HERE study visit “Learning and teaching: Professional development of staff in higher education” was organized by the SPHERE team in cooperation with King’s College London (KCL) and the London School of Economics (LSE).

It was targeted at senior academic staff, senior university administrators, national policymakers interested in incentivising and supporting teaching and professional development in higher education. They discussed stimulated innovative learning and teaching methods, which are constantly evolving under the pressure of technological developments and student-centred learning that has prompted a radical re-think of the role of academics whose sense of professional identity is essentially vested in the concept of research excellence. 

After two days of exchanging experiences among professors, experts, practitioners, we emphasized the following:

• to practice and promote research and critical enquiry within and across disciplines; create an inclusive scholarly community in which everyone has a voice; change the world through connecting education, research and public engagement
• to create professionalisation of teachers; master’s programmes in pedagogy; develop teaching competency curricula and certification procedures; develop a new teaching model; opportunities to experiment to learn from mistakes and successes. 
• to support a research-oriented education that offers a strong foundation for various career paths and can bring many benefits, such as self-management, genuine problem-solving capacity, resilience etc.
• QA as a key priority of the national policy in HE; efforts on national & institutional level; the leading role of the HERE; the leading role of the international projects; partnership and synergy