Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland’s Colleges

Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland's Colleges

These Standards have been developed through partnership working between the College Development Network and GTC Scotland. They are designed as a benchmark for learning and teaching, and to enhance and promote professional learning. GTC Scotland has been given responsibility for these Professional Standards by the Scottish Government.

Download Professional Standards here

Vision

Professional lecturers contribute to making Scotland a great place to live, learn and work by transforming lives through high quality learning. In taking forward this vision, lecturers play a key role in enabling people from all sections of the community to be included in education, achieving their potential as successful learners, citizens and contributors to sustainable economic growth. Lecturers create supportive environments by working collaboratively with stakeholders, including employers, across all learning communities.

Purpose

The Professional Standards support the achievement of this vision by providing a clear description of the professional practice, knowledge, behaviours, qualities and capabilities that lecturers in colleges are expected to develop, maintain and enhance throughout their careers.

These Standards will be used for a range of purposes including:

  • Underpinning professional teaching qualifications for lecturers in Scotland’s colleges.
  • Developing critically reflective and evaluative practitioners.
  • Supporting professional dialogue and collegiate working.
  • Supporting professional development.
  • Contributing to ongoing developments across the sector.

Context

Lecturers work within a diverse, complex and dynamic environment. The Standards are designed to support and encourage lecturers to develop a clear understanding of their role and how they contribute to wider student outcomes. Underpinning the Standards is the expectation that individual lecturers are expected to commit to and be responsible for their own continuous professional development, ensuring the quality of the student experience

Values

Values are core to the Standards and underpin the professional identity and aspirations of a lecturer. They shape everyday practice and engagement. Professional values explicitly reinforce the professional commitment of a lecturer by putting students at the centre ensuring that respect, integrity, inclusion and equality are integral to that everyday practice. Through the commitment to being a professional leader of learning, these values are affirmed and will empower students to engage, take responsibility for their own learning and maximise their potential. These values and commitments to students, colleagues and others is reinforced and evidenced through the engagement in continuous professional learning and development which enables lecturers to embrace collaboration, critical evaluation and support development of new and emerging practices. Embedding these values ensures that the professional lecturer builds and supports resilience in themselves and their students in a complex and ever-changing education and work environment.

The Standards are developed around three interdependent elements. The Standards describe our:

Glossary

Values

Intrinsic beliefs that underpin practice, including a commitment to social justice, fairness and respect.

Active enquiry

The purposeful and consistent act of being curious about learning and developing new subject knowledge and ways in which to share it.

Sustainability in learning and teaching

Themes of sustainability and the impacts of course-relevant decisions on people and the environment, should permeate teaching practice, inform it, and be made explicit to learners.

Health and wellbeing

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity in which every individual realises their own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to contribute to their community.

Subject knowledge

This includes delivery of subjects that are embedded in a vocational area, as well as the teaching of subjects, such as essential skills, that also support the achievement of student learning and employability.