ITM Learning reviewed in two reports
Two different investigations are reviewing the activities of the department of Learning in Engineering Sciences at ITM. One concerns the organisation of joint KTH´s tasks within the department, while the other concerns KTH's teacher training.
The first is an in-depth investigation, building on one conducted last year, with the aim of providing a coherent picture of activities, funding and division of responsibilities.
This time, the investigators have examined what the rest of KTH requires from the Department of Learning´s activities in terms of higher education pedagogy, digital learning, language training, engineering communication communication, and global competence.
"The activities have been running for ten years, but needs have changed — for example, through lessons learnt during the pandemic, when teaching methods changed quickly," says Professor Per Berglund, who conducted the investigation with Åsa Gustafson at the Management Office.
"Great commitment"
Through discussions with a large number of teachers, management and the Faculty Council at KTH and the ITM school, as well as others, the investigators provide an in-depth picture of the needs.
"There has been a great deal of commitment, and we have received many ideas about the requirements for the Department of Learning's assignments to the rest of KTH," Berglund says.
The investigation resulted in 13 proposals, some of which are:
- Moving some of the teacher-related pedagogical and technical support from the department to the schools.
- Phasing out some of the language training currently offered at the Department of Learning, continuing to offer courses only in Swedish and English.
- Governance and follow-up of KTH joint assignments should be handled by the Faculty Council.
Different time horizons
"We have seen the activities at Learning as quality-enhancing, while the Faculty Council has been responsible for quality monitoring. Over the years, this responsibility has been assigned to different bodies, and one purpose of the investigation is to clarify this, " says Berglund.
As part of its transfer to KTH, the Department of Learning received some resources in the form of earmarked funds from KTH's research and education budget. The investigators propose reducing these earmarked funds, which would make ITM Learning more like a regular department at KTH.
The two reports now form the basis for decisions by the President, who will also raise them in the management group.
‘We will prepare these two reports together and consider the consequences in an integrated way, even though the time horizon for implementation may differ,’ says President Anders Söderholm.
The second report, 'Teacher Education in Cooperation between KTH and SU', Stockholm University, proposes extensive cooperation between the two universities, as well as a coordinating function.
"You could say that it is a return to the kind of collaboration that KTH and SU have had in the past, going all the way back to Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm, but which has thinned out over time," says Jörgen Nissen, the investigator and associate professor of pedagogical work at Linköping University, as well as a former Dean of Educational Science at the same department.
Furture cooperation
According to Jörgen Nissen, the basic idea is that these two large, neighbouring universities, both of which have teacher training programmes, should complement and strengthen each other's offerings instead of maintaining parallel didactic and pedagogical environments with similar content. Together with Anna Jerbrant, Associate Professor, and Joakim Edsjö, Professor at SU, he has investigated the development of the collaboration and developed starting points for how it could look in the future, through discussions with heads of department, students and directors of studies at each university.
In brief, the collaboration proposal is that subject teaching in physics, chemistry, mathematics and technology, as well as technology didactics, will continue at KTH within the framework of the Master of Science in Engineering and Teacher Education programme. The school, learning and teaching, the educational science core UVK and subject didactics will largely be at SU.
At the same time, several proposals for changes to teacher education programmes are being considered in a national review, which will probably entail major changes regardless, affecting the current investigation of collaboration between SU and KTH.
Further information can be found in the reports Lärarutbildning i samarbete mellan KTH och SU Lärarutbildning (pdf 1.4 MB) samt Fördjupad intern utredning om de KTH-gemensamma uppgifterna inom institutionen ITM Lärande Fördjupad utredning (pdf 336 kB) (in Swedish).
Text: Jill Klackenberg
Photo: Daniel Lindmark