The accredited teacher will have shown how these principles and values underpin their work and their attainment of the objectives:
All teaching and academic administration should be informed by an understanding of how students learn and the conditions and processes that support student learning.
Helping students to learn must begin with a recognition that all students has their own individual learning needs and bring their own knowledge and resources to the learning process. Work with students should empower them and enable them to develop greater capability and competence in their personal and professional lives.
At the base of professional teaching is an awareness and acknowledgement of the ideas and theories of others. All teaching should be underpinned by a searching out of new knowledge – both about the subject/discipline and about good teaching and learning practice. All teaching should also lead to students developing a questioning and analytical approach.
Much of an academic’s work is carried out as part of a team made up of teaching staff and academic support staff. The colleagueship and support of peers is as important as individual academic excellence.
Teachers must be concerned that students have equal opportunities, irrespective of disabilities, religion, sexual orientation, race or gender. So, everything that teachers do should be informed by equal opportunities legislation, by institutional policy and by a knowledge of best practice.
Teachers should reflect on their intentions and actions and on the effects of their actions. They try to understand the reasons for what they see and for the effects of their actions. They thus continue to develop their understanding and practice and therefore inform their own learning.
Many of the terms used here can be defined in more than one way. In preparing for accreditation a teacher should make, and if necessary justify, their own definition of such terms.
A member of the International Consortium for Educational Development