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LEARNING-CENTRED TEACHING
IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Hungarian University Teachers’ Perspectives on Teaching,
Professional Development and Learning
Professional learning and development of university teachers is an important
driving force for enhancing quality teaching in higher education. Quality teaching
can and should be a debated term because of the various stakeholders and contexts
which shape its interpretation. Nonetheless, in most cases quality teaching is
related to student- or learning-centred practice which is highly dependent on
university teachers’ beliefs about good teaching and teaching competencies as
well as how committed they are to their professional development and learning
(PDL) as teachers.
In Hungarian higher education growing attention has been paid to university
teaching and university teachers’ preparedness for teaching. New initiatives have
been introduced at national and institutional levels to support the learning outcomes
approach, the renewal of teachers’ methodologies, and to reduce the dropout rates of
students. These initiatives are typically top-down driven by state, and the incentives
are mostly new legal regulations. However, at the institutional level the shortages
and dropout rates of students have led to considering new ways of teaching, focusing
more on learning-centred approaches, and supporting university teachers’ PDL.
In Hungary PDL in higher education is typically voluntary, accountability for and
external evaluation of teaching is not prioritised in everyday practice.
All in all, in Hungarian higher education it is a moment of change in teaching
and learning, a shift has been brought about in acknowledging the quality of teaching
instead of focusing only on the quantity of teaching (e.g. the lessons that university
teachers have per week). This shift has not yet been reflected in depth nor has it been
a pervasive change in the entire Hungarian higher education. This is the right time
to try to understand learning-centred teaching practice in more depth and within
that it is especially important to pay attention to university teachers’ beliefs about
and experience of teaching, PDL, their readiness for learning-centred teaching as
well as to build new teaching initiatives, developments on their voice and choices.
The theoretical and empirical research studies described in the book were
conducted between 2017 and 2019 supported by the Janos Bolyai Research