This book is the culmination of three years work by teams from eight institutions in five different European and North American countries. The teams included faculty developers, professors, and graduate students interested in developing and disseminating a more profound understanding of university-level pedagogy.

The purpose of the project was, first, to conceptualize what an internationally-appropriate, formal academic program for faculty development in higher education might look like, taking into account differing national contexts, from national standards for faculty development (U.K. and Scandinavia), almost universal institutional support (North America) to virtually no activities (France).

The intention was to create and nurture a community of practice, enriched and informed by a range of expertise and different higher education traditions, cultures, and languages. To do so, the book begins with a section of five case studies that describe current practice in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France and Switzerland.