Unveiling the professional attributes of university teachers

Rubby Dunpath,Ian Nell,Hesta Friedrich-Nel,Hanlie Dippenaar,Lynn Biggs,Jacqueline Yeats,Deidre Joubert

doi:10.14426/cristal.v9isi.330

Abstract

This article derives from a collaborative higher education project, conceptualised, and implemented by academics from seven South African universities. These academics are members of the South African Teaching Advancement at University (TAU) Fellowship. The project has its roots in the Department of Higher Education’s National Framework for Enhancing Academics as University Teachers, which identifies six leverage points or ‘imperatives for action’, one of which is the imperative to develop expectations (attributes) of academics in their role as university teachers. TAU Fellows engaged in the collaborative enquiry over a period of three years, appropriating a conceptual framework posited by Henry Giroux, of teachers as transformative intellectuals. In this article, each author reflects on his/her own scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) endeavours, which provided the conceptual tools to illuminate what for them and the group, are valuable professional attributes. The metaphor of the Baobab tree is appropriated to signify ‘rhizomatic thinking’, which portrays teaching as subconscious, subversive, non-linear, multi-directional, serendipitous, esoteric, dynamic, unbounded, unpredictable, adaptive, and non-hierarchical. This SoTL enquiry enabled the TAU group to unveil and declare their professional attributes as they made public their praxis. The attributes include academics as imbued with the capacity for critical thinking and actively promoting critical thinking amongst their students; as active learning mediators; as responsive, innovative, and relevant curriculum designers; and as engaged professionals. Appreciation of the article is enhanced when the reader first views this video https://youtu.be/yoA9guMut-8.

Highlights

In 2018, the Department of Higher Education (DHET) published a National Framework for Enhancing Academics as University Teachers (DHET, 2018:3), which identifies six leverage points or ‘imperatives for action’, to ‘create structural, systemic ways to improve the quality of university teaching and student success’
Like other academics in this study are pre-eminently responsive and Innovative curriculum designers while aspiring to be lifelong learners and transformative thinkers. Concluding observations This interdisciplinary project was conceived with the declared aim by seven academics to define graduate attributes of their students, which was later elevated to defining the professional attributes of university teachers to ameliorate the learning thresholds routinely encountered by their students
While this exercise affirmed the typology of graduate attributes in the extant literature, it served to ignite another compelling imperative: the need to identify relevant professional attributes of academics as university teachers

Summary

Introduction

Framework, is the imperative to articulate understandings of what attributes (expectations) are deemed valuable in our commitment to ‘nurturing, supporting, and developing academics as university teachers’ (4). To this end, the authors, all members of the Teaching. As consensus emerged on valued graduate attributes, it became increasingly apparent that an urgent pre-condition was to identify what professional attributes academics needed to be imbued with, to activate those valued attributes amongst their students. This nexus was Dhunpath, Biggs, Dippenaar, Friederich-Nel, Joubert, Nell, and Yeats represented metaphorically using the botanic image of the baobab tree. Over the course of the Fellowship engagements, the theme of critical thinking dominated conversations and formal discussions

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion