The Path to Professional Growth for University Educators

University teaching is one of those professions where expertise in a subject is taken for granted – but expertise in teaching that subject often gets far less attention. For many academics, professional development is treated as optional background noise, something squeezed between research deadlines and administrative duties. Yet the evidence is clear: faculty who actively invest in their own growth as educators improve student outcomes in measurable ways. The question isn’t whether professional development matters – it’s how to pursue it in a way that is genuine, sustainable, and effective.

What professional development really means for university educators 🔗

Professional development (PD) in higher education is often misunderstood. Many faculty equate “continuing to learn” with staying current in their discipline – reading the latest journals, attending conferences in their field, completing the next research project. Teaching development, by contrast, is frequently treated as supplementary. For most college instructors, regular participation in teaching development is neither a workplace expectation nor a professional obligation – and yet it is among the most direct levers available to improve the student experience.

True professional development goes well beyond attending a one-off workshop. Professional development programs for academic teaching staff should include activities that contribute to positive experiences of teaching-related competencies and skills, as well as deeper reflection on academic roles in higher education. In practice, this means engaging with new pedagogical approaches, building collegial networks, seeking feedback on one’s teaching, and treating growth as a continuous process rather than a box-ticking exercise.

It is also worth noting what students themselves value. Research suggests that students prefer an excellent teacher over an excellent professional – meaning that teaching quality, including approach, skillset, and student engagement, matters more to learners than academic qualifications alone. This is a significant finding. It implies that no matter how distinguished a faculty member’s research record may be, their effectiveness in the classroom depends on deliberate, ongoing investment in their teaching practice.

Collaborative learning cultures: the role of peer support and mentorship 🔗

One of the most underutilised resources in a university educator’s professional journey is the colleagues sitting in the offices down the hall. Peer support and mentorship – when structured well – can create the kind of meaningful, contextualised learning that formal workshops rarely achieve. Most faculty learn to teach outside of formal PD opportunities, informally, from colleagues and mentors. Effective professional development programmes should respect and build on these organic interactions rather than ignore them.

Peer mentorship among faculty 🔗

Peer mentorship at the faculty level takes several forms. Peer mentoring typically involves a group of faculty at a similar career stage who come together to discuss research and personal issues, either with or without an assigned senior mentor. This kind of horizontal mentoring creates a space for candid conversation – about struggling with a new teaching format, handling student dynamics, or navigating curriculum redesign – without the power dynamics that can make senior-junior relationships complicated.

Beyond peer groups, formal mentoring relationships between early-career and experienced faculty remain valuable. Mentorship helps newer faculty understand the academic culture of departments, schools, and the institution at large, and provides practical support in areas like course design, classroom management, and positioning oneself for career advancement. The key is reciprocity – effective mentoring isn’t a one-way transfer of wisdom. Effective mentoring isn’t just about providing guidance – it’s about developing a collaborative relationship that evolves with time, where both mentor and mentee actively contribute and grow together.

Faculty learning communities 🔗

Structured peer collaboration can also take the form of Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) – small groups of educators who meet regularly around a shared pedagogical theme or teaching challenge. Scaffolded professional development that includes long programming, building communities or cohorts of faculty, and coaching and informal peer observation of teaching practice acknowledges that professional learning about teaching is a process, a commitment, and a way of thinking that takes time, thought, and work.

Programmes like the Berkeley Center for Teaching and Learning’s Transforming STEM Teaching Faculty Learning Program, for instance, incorporate synchronous workshops combined with peer observation sessions – allowing instructors to both receive and provide feedback on actual classroom practice. Communities of practice such as faculty learning communities, scholarship of teaching and learning organizations, and professional development programs are excellent avenues to support educators in developing deeper, more sustained reflective habits.

The institutional environment matters too. There will be a higher chance of teachers engaging with professional development if their basic psychological needs are met – through feeling free to think independently, feeling competent in their job role, and feeling connected to those around them. When universities foster trust, autonomy, and a genuine sense of community, professional development stops feeling like an obligation and starts feeling like an opportunity.

Importance of continuous learning: engaging with academic literature and training programs 🔗

Staying current is non-negotiable in any profession – but in university teaching, the definition of “staying current” must expand beyond one’s research discipline. Faculty need to keep pace with changes occurring in higher education and with the latest innovations in teaching and learning if they are to serve their students well. This demands a commitment to reading pedagogical literature, participating in structured training, and actively seeking out new knowledge about how people learn.

Engaging with academic literature on teaching and learning 🔗

There is a rich body of literature on pedagogy, curriculum design, assessment, and student engagement – and university educators have a responsibility to engage with it. Reading educational research does not have to mean abandoning one’s disciplinary identity. Rather, it involves developing a second lens: one that asks not just “what is known in my field?” but “how can I help my students learn it more effectively?”

