What is a good higher education teacher?: "Am I what I say I am?"

Abstract

The Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (LTHE) programme has been in place at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) since 1995; one of the first to be nationally recognised by the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA). Since then it has been revised several times drawing on a range of sources and influences including participant feedback, local and national educational initiatives and research into student learning to keep the curriculum relevant, up to date and appropriately challenging. In 2007 the programme underwent a major review which included mapping the LJMU aims and outcomes to the United Kingdom's Professional Standards Framework that had been published in Februrary 2006. This paper outlines the impact on one participant of one of the changes introduced in 2007. It attempts to demonstrate how an assessment task set at the start of the course influenced a senior lecturer in music from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and provided him with a framework for on-going interrogation of his teaching within the wider higher education (HE) context.