Challenges of Professional Development and Potential Solutions: Policy Reforms of Higher Education Institutions in Mongolia

Abstract

The Mongolian higher education sector has experienced a massive expansion in the past two decades, with changes in the student body as well as academic staff. There are increased pressures of teaching loads and administrative requirements for a relatively young community of academic staff in Mongolian Higher Education Institutions. Academic staff is also required to increase their research profile while delivering excellent teaching. The effect of faculty professional development on student learning is seen as one of the solutions to improve the quality of teaching and research which would have an overall impact on student learning and employability of graduates. Consequently, the faculty professional development in Mongolian higher education is high on the agenda of the Ministry of Education and Science of Mongolia. To develop a national policy for the professional development of higher education teaching staff, the Mongolian Institute of Educational Research conducted the baseline survey which focuses on identifying faculty professional development needs of Mongolian HEIs and finding out challenges and solutions to the issues around faculty professional development. The survey was conducted in January 2018 and was designed to elicit information about how academic staff conceives their professional development needs, what challenges they encounter in their professional development, and what they suggest to address the issues.

Appendix: Survey Questions

Questionnaire on Faculty Professional Development

The purpose of this survey is to identify the professional development needs of the university teachers and the challenges they encounter and solutions to address them. So, I hope that you will contribute to the research and answer the questions to the best of your knowledge. To answer the question, circle the corresponding number of the questions. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

• 1. Classification of your institution:

  • University

  • Institute

  • College

• 2. Location of your institution:

  • In urban areas

  • In rural areas

• 3. Ownership status of your school:

  • The state-owned higher education institution

  • The private higher education institution

• 4. Science field:

  • Natural science

  • Social science

  • Humanity

  • Engineering, production, and technology

  • Agriculture

  • Health

• 5. Your qualification degree:

  • Bachelor

  • Master

  • Doctor

  • Doctor of Science

• 6. The status of your job:

  • Teaching Assistant

  • Lecturer

  • Senior Lecturer

  • Associate Professor

  • Professor

  • Leading Professor

• 7. Year of your teaching:

  • Up to 5

  • 6–10

  • 11–15

  • 16–20

  • 21–26

  • More than 27

• 8. In which status do you want to work as an academic?

  • Researcher lecturer

  • Researcher

  • Lecturer researcher

  • Lecturer

  • Specialist lecturer

• 11. How do you like your position?

  • Greatly

  • Very much

  • Do not know

  • No

  • Never

• 13. Do you think that a student satisfaction survey is an effective tool for faculty members to improve their teaching practices?

  • Yes

  • No

  • Do not know

• 14. As a professor, which of the following knowledge and skills would you most like to develop?

  • Field-specific

  • Foreign language

  • Research and analysis

  • Teaching methodology

  • Information technology

  • Communication

  • Team working

  • Other ______________________________________________

• 15. Do you encounter the following problems in your work environment? Please tick all that you agree.

  In teaching areas

  • My teaching hours are overlapped with professional development training, seminars, and conferences I want to attend.

  • Salary is deducted if I cancel my classes to participate in professional development or training activities.

  • Lack of access to the professional literature in mother tongue.

  • Inadequate resources of education studies in mother tongue.

  • Other_______

  In research areas

  • Does not provide financial support for presenting and participating in conferences abroad.

  • Inadequate supply and access to technical facilities affects my self-development.

  • Inadequate financial support to publish papers in international high impact journals.

  • Other_______

  In personal development

  • No training programs to meet my needs.

  • My competency doesn’t meet the requirement (experience, degree, test scores etc).

  • Other______

  In work environment

  • Much time spent on administration duties on top of teaching load.

  • Weak collaboration and coherence between departments.

  • No good atmosphere among colleagues.

  • Unsustainable management affects learning policy and practice.

  • As many teachers share the small office room, which limits their availability to provide counselling and support to students.

  • Other ________

• 16. How often do you use the advances of ICTs in your teaching? (Please answer in each row)

Activities	Regularly	Sometimes	Never
Using Power point in lectures
Record and evaluate students
Check student assignment
Giving and receiving assignments online
Improving curriculum
Improving course content with research and facts
Study online lessons and learn best practices
Using electronic resource materials
Using audio and video resources
Putting lectures in electronic form
Conduct e-lessons
Using various apps
Blogging and running groups in social media
Other

• 17. What should be done by policymakers to improve faculty professional development?

  • Approval of the law for Professional Development of higher education.

  • Define the concept of “professional development” of tertiary education in the policy.

  • Determine standards of the competency of university teaching positions.

  • Ensure autonomy of university to make them independent from politics and become more stable.

  • Set a policy for ranking of faculty positions in terms of teaching and research.

  • Make student satisfaction surveys more realistic and multifaceted and create conditions to use survey results as a basis for teacher development.

  • Support the social issues of the teaching staff of higher education (to provide a low-interest loan, housing, schooling, and kindergarten for teachers’ children etc.).

  • Facilitate health services for teaching staff in universities (provision of health examination for teachers etc.).

  • Other _______________________________________________

• 18. What do you think Higher Education Institutions need to do to support the professional development of faculty?

  • Financial support to faculty to pilot their research works into production.

  • To allocate budget to each department for their faculty’s professional development.

  • The professors’ team is granted the right to make a recruitment decision.

  • To determine status and criteria for Researcher—Teacher, Researcher, Teacher—Researcher and Teacher.

  • To enhance partnership with business and industry organizations.

  • To develop cooperation with similar institutions.

  • To provide financial support to invite and hire a visiting professor.

  • To sell intellectual properties and patents of academics and allocate shares to them.

  • To provide financial support for faculty members to get affiliated with international professional associations.

  • To provide financial support for the publication of textbooks and handouts.

  • To provide financial support for publication in international journals with high impact factor.

  • Students’ satisfaction surveys should be used to support teacher development.

  • Others____________________________________

• 19. What does faculty members need to do for their professional development?

  • To attend training and seminars regularly.

  • To present their papers at conferences.

  • To publish articles in international journals with high impact factor.

  • To join international professional associations.

  • To write books and manuals.

  • To implement individual or team projects.

  • To work with an international research team.

  • To work as a visiting professor or guest lecturer.

  • To upgrade their academic degree.

  • To get an assistant researcher.

  • To provide professional consulting services.

  • To stay in touch with international and national researchers in the field.

  • To have a personal development program.

  • To improve their research skills constantly.

  • To improve their teaching methodology.

  • To utilize scientific and technological achievements in their work.

  • Other _________________________________________