How a professional development programme for university teachers impacts their teaching-related self-efficacy, self-concept, and subjective knowledge

ABSTRACT

The professional development of academic teaching staff has become increasingly visible in higher education, even though there is still not enough evidence on how teachers change through such initiatives. Because flexibility in teaching is a commonly found demand, knowledge and core beliefs of one’s own ability to teach are pivotal. We present data on N = 73 instructors at a German university who participated in a comprehensive training programme on academic teaching. Self-reported data on teaching-related self-efficacy, self-concept, and subjective knowledge about teaching and learning were collected in a pre–post design at the beginning of the programme and afterwards. Improvement in all three variables was found over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• professional development
• self-efficacy
• self-concept
• subjective knowledge

Acknowledgements

The professional development program of this work was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Federal Ministry of Education and Research.