The Double world-class university Reform and Development Plan has put innovation of talent-cultivation model reform on the top of agenda. Moreover, it has been claimed as an approach to improve undergraduate education quality and further to promote entrepreneurship education in recent years. Universities at different levels have raised strategies and plans to propel the education reform. In particular, university leaders are in urgent need of responding to the following questions: What kind of talents should be cultivated by education? How to achieve universities’ educational goal? How does management system support its educational goals.
Internationalisation in higher education is accelerating and this means that the demand for courses that are taught in English has also risen across Asia very rapidly. These courses require the support of professional English for Academic Purposes teachers, who can prepare their students for the communicative challenges that lie ahead. Our students need to cultivate 21stCentury skills, and amongst these are academic writing and speaking skills, as well as the ability to fully participate in their studies and to be able to join their disciplinary communities. To this end, the traditional College English curriculum and techniques, that have long been practised in China, are, in many contexts, moving towards more skills-based, up to date EAP programmes. This requires new techniques, knowledge and even a new professional identity for teachers transitioning from being English teachers, to becoming EAP practitioners. This course has been established to help teachers and academics with that transition.
At present, the world is embracing the globalization, the drastic development of the internet and the digital technology is changing people’s channel of gaining and spreading the knowledge. The function of spreading the knowledge in the traditional classrooms has been confronting with the grounded challenges; the focus of teaching should shift the focus from transmitting the knowledge to the application and problem-solving. The universities around the world are discovering the new values, philosophies of the teaching in the new era and the research-led learning and teaching has attracted much attention and recognition, however, there is still controversial to define the essece of research-led learning and teaching.
The training aims to inspire participants to rethink the orientation of student affairs and the role of student-work staff, to help participants change from traditional stability maintenance to people educating and change from “teacher-management-centered” to “student-centered” concept.
Higher education professional development trends increasingly focus on areas of quality improvement, quality assurance and optimal technology delivery models to achieve academic excellence. World-class universities rely on their faculty professional development centres for an array of professional development programmes to support teaching, research and student learning. We provide suggestions and recommendations to assist higher education administrators interested in establishing or strengthening professional development programmes at their own institutions.
There are an ever growing number of programmes of all levels and in all kinds of education institution being delivered with English as the Medium of Instruction (EMI) around the world to meet the demands of globalization. Delivering a programme in English is much more than just translating lectures from one language to another and because the demands are greater and differences on both teachers and students, the need for effective training and development is greater than ever. Here at XJTLU we have carried out such training for hundreds of teachers with fantastic results.
