EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF A PEDAGOGICAL TRAINING PROGRAM OFFERED TO AWARDED UNIVERSITY TEACHERS

A didactic grant competition for academics is organized annually at the West University of Timişoara (WUT), offering a grant to the winners of a public student-centered activity project competition. The teaching grant winners later take part in a program to develop their pedagogical skills in student-centered teaching based on the WUT’s reflexive-collaborative (i.e., RCL) instructional model. Next, during one academic semester, grant winners must implement the RCL instructional model in one specific subject matter. Based on a quantitative quasi-experimental design, this study examined the impact of a pedagogical program offered to the beneficiaries of the 2020 grant competition at both teachers’ and student levels. At the teachers’ level, we measured their conceptions of teaching, teaching approaches, and psychological resources. At the students’ level, we investigated their evaluation of their teachers’ teaching behavior and their learning approaches. Analyses such as Two-way mixed ANOVA, Quade’s ANCOVA, and Mann-Whitney U were conducted to investigate the gathered data. Academics in the EG reported statistically significant improvements in their conceptions of promoting active learning. According to their students, teachers in the experimental group employed more student-centered assessment methods and teaching behaviors that encouraged active learning. Our results also showed that academics in the control group reported higher resilience levels at the end of the academic semester, and according to their students, their more traditional teaching approaches seemed more effective in stimulating their students’ understanding of fundamental concepts. The results could have been more significant regarding the students’ learning approaches. Because of the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we encountered several obstacles in the impact assessment process (e.g., high values at the pretest, the impossibility of matching students’ answers). Although our findings have some limitations, the present article has noteworthy implications for stakeholders involved in in-service teacher training programs, in particular, conducted in higher education institutions. Practical implications of the findings for both academic developers and future research are discussed.