Educating students is one of the primary functions of higher education institutions. Thus, staff entrusted with teaching duties, from teaching assistant to full professor, should be equipped with an appropriate set of competences to successfully educate students. In fact, attention toward the competences of teachers[1] has increased in recent years, as evidenced, for example, in the revised Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ENQA, 2015). Accordingly, many higher education institutions have strengthened the training of their teaching staff, with some countries even introducing standards for teaching qualification (e.g., Advance HE, n.d.; Loukkola & Zhang, 2010).
Simultaneously, there is a growing consensus in the European Higher Education Area to embrace a student-centred and competence-oriented paradigm (e.g., ENQA, 2015; Loukkola & Peterbauer, 2019). In such a paradigm, teachers’ primary function is not to simply pass on their knowledge to the students. Instead, students have agency over their own learning, which fosters their transversal skills, critical thinking and active citizenship, better preparing students for the current and future labour market and society (e.g., Gover, Loukkola, & Peterbauer, 2019; Klemenčič, Pupinis, & Kirdulytėsee, 2020). Similarly, involving students in decision-making and co-creation processes to enhance the quality of higher education is being called for (e.g., Bovill, Cook-Sather, & Felten, 2011; Díaz‐Méndez & Gummesson, 2012; ENQA, 2015; Estermann, Pruvot, & Stoyanova, 2021; Gover & Loukkola, 2018; Loukkola & Zhang, 2010). This suggests the student perspective should also be included when discussing questions concerning teaching competences. As recipients and, ideally, active participants of higher education, students comprise a pivotal stakeholder group concerning the quality of learning and teaching.
However, in research on teaching competences, the focus is usually on other stakeholders, such as educational experts. The few studies which have focused on the student perspective were confined to individual institutions (e.g., Blašková, Blaško, & Kucharčíková, 2014 in Slovakia; Pavlina, Pavlina, & Juričić, 2020, and Pavlina, Zorica, & Pongrac, 2011 in Croatia) or to competences for specific settings, such as for online education (e.g., Young, 2006). With increasingly international settings of higher education emerging, such as in the context of the European Universities Initiative (see European Commission, n.d.), the investigation of what competences are required of ‘student-centred teachers’ (Gilis, Clement, Laga, & Pauwels, 2008) needs to extend beyond individual institutions and specific settings.
Although often called for, there is no universally accepted definition of (teaching) competences. Originally used as a legal term referring to authority in a certain domain (cf., Illeris, 2009), the term ‘competence’ now commonly refers to the integration of knowledge, skills and attitudes (e.g., Baartman & de Bruijn, 2011; Le Deist & Winterton, 2005). While competences can be identified and measured through behaviour (Rowe, 1995), they are not fixed characteristics or attributes of a person. Rather, they can be developed through, for example, formal education (Illeris, 2009). In the discourse on teaching competences, Tigelaar, Dolmans, Wolfhagen and van der Vleuten (2004) define teaching competence as “an integrated set of personal characteristics, knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed for effective performance in various teaching contexts” (p. 255). In contrast, Gilis et al. (2008) define teaching competence as “professional attitudes, knowledge and skills which enables him/her to fulfil the role of teacher in student-centred higher education and to support the learning process of students in a student-centred way” (p. 535). We follow the latter definition, focussing on teaching competences that can be developed rather than personal characteristics.
Despite the widely agreed relevance of teaching competences for the quality enhancement of higher education, comprehensive research for systematic development and assessment of these competences is scarce. Attempts to validate teaching competence frameworks for higher education are offered by Smith and Simpson (1995) in the United States and Tigelaar et al. (2004) in the Netherlands. Applying a Delphi method, both frameworks are based exclusively on the opinions of formal education experts. Yet, to increase the acceptance of teaching competence models throughout the community of practice, it is important that teachers are involved in their development (e.g., Allen, 2006 as cited in Crawford, 2007). Following this reasoning, Gilis et al. (2008) developed a competence profile based on semi-structured interviews with teachers known for their student-centred approach from different higher education institutions in Belgium.
To contribute the crucial but largely missing student perspective to the development of teaching competence frameworks for student-centred higher education, we investigated which competences students across Europe value as important for their teachers. Adapting the profile that Gilis et al. (2008) developed with teachers, we surveyed a diverse sample of students from the European Universities Initiative’s EPICUR Alliance to investigate the following questions:
(1) Do students find Gilis et al.’s (2008) teaching competences for higher education, which were identified with teachers, important?
(2) Which competence areas can be empirically identified based on the student perspective?
(3) Which further competence areas should be included in a teaching competence framework from the student perspective?
[1] In line with the common usage in the discourse on European higher education, we use the term ‘teacher’ to refer to all teaching staff in higher education.