential support framework provided to faculty members to assist them in responding to the challenges of their multiple roles and evolving responsibilities. Teaching Seminar is an important approach used to improve teaching abilities of teachers in our college. However, it is frequently characterised by a lack of participation of teachers. This study is to confirm the effect of application of Sandwich Principle to regular teaching seminars. The results of on-site observation and questionnaire showed that teachers participated in discussions more actively; the depth of discussions was greatly improved when the seminars were conducted according to the Sandwich Principle. Therefore, the teaching seminar with the Sandwich Principle is an effective approach to promote faculty professional development. The detailed procedure and experience of the teaching seminar also were described in this paper. The experience will add benefits to teachers’ in class teaching and current faculty development of higher education.