THE PEDAGOGICAL DEVELOPERS INITIATIVE: SYSTEMATIC SHIFTS, SERENDIPITIES, AND SETBACKS

Pedagogical projects have often, at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, as well as elsewhere, been initiated and managed by individual enthusiasts rather than dedicated teams. This generally decreases the possibility of successful implementation of more ambitious ideas, e.g., changing educational programs, implementing the CDIO syllabus, or strengthening the pedagogical development of larger parts of the faculty. To enable wider and more effective change, KTH top management therefore launched a universityencompassing three-year project in 2014, in which a group of highly motivated teachers from all schools at KTH were appointed part-time pedagogical developers (PDs). The PDs were given the task of promoting pedagogical development and facilitate cooperation and knowledge exchange among faculty members, as described in two previous papers at CDIO conferences. From 2017, the outcomes of this project are supposed to be integrated parts of the KTH line organization. The project has led to numerous actions, which would have been difficult to set in motion unless given the freedom in time to explore and to develop into a collective effort rather than a myriad of individual “stand-alone” examples. By addressing key areas for pedagogical development, our group of dedicated faculty have tried to surpass the suboptimal "lock-in" of strict individual reasoning and to deal with surfaced questions and relevant issues in a broader collective manner. A major insight confirmed by the project and its many sub-projects has indeed been the fundamental importance of collegial discussions and the creation of processes that facilitate and support teacher cooperation. We have also, through discussions with faculty at KTH, confirmed the need for clearly defined, tangible incentives for teachers, motivating them to participate in pedagogical development activities, even if this means less time left for the traditional pathway to rewards within academia, i.e. research. In this paper, we chart changes that have occurred in the educational practices at KTH by describing and discussing the project’s focus on pedagogical development of faculty, actual execution of changes in the engineering educations, lessons learned along the way, and visions yet to be realised.