Conference Agenda

Engineering teachers are not prepared to be teachers. In fact, most of them never had a formal course in education before teaching (Wankat, 2015). Besides that, there is a wide range of challenges in teaching practice, such as students’ engagement, the complexity of the demands of professional practice, didactic transposition, technological advances, amongst others. Thus, it is not surprising that teachers’ professional development is of growing interest in Higher Education Institutions, by providing initiatives to promote excellence in teaching. According to Kennedy (2014), it is possible to identify different approaches to enhance teachers’ professional development, namely, training, coaching and mentoring, learning communities, action research, and transformative approaches.

This work is part of an ongoing ERASMUS + project entitled ‘Reinforcing Non-University Sector at the Tertiary Level in Engineering and Technology to Support Thailand Sustainable Smart Industry’. This project intends to enhance the capacity and ability of Thailand teachers for the effective delivery of engineering and technology knowledge and skills related to Industry 4.0, to support Thailand’s sustainable smart industry. This implies a training program designed for engineering teachers in Thailand and includes 10 modules organized in two parts: the first part includes five modules related to Industry 4.0 knowledge (e.g. Data Analytics, Digital Manufacturing); the second part includes other five modules related to Teaching Skills to Enhancement Learning Experience-Focused Course Design and Development (e.g. Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods, Problem and Project-Based Learning). The training program demands 15 training hours per module and focuses on the cascade model (Kennedy, 2014). First, a group of twelve engineering teachers from four Thai universities attends the training courses to be trainers. After the training, a total of 30 hours of coaching/mentoring is provided to support the twelve participants in their teaching practice. At the end of this process, it is expected that they deliver these modules to other engineering teachers from all over Thailand.

Considering this context, this work will describe the training experience of “train the trainers” in the “Problem and Project-Based Learning” module, considering its design, development, and final evaluation. The preliminary results will be also presented and discussed.

Neoliberalism is an ideology that, although it was born in the economic sphere and developed in the political field, soon began to permeate different sectors such as health and education (Rodgers, 2018). This ideological trend is characterised by principles such as the free-market economy or the privatisation of public sectors, among other aspects (Olssen and Peterson, 2005). In general terms, we can understand neoliberalism as a doctrine whose main objective is to make agencies and entities much more economically efficient (Dougherty and Natow, 2019). In the case of Higher Education, the effect of neoliberalism has been particularly significant for several reasons. First, because of the long tradition of university-market relations (Brunner, 2008). Secondly, because of the enormous impact that universities have on societies. And thirdly, for conceiving the university itself as an important market good, i.e., understanding higher education as a key element for economic development (Tomicic, 2019).

According to Ball and Youndell (2007), the impact of neoliberalism on Higher Education has materialised in two parallel processes: (1) privatisation processes; and (2) the adoption of private (market) practices by the public education sector. However, in addition to these changes, new forms of accountability that have been justified as an instrument of transparency and democratic legitimacy, as well as a means of controlling the quality, autonomy and performance of universities have also spread (Macheridis and Paulsson, 2021). In this sense, the last decades have witnessed a considerable increase in evaluation processes focusing on different elements of higher education (teaching, curricula, mobility schemes, etc.), on the results of which the development of the institution partly depends (obtaining incentives, increasing social prestige, etc.).

In the specific case of university teaching staff, this governance has materialised in the form of professional performance evaluations characterised by giving priority to the quantification of scientific production over other functions, and on whose results depends the achievement of benefits such as grants, funding, research projects or even salary supplements (San Fabián, 2020). This evaluation system is not a unique phenomenon, but rather a reality that is widespread throughout the world. International examples include: Excellence in Research for Australia (Australia); Research Assessment Exercise (Hong Kong); Research Excellence Framework (UK), Initiatives d'Excellence (France), STAR METRICS (USA), Excellenzinitiative (Germany), Academia and PEP (Spain), etc.

This whole system generates important consequences on academics, not only affecting their professional practices but also their social and family relationships and their health status (Saura and Bolívar, 2019; Shams, 2019; Mula-Falcón et al., 2022; McCune, 2020). But how satisfied are academics in relation to this system? Therefore, the main objective of this study is to analyse the degree of satisfaction of academics with these systems that evaluates their professional activity. Secondary objectives are, on the one hand, to determine the existence of differences in the degree of satisfaction according to different variables and, on the other hand, to investigate the reasons for these differences.

This paper is part of a broader line of research, addressed through two research projects, titled "The influence of neoliberalism on academic identities and the level of professional satisfaction" (PID2019-105631GA-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), and "New teaching staff in Andalusian universities: quantified and digitized academic identities" (B-SEJ-534-UGR20), granted by the State Research Agency of the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Andalusian Agency for Knowledge and Universities of the Andalusian Ministry.