When you as a student set aside several years of time, hard work and mortgage yourself for the foreseeable future, you deserve to get a good education back. You should be able to trust that you will get the help you need to meet the course objectives. You should be able to count on your teachers having received a pedagogical education and are well acquainted with the latest research findings on how to best set up a higher education. You should be able to be confident that the Higher Education Act ensures that the teaching conducted at your higher education institutions is of a high quality.
Unfortunately, you can not be so sure. SFS 'review of pedagogy in higher education shows large differences between different higher education institutions. At 60 per cent of all higher education institutions, all teaching staff are not required to have a higher education pedagogical education. This means that many of the country's students risk being taught by unqualified teachers. It is difficult to understand why it is not obvious that those who teach at universities should be pedagogically educated.
Within the academy, there has long been a system for assessing researchers' scientific skills. Corresponding established systems for assessing teachers' pedagogical skills are lacking. SFS states that two thirds of the higher education institutions do not have a university-wide system for meriting pedagogical skills. This means that the teachers who want to give the students the best teaching are not always rewarded for it in a fair way. It is also proof that teaching still has a much lower priority than research for many universities. Teachers' knowledge of the subject is superior to their ability to teach the same knowledge.
Sweden needs a national agenda for pedagogy that creates conditions for all teachers and universities to work with pedagogical development. In order for all Sweden's students to be guaranteed better teaching, SFS requires:
1. Stop for unqualified teachers at the university. All teaching staff at the university must undergo at least ten weeks of higher education pedagogical training and receive continuous higher education pedagogical competence development.
2. All good teachers should be rewarded. It is time for the government to initiate a national coordination of pedagogical merit systems, in the same way as exists for science.
3. Make sure that the pedagogy develops. Assign an authority to coordinate higher education pedagogical issues and promote pedagogical development at the country's higher education institutions.
Rebecka Stenkvist, SFS chairman & Johan Alvfors, SFS vice chairman