ABSTRACT
Teaching excellence is now part of the everyday language and practice of higher education. Policy makers declare its value to national economies, institutions market themselves through excellent teaching quality scores, and an increasing number of teachers are recognized and rewarded for their excellence at prestigious award ceremonies. At the time of writing in the UK, a new Higher Education Academy (HEA) has just been established which is to be entrusted with the goal of ‘delivering’ excellence in learning and teaching within the sector (DfES, 2003). These developments could not have been contemplated two decades ago.
Since that time, the argument that teaching should be treated seriously as a professional activity with equal status to research has been made repeatedly and with increasing intensity, leading to the formalization of staff development support for teaching and the introduction of a whole raft of measures designed to raise its status within higher education. These measures include teaching quality assessment and enhancement mechanisms, educational development grants funded by central government, certificated courses on learning and teaching, and awards for teaching excellence. Teaching is now firmly on the agenda and excellence in teaching is associated by many politicians with securing national advantage in the global knowledge economy. It is surprising that although teaching excellence has taken on a greater
significance in our lives, it is rarely the subject of serious research investigation. Much of the work on teaching excellence in higher education has a practical emphasis, which sets out to promote it through policy initiatives, mechanisms and structures. This book adopts a different approach in taking teaching excellence to be something worthy of critical investigation. This involves recognizing that teaching excellence is a contested concept and that we each need to develop an informed personal perspective on what it means for practice. The purpose of this introductory chapter is to ‘set the scene’ for
this investigation and to identify what a critical approach involves in more detail. It considers three contextual factors that are influencing how we currently think about teaching excellence in higher education: managerialism, the market and performativity. The chapter considers the impact of these contextual factors on our
understanding of teaching excellence. It argues that they are helping it to shake off its exclusive connotations. Teaching excellence is increasingly subject to measurement and control, and all teachers are encouraged to improve their practice by meeting prescribed standards. Teaching excellence is no longer viewed, therefore, as ephemeral and beyond the reach of mere mortals. It is actively promoted by and embedded within policy initiatives and pinned down by ‘expert panels’ who define it for the sector. We therefore have a teaching excellence that is increasingly visible but taken for granted and under-explored. Few would challenge the idea that we need to promote teaching and learning within higher education. Few would oppose the view that teaching excellence can be used strategically to raise overall standards. But what sort of ‘teaching excellence’ do we want and what are the alternatives? There is increasing concern among many educationalists about how a
culture of measurement and control is influencing how we think about teaching excellence. We are encouraged to think of teaching as a simple, practical activity that can ‘deliver’ predetermined ‘outcomes’. But perhaps what is more significant and worrying is the lack of real debate and deliberation within the sector about the meaning of teaching excellence. This book seeks to address this situation by adopting a critical approach. Such an approach recognizes that teaching excellence is a contested, value-laden concept. It takes the view that in order for it to be a valuable and meaningful concept for teachers and students in higher education, there has to be real deliberation about what it means and what it ‘looks like’ in practice. It is not sufficient for teachers to comply in a passive manner with those
understandings of teaching excellence given to them by politicians or experts; they have to develop for themselves a personally informed judgement and take responsibility for this. I conclude the chapter by describing the structure of the book, its intended audience and the content of specific chapters. The book seeks to promote discussion about teaching excellence in higher education. It is only through such discussion that we will develop a teaching excellence that is fit for the long term: one that is robust and confident, and one that we can trust and respect.
