Do STEM professors generally hold training in teaching from faculty of education or not?
Do STEM professors generally hold training in teaching from faculty of education or not?
No. Even at institutions that privilege teaching over research, it is unlikely that professors would receive formal training from colleagues in the Faculty of Education. Many universities have some sort of support unit (i.e. a &quot;Centre for Teaching Excellence&quot;) that provide training to professors as professional development. While there is probably more attention these days towards pedagogical issues, few places make this mandatory (apart from perhaps a few introductory seminars). In fact, there is unfortunately a bit of a bias towards seeing teaching training as remedial.
Why is this? For better or for worse, at many research-intensive universities, research takes priority over teaching. Faculty members wanting to get tenured and promoted need to be well received by their community of peers, often external letter writers, who will focus on research as it's the main way to evaluate a faculty member (i.e. if I am writing a letter from another university, it's hard for me to know if a professor is an effective teacher or not; but I can situate them in the profession much easier based on our community norms).
As comments have noted, most professors learn how to teach &quot;on the job&quot; in an apprentice model, similar to how they learn many parts of their job. Starting out as a TA and then increasingly gaining autonomy in the classroom (until they are thrown in the deep end as a professor, of course).