PROFFORMANCE – for quality teaching and learning

22-07-2020

News | Higher education

Ministry for Innovation and Technology and Tempus Public Foundation lead international consortium for the development of teaching and learning in higher education

How European and national policy documents define the role of 21st century higher education teachers? How policy objectives affect their profession, how these goals can be translated into their everyday practice? What do society, the university management, and their stakeholders (students, partners) expect from them? How do colleagues see each other's research results and teaching practice? What frameworks and criteria systems exist for teachers’ roles and skills? How to find a balance between the lecturer and researcher role and social responsibility? Should or can someone be the best from each aspects? How to differentiate between instructors? How to assure flexible, “educator-centered” career paths? How can teacher performance be assessed, developed and incentivize? What good practices exist in this area at national and European levels?

The PROFFORMANCE project - Assessment tool and Incentive systems for Developing Higher Education Teachers ’Performance was set to find answers to these questions. The international consortium is led by the Ministry for Innovation and Technology of Hungary and Tempus Public Foundation, in cooperation with 5 full and 4 associated partners and with the contribution of around 30 international experts from all around Europe. The consortium is proud to have ACA among its associated members.

The project aims to support quality enhancement of teaching and learning at higher education institutions in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The consortium plans to create a set of criteria and an assessment tool for teachers’ performance, testing it during pilot visits in selected HEIs in the participating countries, as well as to elaborate recommendations on incentive systems for teachers’ development at institutional, national and European level. The criteria model and the tool will help teachers and HEIs to translate EHEA and European Education Area teaching and learning targets to real actions. Best practices of innovative teaching will be collected and disseminated through an award for teachers and an open, online, searchable database.

The project started on June 1, 2020, with a two-year term until May 31, 2022. After the kick-off meetings held in June, experts started to elaborate a benchmarking questionnaire to be circulated in September to survey teacher assessment, development and incentive systems in HEIs in consortium partner countries.
More info on the project is available at the project website: www.profformance.eu.

CONSORTIUM PARTNERS

  • Hungary: Ministry for Innovation and Technology - coordinator
    • Tempus Public Foundation (linked third party)
  • Austria: Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung
  • Czech Republic: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports
    • Czech National Agency for International Education (linked third party)
  • Georgia: National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement
  • Croatia: Ministry of Science and Education
  • Serbia: Foundation Tempus (Erasmus + National Agency)

ASSOCIATED PARTNERS

  • Academic Cooperation Association
  • European Students Union
  • Digital Success Nonprofit Ltd., Hungary
  • Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Last modified: 22-07-2020