Research of Dr Carla Oonk on the role of university lecturers as collaborative knowledge brokers between regional actors and students in higher education in the regions where they are working and studying, has now been published online by Higher Education. See: https://rdcu.be/b3m7.
Since many years, the societal role of universities is debated. Universities should step out of their ivory tower, and build stronger connections with the outside world. This has not only resulted in many projects financed by third parties, but also in many university extension, outreach and valorisation programmes throughout the previous decades. However, how this plays out for university lecturers and regional networks, is not studied a lot actually. Current competence frameworks for university lecturers are predominantly inward-oriented, whereas they should become more and more become outward-oriented, including for instance the capability of finding and managing authentic projects for students.
The research reported in this contribution tries to fill that gap; it proposes a competence framework for university lecturers for establishing university-society oriented, multi-stakeholder learning environments. The competence framework comprises nine roles, nineteen tasks and 21 competencies. Three competence domains may be added to the role of university lecturers: 1. brokering, 2. boundary crossing, and 3. stimulating a collaborative learning attitude.
Full reference: Oonk, C., Gulikers, J.T.M., Den Brok, P.J., Wesselink, R., Beers, P.J., & Mulder, M. (Published online April 2, 2020). Teachers as brokers: adding a university-society perspective to higher education teacher competence profiles. Higher Education. doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00510-9.
