ABSTRACT
The higher education sector is moving towards requiring that all lecturers have teaching qualifications, with the aim that teaching should be built on a firm foundation of educational theory. All new staff would take a teaching certificate during their probation, as advocated by Ramsden (1992). However, the first year of a new lecturing job involves high workloads, preparing courses and learning the way the institution operates. Finding time to read pedagogic research literature is hard. Furthermore, new lecturers will typically have no educational background, which makes it difficult for them to target their reading. New lecturers are also likely to have more initial interest in the practical than the theoretical aspects of their teaching.
