Colleges lecturers professional standards

Foreword

Change is a familiar context for colleges in Scotland. At any one time, colleges operate in a continuum of change stretching from evolutionary to radical. Work on these standards has taken place at a time when the extent of proposed change lies outwith this scale. A process of sector reform has begun and old reference points are disappearing.

Through this turbulent process, there will be constants. Learners, often coming from challenging circumstances, will turn to colleges to help change their lives and college staff will be working to deliver a high quality service. Through this work, we offer a new reference point of a set of Professional Standards for Initial Teacher Education of Lecturers who work in colleges.

It is a tribute to the quality of work of those engaged in development of the previous standards that the unanimous view of the sector was that only a refresh of the standards was required to maintain their relevance. We were fortunate to have the services of a consultant, Andrew Morrison, to lead an engaging review process which included working with the core group and others on detailed examination of various drafts.

The changes introduced in these standards reflect more a change of emphasis than fundamental substance; recognising, for example, that lecturers operate as contributors to curriculum teams and demonstrating expectations that they themselves should be models of change. Achieving these initial standards is part of a process of continuous professional learning and it is to that area that we now must turn.

Meantime, I hope you find this a valuable reference document in our ongoing task of ensuring the college workforce meets ever increasing learner expectations.

Graeme Hyslop
Chair Professional Learning and Development Forum ( PLDF)