TEACH FOOD – Developing a teacher’s community of practice

The National Food Institute (DTU FOOD) at DTU teaches and educates engineers for the food sector, the public authorities and the research communities. To meet these objectives faculty needs to be at the forefront of food science as well as in teaching and continuously develop the approach to how to teach. Learning environments with suitable student challenges requires devoted and involved faculty members, who continuously develop their competences in teaching. At DTU FOOD the faculty consists of scientist in a broad range of disciplines and cultures. TEACH FOOD was established to promote and enhance the development of community of practice, i.e. a Professional Learning Community (PLC) focusing on optimizing the learning outcome of the students. To achieve this, a 1½ residential seminar for all teachers was arranged. In the first seminar 76% of the teachers and the head of institute participated. Five core activities were identified and a series of half years seminars were started focusing on challenges in every day teaching experiences. The participation of DTU FOOD faculty members in the internal DTU conferences about teaching and learning has increased from 3 to 11 since the start of TEACH FOOD. These activities illustrate the extended willingness to discuss teaching and learning as well as share experiences from teaching at DTU FOOD exemplifying the growing PLC.