engleski

Developing students’ learning potential through development of university teachers' teaching potential: preliminary evaluation of the teacher training program

The aim of this paper is to present preliminary results of the evaluation study of a newly developed training program for university teachers in Croatia ¬Active learning and critical thinking across curriculum in higher education». The program is based on three-phases framework for teaching corresponding to the information processing model of learning (Klooster et al., 2001). Three phases are: Evocation phase, Realization of meaning phase and Reflection phase. The program has started in 2003 and until now 187 participants from different higher education institutions and from different academic disciplines have completed it. The expected outcomes at the teacher level are defined as: ability to accept the role of teacher as facilitator of learning, attainment of teaching skills necessary to encourage students to become self-regulated learners, attainment of social skills for enhancing open communication with students, raised awareness of student diversity and their individual needs, deeper insight into one’s own motives and actions, and becoming an agent of the changing teaching practices in academic community. Evaluation has been conducted at three levels: immediate, short-term and long-term level using both quantitative and qualitative approach. Evaluation results show that teachers perceive most of the intended outcomes as being achieved to a high degree. Moreover, their retrospective evaluations are becoming more positive over time. Average ratings for overall satisfaction with the course on a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) are 4.56 for short-term evaluation, and 4.75 for long-term evaluation. The program evaluation will be further extended towards the examination of students’ perception of the new approaches to teaching and learning.

teacher education; active learning

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