Att bedöma pedagogisk skicklighet – är det verkligen så svårt? – en studie av skillnader i bedömningar mellan vetenskapligt och pedagogiskt sakkunniga

Abstract

Educational competence should, by law in Sweden, be treated with the same conscientiousness as scholarly competence when employing academics at a university. However, the prerequisites for showing such conscientiousness differs hugely between institutions. This case study explored differences in how educational competence is enacted in evaluations by expert pedagogical evaluators and other (scientific) expert evaluators at a faculty of Law at one swedish university. The study shows several differences in the evaluations where the pedagogical evaluators make more extensive, more qualitative and more systematic expert opinions, both regarding what was submitted as basis for evaluation and what was missing in the teaching portfolios submitted. Additionally, some recurring challenges as formulated in the evaluations are discussed and suggestions are made for how these may inform practice. As a conclusion it appears that the use of pedagogical expert evaluators facilitated the decisions on employments of academics in the board of staff employment, but that the instructions to applicants and expert evaluators currently are not clear enough and could be developed to include criteria towards which applicants are evaluated, and instructions of how applicants can strengthen their qualities of the different criteria.