Staff development for a more inclusive curriculum

Universities are developing more inclusive curricula in order to widen participation in Higher Education (HE). Initiatives typically include partnerships with employers designed to turn workplace training schemes into higher education programmes for professional development. Principles governing academic quality and standards emphasise the importance of ensuring that staff teaching on these programmes should be qualified to teach in HE, and that they should have sufficient development opportunities to maintain their dual teaching and professional status. This paper asks what we might learn about how to provide appropriately for partnership staff new to HE by considering the experience of a team of professional trainers who moved into a university to teach a new Foundation Degree. Their preparation as HE teachers is a particular problem, since conventional postgraduate certificates in this area are designed for those already in post. We consider how enhanced staff development for individuals and for a whole team new to HE might be offered through a university’s Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT). Although this study is based on the experiences of a specific team, it raises common issues relating to the integration of new groups of staff into academe, and the development of lecturers involved in building inclusive curricula within partnership programmes and workplace learning.