Journals focused on higher education pedagogy, such as those published by organisations like the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), offer practical, evidence-based insights that educators can apply directly to their courses. Discipline-specific teaching journals are equally valuable, as they connect pedagogical theory to the specific context in which a faculty member works.

Structured training programs and workshops 🔗

Formal training programs – from certificate courses to intensive workshops – give educators access to structured knowledge and practice. However, not all training is equally effective. Training programs are arguably ineffective if they do not result in changes to professional practice. The most productive programs are those that connect learning directly to the classroom – not ones that deliver information in isolation from the professional context in which it will be used.

Teacher satisfaction with professional development programs is strongly linked to factors such as the relevance of content and strategies used, the quality of the trainer’s facilitation, and the extent to which programs encourage active participation. This means that faculty are not passive recipients of training – they benefit most when programs are designed to engage them as thinking professionals, not as blank slates.

There is also a growing need to integrate emerging areas – such as the use of technology and artificial intelligence in teaching – into continuous learning. Workshops on teaching with AI, covering topics from assessment redesign to inclusive pedagogy in digital environments, are now among the most sought-after professional learning opportunities in higher education. Faculty who engage with these areas proactively are better positioned to adapt as the educational landscape continues to evolve.

Models of professional growth: strategies for self-improvement 🔗

Beyond peer learning and formal training, sustainable professional development requires faculty to build internal mechanisms for growth – habits of mind and practice that don’t depend on external programmes to function. Several well-established models offer practical frameworks for this.

Self-directed learning 🔗

Self-directed professional learning emphasises educators’ ability to assess their own needs, establish meaningful goals, select appropriate resources, and evaluate their progress – practices that align closely with the fundamental principles of adult learning. For university educators, this means taking ownership of one’s development rather than waiting for the institution to prompt it. A faculty member might set a goal to redesign a course unit using active learning strategies, identify relevant resources, try new approaches in the classroom, and then evaluate what worked – all as part of a self-initiated cycle of improvement.

By creating environments that encourage autonomy, collaboration, and reflective practice, self-directed learning aligns with the andragogical model, which highlights the distinctive characteristics of adult learners, including their intrinsic motivation. Faculty are adult learners themselves – and the same principles that make learning effective for students apply to educators pursuing their own professional growth.

Reflective practice 🔗

Reflective practice is one of the most widely recommended models for ongoing professional growth – and for good reason. Being an effective and inclusive instructor involves regular data gathering and self-reflection, critique, ongoing learning, and experimentation – because instructors, students, disciplinary norms, and the pedagogical landscape are all in continual flux. A faculty member who taught the same course for ten years using the same approach without ever pausing to reflect is not growing – they are simply repeating.

Frameworks like Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle – which moves through description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action planning – and Schön’s model of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action provide structured ways for educators to interrogate their practice. The goal is not self-criticism, but insight. What happened in today’s lecture? What worked and what didn’t? What would I do differently, and why?

Reflective practice is vital for efficacy as an educator and a requirement for educators to advance their lifelong journeys as learners. When practised regularly – through teaching journals, structured peer observation, or post-session debriefs – reflection becomes the habit that ties all other forms of professional development together.

Transformative learning and pedagogical shifts 🔗

Some of the most significant professional growth happens not through incremental improvement but through genuine pedagogical transformation. Research using Mezirow’s transformative learning theory as a framework has revealed that educators who engage in structured faculty development courses undergo shifts in pedagogical approaches – moving from unexamined or haphazard teaching styles toward the intentional integration of evidence-based methods.

This kind of transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It requires sustained engagement – with ideas, with peers, with feedback, and with one’s own practice. Faculty development programs promote reflective practice and continuous learning, empowering faculty members to adapt to evolving pedagogical demands and contribute meaningfully to academic excellence. Crucially, experiential learning and ongoing professional engagement may play a more substantial role than formal academic qualifications alone in determining how effectively an educator can grow and improve.

Putting it all together: a professional growth mindset 🔗

Professional development for university educators is not a single event – it is an ongoing orientation toward growth. It involves building collegial relationships through peer mentorship, staying engaged with the evolving literature on teaching and learning, participating in training programs that push beyond information delivery, and cultivating personal habits of reflection and self-direction. Exemplary instructors model lifelong learning for their students through their own engagement with their discipline, their teaching, and the ever-evolving students in their courses.

The most effective university educators are not those who have stopped learning – they are those who have made learning a professional identity. Every course taught is both a service to students and an opportunity for the educator to discover something new about pedagogy, communication, assessment, or the nature of understanding itself. That orientation – curious, collaborative, and consistently reflective – is what professional growth ultimately looks like in practice.

What do you think? Does your institution provide the kind of peer-supported, contextualised professional development that genuinely changes teaching practice – or does it default to one-off workshops that have little lasting impact? And as a university educator, what personal strategies have you found most effective in sustaining your own professional growth over time?

References

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