Conference Agenda

Academics often seek to improve their curricula or feel compelled to make changes based primarily on student evaluations, sometimes relying on this source alone. However, research shows that such evaluations do not inherently lead to better teaching practices (Novák, 2023), largely because students typically lack the disciplinary and pedagogical expertise needed to provide informed feedback on teaching quality (NASEM, 2020; Boysen, Richmond and Gurung, 2015). This limitation reduces the appropriateness of student evaluations, especially when used in isolation.

To advance teaching quality more meaningfully, institutions can draw on broader conceptualizations of good teaching. Boyer’s influential framework highlights the importance of student engagement, active learning, and the development of higher-order thinking skills such as critical and creative thinking (Boyer, 1990; Brahm, 2023). In line with these principles, educators are encouraged to focus on thoughtful curriculum design and engage in reflective analysis of their pedagogical approaches (Benson and Ward, 2013). Various models of teaching review support this work. On the more formal end of the spectrum is evaluative review, typically conducted by senior staff to assess teaching performance for purposes such as promotion and tenure. Mid-range developmental reviews, often led by academic developers, focus on diagnosing issues and recommending improvements and may be embedded in teaching-certification programmes. At the informal end, peer review fosters collaborative reflection among colleagues on their teaching methods and approaches (Cutroni and Paladino, 2023).

Classroom observations—whether in-person or via online/video recordings—offer a particularly valuable means of evaluating teaching in action. Yet they also present challenges. Observations require substantial time and effort from both observers and observees (Durham et al., 2018; Teoh, Ming, and Khan, 2016), and questions remain about the reliability of the resulting feedback, particularly when observers lack formal training in pedagogy or didactics (Robinson and Hope, 2013).

The need for robust and informed teaching evaluation contrasts with common career trajectories in higher education. Academic advancement typically depends on disciplinary expertise and research productivity, while pedagogical knowledge and skill—though central to academic roles—often receive less emphasis (Oliveira, Nada and Magalhães, 2025; Cassuto, 2022). Some countries have addressed this gap by introducing structured faculty development programmes, including certificates, diplomas, and master’s degrees in higher education teaching (e.g., in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands). Yet PhD-level preparation in teaching lags behind; only a minority of institutions require doctoral students to complete credit-bearing coursework in pedagogy, despite expectations that they will acquire teaching and mentoring skills (IUA, 2001; Rifkin et al., 2023).

This paper presents the design and development of a teaching observation process that integrates professional, peer, and student feedback within an introductory course of a redesigned “Certificate of Teaching in Higher Education.” We describe how pedagogical and didactic experts engaged PhD students—future lecturers—in a three-step observation model comprising pre-observation planning, session observation, and post-observation reflection and debriefing. Parallel peer observations carried out by fellow PhD students provided additional student and peer perspectives. Together, these components formed a comprehensive feedback process designed to support the pedagogical development of both observers and observees.

The research question for this study is whether the teaching observation process will empower participants to become reflective practitioners.

Our contribution presents a research and development design aimed at strengthening curricular coherence in teacher education using the example of work-integrated study programmes for career changers at two universities of teacher education. Curricular innovation generally involves complex organisational processes involving actors from diverse disciplinary and school cultures, and there is a growing demand for greater flexibility in terms of time, location and structure (Annala et al., 2021; Bajada et al., 2019; Vreuls et al., 2021). Work-integrated study programmes present an even greater challenge due to their focus on workplace pedagogy and individual and collective learning in various learning environments (Billett, 2002). In the context of our study, coherence is understood in conceptual terms (shared vision), in structural terms (course organisation), and as a process that enhances the alignment of learning opportunities across courses and practice settings (Doetjes et al., 2024). The research questions are as follows: 1) How do students and lecturers perceive program coherence? 2) How can visual methods support discussions on complex curricular development?

This paper will consider how the emergence of national curriculum policies over the past two decades have shaped key debates in what counts as curriculum making, with important implications for equity, access and inclusion in schools and other sites of education (Green et al., 2021; Priestley et al., 2021). Curriculum is fundamentally bound up with national identity and security (Green, 2018), in which the ‘tangled relationship between curriculum and democracy means that curriculum cannot be understood in isolation from the political, economic, social, and cultural conditions in which it is produced and practised’ (Reid & Thomson, 2003, p. xiv). As Pinar (2004) argued, curriculum requires making choices regarding what to remember about the past, beliefs for the present and hopes for the future. As such, the question of how nations frame national curriculum policies is crucial to understanding broader concerns of democratic participation, civic belonging, and social justice (Green, 2018; Mills et al., 2022, 2026). For example, the Australian federal, state and territory education ministers have committed to a curriculum that helps young people to become ‘committed to national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia’s civic life’ (Council of Australian Governments, 2019, p. 8). However, Green (2018) raised an important concern regarding national curriculum, which necessarily creates ‘the limits of dissent, of participation, of social imagination’ (p. 274) available to its participants—students, teachers and school communities. We are mindful that ‘there are a multitude of possible curriculum responses to the question of how to provide all young people with high-quality and high-equity educational opportunities’ (Riddle et al., 2023, p. 140). This paper will examine the place of national curriculum policymaking in a volatile, uncertain complex and ambiguous world (Riddle, 2022; Shields, 2013), considering implications for a more socially just schooling that enables young people to thrive, not just survive, in the twenty-first century.