Gary Hunt

I would like to extend a very big thank you to everyone who participated. There is a wealth of interesting and valuable ideas here that will help guide us in determining how this initiative will proceed.

There was clear support for the idea that a national system could elevate the value of training and certification and bring more professional recognition to our practice. There was repeated mention of the need for a flexible framework of expectations that can be adapted to the context of institutions, programmes, and faculty needs.

How to go about developing the structure of a national system is an extremely challenging proposition. Our comments clearly indicated that we need to consult broadly with wide-ranging stakeholders. Perhaps a survey or series of surveys could meet this requirement. There was mention that the organizational effort could begin at the national level through the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. There was also the suggestion that we need to start at the provincial level, either at the political level of Ministers of Education or provincial teaching and learning organizations. Perhaps working concurrently at both the national and provincial levels would be appropriate.

Perhaps we can use this last discussion topic to answer the question--What exactly do you think should be done next and how do you suggest we go about doing it?

It has been mentioned in this seminar that we should consult widely among stakeholders to get feedback on how people feel about implementing a national system that would provide for national accreditation of teacher training programmes and portable, national certification of post-secondary teachers in Canada.

If we were to develop a survey for stakeholders, exactly what should we ask? Lets assume that we would have the response anchors of, strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree.

Post your suggestions in this thread and if we get quite a few, we can test it on contributers to this SCoPE forum before the end date of March 22. Under each one there would be opportunity to comment.

Here are some possible examples.

• I think Canada should have a national system of accredited teacher training programmes.
• I think teacher training in Canada would be improved if we had a national framework of standards.
  
• I think student learning would improve if all post-secondary teachers were trained.
• I think Canada should use the UK, HEA system as a basis for our framework of standards.
  

For the first week (March 2-8) the focus will be on the desired outcomes of a national system of training and credentialing. Here are some questions that we could address. What benefits do national systems have that are not possible with regional or institutional systems? How much of a benefit is portability of a credential? Is the quality of teacher training better under a national framework compared to that in separate institutions?

For week two (March 9-15) the focus will be on the attributes of a good teacher-training framework. What are the critical components of a training programme? Should the framework be different for training graduate students compared to junior faculty or professional development for senior faculty? What can other countries take from the UK experience?

For week three (March 16-22) the focus will be on required resources. What are the personnel and financial resources required to develop, implement, and maintain a national system? What are examples of appropriate national bodies that have the ability to oversee and run a national initiative?