Using the UK Professional Standards Framework to evidence your developing expertise

The following excerpts from the UK Professional Standards Framework provide a useful guide for thinking about how you will articulate and evidence your teaching and pedagogical expertise over time.

Evidencing Area of Activity A5: Engage in continuing professional developments in subjects/disciplines and their pedagogy, incorporating research, scholarship and the evaluation of professional practices

This Area of Activity is concerned with enhancement and comprises three elements integral to teaching and supporting learning roles.

The elements are:

• Continuing professional development in subjects/disciplines and their pedagogy
• Incorporating research and scholarship
• The evaluation of (one’s own) professional practices

Question: How might you draw on these three elements to demonstrate that you have become a better teacher through continuing professional development, research and the evaluation of their teaching and learning related practices?

Evidencing Professional Value 3: Use evidence informed approaches and the outcomes from research, scholarship and continuing professional development

This focuses on the use of evidence informed approaches, the ability to draw on and contribute to many sources of evidence and to use them to inform teaching and learning practice. It is about using the outcomes from research, scholarship and professional development to make principled, informed and considered judgements which enhance practice and the learning experience. This value advocates the importance of direct professional involvement in enquiry (in teaching and learning) to support the individual’s own professional development and to enhance their teaching or learning support activities.

Question: What evidence can you provide to demonstrate that your teaching is characterized by Value 3 above?

You might:

• consider and apply the findings from studies, reading, personal enquiry of (for example) teaching, learning, learners, the subject, the environment, etc. to enhance practice and the student learning experience.
• demonstrate how you have used your own discipline based research to enhance the curriculum. This might include your reading or research about curriculum design, the nature of the subject itself and the learners in order to provide a rationale for the design of the curriculum and its delivery.

Source: heacademy.ac.uk/UKPSF