Abstract
An investigation of eight university-based Learning and Teaching Centers (LTCs) at Australian top-tier universities could provide benefits for the development of China’s Double First-rate universities. This paper contributes to our understanding of integrated centripetal forces in four ways. Firstly, we describe integrated organizational centripetal force. Then, we examine integrated staff centripetal force, which imply that LTCs regard teacher education as dynamic, sustainable processes providing enriched teaching and professional developmental resources. Next, LTCs facilitate the integrated discipline centripetal force that reveals the required technical guidance and identification of academic leaders. Finally, we realize the integrated centripetal force of the quality of education resulting from the development of high-quality learning environments for student engagement and scientific evaluation, and feedback from lecturers’ teaching. Therefore, the experience from LTCs can promote the organization and construction of Double First-rate universities, letting teachers respond to students’ changing in suitable ways, benefiting academic’s centripetal force of self-improvement, producing the centripetal force that benefits both the teacher and the discipline. Eventually, LTCs could fundamentally integrate all stakeholders’ centripetal forces in promoting first-class disciplines and first-class universities in China’s higher education.
Highlights
1.1 Introduction the ProblemLearning and Teaching Centers (LTCs), teacher education institutions in world-class universities, have played important roles in institutional development
No matter how much change they experienced, the universities regarded the LTCs as essential institutions during their own development and construction, due to the notion that professional educational institutions like LTCs provide the necessary support for the teaching and learning at university and produce the centripetal forces aimed at the university’s education vision
In China, there are three modes of teacher education in colleges and universities, i.e. normal colleges merged into a comprehensive university and became one of its educational faculties or colleges; normal colleges that are upgraded or transformed into a comprehensive university; and normal schools that are defined as university-level independent colleges and that collaborate with universities to self-develop (He, 2013)
Summary
Learning and Teaching Centers (LTCs), teacher education institutions in world-class universities, have played important roles in institutional development. The University of Michigan sets up the first Teaching and Learning Center entitled the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching in 1962 (Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, 2016). The Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning currently supported teaching by providing training, developing network technologies and hosting a variety of development activities (Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning, 2016). In 2009, the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation of Toronto University, Canada, provided teaching training for 12,500 academic and 4,300 teaching assistants (Bolan, Bellamy, Rolheiser, Szurmak & Vine, 2015). LTCs have made major learning and teaching contributions to these world first-class universities and contributed to their general academic development.
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