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LEARNING-CENTRED TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION 225 competencies show a more diverse picture. Although one of the most important and perceived competence is teaching relevant and new knowledge, facilitating students’ learning also belongs to the most relevant competencies. The most problematic area is supporting all students. Academics find it important to support talented students’ development but supporting first year students’ learning or mentoring are found to be less relevant. Four different types of professional development practices were identified, from which professional development as reflection and as sharing, developing together with colleagues were the most typical ones. One of the key findings for designing university teachers’ professional development programmes, is that all four PDL activities were predicted by the concept of PDL as supporting students’ learning, In contrary, the concept of PDL focusing on appreciation and strengthening teachers’ role only influences PDL as research. Study areas and teaching experience influence beliefs and experience in different ways. While learning-centred teaching approaches and competencies as well as professional development activities mainly differ by study areas, the more teachingcentred competencies and the beliefs about PDL vary by teaching experience. Teaching in more than one study field contributed to more learning-centred approaches. The concept of PDL focusing on students’ learning was highly relevant not only for novice university teachers but also those who had more than 20 years of teaching experience. Interdisciplinary teaching and focusing on both novice and more experienced university teachers’ professional development should be key assets for designing professional development programmes. In the design-based research, four emerging designs for PDL of university teachers’ communities were analysed by the aims, methods of learning and support, and outcomes. Besides the difficult alignment of the aims of PDL and curriculum development, the different designs showed that an effective learning strategy was co-developing when university teachers and educational developers worked together on a course design. Furthermore, a key new level of support was identified when supporting PDL is not focused on the faculty or on the individual level but on an intermediary level that is the wider community of a key course.
