11 Jan 2018

Opportunity to help shape the Professional Standards for lecturers in Scotland's colleges

sparqs is running 2 workshops to enable college student officers and course reps to contribute to CDN’s current review of the existing Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland’s Colleges.

The events are taking place on Tuesday 27th February in Edinburgh and Tuesday 6th March in Aberdeen. They will be interactive and workshop-based, aiming to harness students’ thoughts and priorities on what the new Professional Standards should look like.

This is a really exciting opportunity for students to get directly involved in shaping a key piece of policy that has the potential to influence learning and teaching in Scotland’s college sector for years to come. The standards were originally published in 2006 and revised in 2012 and the intention is to modernise them so that they better reflect and promote the advances made in recent years across learning and teaching in Scotland’s colleges.

The review of the standards is being carried out by the College Development Network (CDN) on behalf of the Scottish Government, and sparqs has been tasked with gathering the student voice. The sparqs workshops to capture the student voice will complement the research being carried out by Ashbrook Consultants with other key stakeholder groups, including lecturers, management and trades unions. Together, they will form the qualitative and quantitative evidence-base underpinning the revised standards.

We are looking for student officers who are keen to contribute to this important piece of research. To broaden the scope of the student voice, we are asking student officers that attend to each identify an engaged and enthusiastic course rep from their college to accompany them to the workshop. Please note that everyone attending one of the workshops – student officers and course reps – will need to register for the relevant event.