Assistant professorship at the Centre for Educational Development

The Centre for Educational Development (CED) invites applications for a 3-year assistant professorship. The position focuses on the development of university teaching.

About the Centre for Educational Development (CED) at Aarhus University

The mission of the Centre for Educational Development is to inspire engaging teaching and excellent educations at Aarhus University. We offer teachers, academic staff, coordinators, directors, and executives at Aarhus University practical partnership, collaboration, and help concerning their ongoing teaching tasks and competencies.
Furthermore, we ambitiously strive for the highest international level through applied research in university teaching and learning. We contribute to development projects and experiments in the fields of digitalization and learning technologies at universities, university teaching and program development.

CED employs almost 60 colleagues organized into three departments specialized in digital development, teaching development, and program development, respectively, plus a small administration. We have a good collegial atmosphere characterized by a high degree of professionalism, collaboration, and the opportunity for continuous professional development.
We value inquiry, co-creation, empowerment, and expertise.

The research group at CED works within and across the three departments. The research group currently comprises five associate professors, three postdocs, and three PhD students. The group often works multidisciplinarily with a wide range of methods and theories.The group focuses on high quality applied research.
The current topics of interest in the group include development and competencies of university teachers, student learning, transformation and transitions, curriculum, change pedagogies, digitization, learning technologies, and subject didactics such as health science didactics.
We come from a wide range of research methods and theoretical frameworks.

For a more detailed description of CED, please, visit our website.

About the position as assistant professor

With this job posting, we aim to strengthen the center's research on how university teachers frame and carry out teaching activities. Within this focus area, there is an opportunity to pursue various research interests, such as inclusive teaching methods, support for students' academic integration, learning processes and critical thinking, or classroom management. Common to these examples is that teaching development occurs through the actions of the university teachers, making it the primary focus of the assistant professor.
The position is in the Department of Teaching Development; however, you will also become a part of CED's interdisciplinary university pedagogy research group. In your daily work, you will closely collaborate with the center's many dedicated researchers and consultants across CED's departments.

About the tasks

Your tasks will be evenly distributed between research and teaching, primarily involving:

• Initiating and leading your own research projects with an applied focus.
• Publishing with peer feedback at an international level.
• Collaborating on your research with CED's other researchers and colleagues in the department.
• Seeking external funding.
• Contributing to the development and implementation of professional development programs for university teachers at AU or contributing to development projects in collaboration with faculty at AU.
• Being part of a relevant teaching or development team at CED.

In addition, you may, to a limited extent, be involved in other tasks at the center based on specific agreements.

About you and your qualifications

You have:

• A Ph.D. degree in a relevant field (completed and defended PhD).
• Published at an international level in educational development or related areas, preferably related to higher education.
• Successfully obtained external funding for your own projects or your own professional development.
• Specific experience in teaching or development work.

You can:

• Plan and conduct your own research projects.
• Participate in research collaborations.
• Collaborate across disciplines and organizations.
• Independently teach in well-defined formats, such as workshops or webinars.
• Contribute to the development and delivery of pedagogical professional development programs or contribute to the development and implementation of educational development projects.

You are:

• Solution-oriented with a focus on both results and processes, including the ability to consider participants' backgrounds and perspectives.
• Independent and able to act professionally with respect for the organizational context.
• Flexible and able to keep a cool head and maintain a positive attitude, even when things don't go as planned.

Conditions and place of employment

The assistant professorship is a full-time (37 hours) position limited to a 3-year period starting from the date of employment.

Expected start date is 1 April 2024.

You will be placed in the Department of Teaching Development with a reference to the department manager. Regarding the research tasks, there is daily close collaboration with the research group at CED, led by the center director.

Place of employment is Trøjborgvej 82-84, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.

Further information on the appointment procedure can be found in the Ministerial Order on the Appointment of Academic Staff at Universities.

The appointment is in accordance with the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (Akademikerne).

Further information on qualification requirements and job description can be found in
the Ministerial Order on Job Structure for Academic Staff at Universities.

The hiring process

We encourage diverse research and teaching backgrounds so we have posted an open position that is not limited to specific educational or methodological backgrounds.

In addition to your motivated application, please attach the following:

• CV
• Documentation for the PhD degree
• Teaching portfolio (maximum 3 pages)
• List of publications
• Two selected international publications for assessment
• Outline of a 3-year research plan
• Optionally, an example of a relevant completed development project

We use shortlisting in the hiring process lead by the department manager and head of the assessment committee. In this shortlisting process, we exclude applicants that clearly do not match the described position.

After the shortlisting process, an assessment committee with international participation gives their written summary concerning each of the shortlisted applicants. Based on these summaries of qualifications, an employment committee of future colleagues and the department manager invites the most qualified applicants for an interview. If necessary, the employment committee can invite 1-2 applicants to a second interview round before making the final decision and offer.

Applications must be made in English.

Interviews are expected to take place in week 8 (19 – 23 February 2024).

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