ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapter 1, teaching excellence has now become part of our everyday language and aspiration for practice in higher education. But what we mean by the term often seems unclear as terms like ‘excellent’, ‘good’, ‘outstanding’, ‘competent’ and ‘best’ (practice) are often used interchangeably by practitioners and educational policy makers (DfES, 2003). It is also apparent that when people refer to teaching excellence they often mean quite different things. This can be confusing and not conducive to dialogue. It seems timely, therefore, to try to achieve a greater level of conceptual clarity. If teaching excellence is to be a positive force in higher education, we need to gain some critical purchase on it and how it might be understood. In order to do this, some serious questions need to be asked about
teaching excellence. First of all, we need to identify what we mean by ‘higher education’ so that any expression of teaching excellence is directed towards this end. As Barnett (1992: 15) notes, it is impossible to discuss concepts like quality and excellence ‘unless we have a reasonably clear conception of what might be included under the umbrella concept of ‘‘higher education’’ ’. Any consideration of teaching excellence must therefore address the broader concept of higher education to which it contributes. Some ‘dominant’ and ‘alternative’ concepts of higher education are outlined by Barnett (ibid.: 18-21). The dominant conceptualizations are systems-based. Higher education is viewed as a total system, ‘in which students enter as inputs, are processed, and emerge as outputs’ (ibid.: 20). Alternative concepts ‘take seriously the educational processes to which students are exposed, or which are intimately concerned with the students’ development’ (ibid.: 20). These different conceptualizations are listed below:
Dominant – higher education as:
The production of qualified manpower Training for a research career
The efficient management of teaching provision A matter of extending life chances.
