Field of Action: Enhancing Teaching Competency
We understand teaching competency as the ability to support students in the acquisition of professional knowledge and the understandable instruction of scientific content and contexts on the cutting-edge of scientific knowledge.
This requires that targeted impulses for learning are given and motivation as well as adequate preconditions are created to provide students with the skills to independently acquire content and develop solution strategies. Given the strategic direction of our university towards addressing major societal challenges, it is also becoming increasingly important to point out connections to other course content and also to other scientific disciplines. Teaching competence includes the continuous acquisition of new skills, or updating of existing subject-specific and pedagogical skills.
With our services we want to ensure that all teachers at RWTH Aachen University possess the following competencies and can convey these convincingly:
- Professional and application expertise (theoretical knowledge, interdisciplinary knowledge, error-free execution, market knowledge, imagination, practical application)
- Methodological skills (expression and presentation skills, assessment skills, decision making skills, leadership skills, conceptual ability, methodical approaches, planning skills, goal-oriented acting, problem solving, correct scientific working)
- Self-competence (resilience, responsibility, discipline, ability to learn, commitment to quality, objectivity, self-confidence, self-critcism, self-management, independence, creativity)
- Social competence (ability to delegate, assertiveness, honesty, emotional intelligence, team skills, integrity, communication skills, networking skills, connectedness)
- Media teaching skills (handling, selection and use of innovative subject-and addressee-oriented teaching and media concepts)
By providing a good framework for teaching and having excellence, creative teachers,
- the full performance potential of students is mobilized,
- a high sensitivity for complex and interdisciplinary problems is created,
- research and academic work – especially as a team – is promoted,
- the social and practical relevance of scientific knowledge is demonstrated,
- young scientists are recognized and individually supported early on.