Exploring the "Skills" standards

As we’ve begun to explore, being an effective educator involves far more than knowing what to teach, it also requires knowing how to teach, support, lead and adapt in complex educational environments. This is where your skills as a practitioner come to life.



Throughout your apprenticeship, you are expected to continually develop and demonstrate a broad set of professional skills. These include the practical, interpersonal and reflective capabilities that enable you to design and deliver high-quality learning experiences, work effectively with students and colleagues and contribute to the wider goals of your institution.

In this section, we’ll take a closer look at the Core Skills standards that underpin the Academic Professional Apprenticeship. These standards outline the behaviours and abilities you are expected to develop, from planning learning and giving feedback, to using digital technologies, engaging in peer collaboration and managing your own learning.

Developing these skills isn't a one-time task - it’s an evolving process of practice, reflection and refinement.

So, let’s begin to explore them!

Core Skills

1.Deliver higher education teaching of high quality through lectures, tutorials, practicals or seminars
2.Use varying teaching styles depending on the learning environment and students’ needs
3.Develop research questions and hypotheses prior to undertaking research in their subject discipline
4.Analyse, synthesise and use critical thinking in the conduct of research
5.Supervise and mentor students and peers to develop knowledge in their subject discipline
6.Manage their own continuing professional development (CPD) in subject disciplines and pedagogy, incorporating research, scholarship and professional practices
7.Manage their own time through preparation and prioritisation, time management, responsiveness to change, and achieving a work-life balance
8.Communicate orally and in writing and collaborate effectively, to manage people, processes or teams
9.Use digital technologies effectively to develop and disseminate knowledge and understanding of subject disciplines
10.Share ideas and evidence with students, peers, policy makers and private and public organisations through a variety of channels including publication and teaching
11.Implement approaches to academic practice that are informed by equality and diversity
 
 

Activity: Reviewing the "Skills" standards - Padlet

Head over to the Padlet page where you will find the 11 skills standards listed. 

We would like you to review the list and identify three - TWO that you feel you are reasonably familiar with and ONE ‘cloudy’ standard that you feel less sure about.

Once you have identified these, we would like you to add posts under the relevant heading with the following:

  • For the TWO 'familiar' standards, add examples of own teaching or learning in relation to each of them
  • For the ONE 'cloudy' standard, add 1-2 questions you may have about it that might help make it more clear



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Last modified: Tuesday, 5 August 2025, 1:14 PM