ABSTRACT
The discussion in Chapter 3 focused on awards for teaching excellence. Although some awards recognize that teaching excellence is a team effort and intimately connected to institutional policy and available resources, the majority reward individual teachers. In this chapter I concentrate on institutional teaching excellence. It has been argued that to analyse teaching excellence with some precision, one needs to consider not only the contributions of individuals but also the institutional contexts within which they work (Elton, 1998). A range of issues is examined, including: the case for looking at teaching excellence at institutional level; the emergence of formalized institutional teaching and learning strategies; the relationship between institutional identity and teaching excellence; the introduction of specialist centres; and institutional responses to teaching award schemes.
