Proposal view
| Proposal Type: | Individual Paper |
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| Domain: | Higher Education |
| SIG: | Higher Education |
| Type | Submitted Paper |
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PC and projector |
| Paper Details |
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| Title | Conceptions of teaching excellence held by reviewers of teaching awards |
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| Abstract | Reviews of the operation of teaching award schemes in higher education suggest that they have many operational flaws, especially in terms of the kinds of evidence that are made available by teachers to be judged by teaching award panels (MacDonald, 1998). However these are not simply practical problems. To specify appropriate kinds of evidence to be reviewed, and to have aligned criteria for making decisions about such evidence, requires that there is a coherent and aligned notion of what teaching excellence consists of. This paper reports part of a study in which the espoused model of teaching excellence of a wide variety of teaching award schemes in several countries, as evident in scheme documentation, was compared with the conceptions of teaching excellence underpinning decisions about applications for awards made by award panel judges, and related to alternative conceptual models of teaching excellence (e.g. Trigwell, 2001). Interviews were conducted with three panel judges from each of 10 university teaching award schemes in four countries. Judges’ conceptions of excellent teaching were elicited by discussion of individual applications for awards that were successful or unsuccessful. Phenomenographic analysis was undertaken on the interview transcripts. The paper will report the categories of conception of teaching excellence held by the judges and highlight the degree of alignment of these conceptions with the model of teaching excellence of the award schemes and the adequacy of the forms of evidence submitted to be judged. The findings contribute to the literature on teachers’ conceptions of teaching (Prosser et al 1994), teachers’ conceptions of excellent teaching (Parpala, 2005) and award winning teachers’ conceptions of teaching (Dunkin and Precians, 1992) by describing variation in conceptions of excellence in teaching held by those who judge teaching excellence for teaching awards. |
| Summary | The use of teaching award schemes are now almost universal in higher education in the USA, UK and Australia and their use in mainland Europe is rapidly being extended. There is a substantial literature on the policy rationale for such schemes and concerning their operation, going back over twenty years (Gibbs andOpenshaw, 1983; Ramsden et al 1995; Gibbs, 1996; Gibbs and Habeshaw, 2002). There is also a literature on practical and policy difficulties (Gibbs, 1995a, 1995b; Macdonald, 1998) and criticism of the extent to which such schemes are informed by what is known about effective teaching (Lublin and Prosser, 1994). Studies of teachers’ conceptions of teaching (e.g. Prosser et al 1994) do not distinguish between ‘teaching’ and ‘excellent teaching’ or provide a basis for making teaching award distinctions amongst distinguished teachers. Attempts to understand notions of ‘excellent’ teaching have been assisted by studies of teachers’ conceptions of excellent teaching (Parpala, 2005) and of award winning teachers’ conceptions of teaching (Dunkin and Precians, 1992). However there has been no study of the way award panel judges make their decisions. How these decisions are informed by their conceptions of excellent teaching, or how these conceptions relate to the rationale of teaching award schemes or aspects of their operation such as the nature of evidence of excellence that is expected to be submitted. This study was designed to inform the operation of teaching award schemes by exploring the conceptions of teaching underlying both the schemes themselves and the way award decisions are made. Methodology The first stage of the study involved articulation of the main available theoretical models of teaching excellence drawing on models underpinning attempts to improve university teaching (Gibbs and Coffey, 2003). Teaching awards differentially value such elements as student performance, teacher performance, innovation, customer satisfaction, reflective practice, orientation to students, orientation to institutional goals, creation of an effective learning environment, good citizenship, evidence of evaluation, evidence of formal scholarship of teaching and knowledge of educational literature. Documentation associated with teaching award schemes in a wide variety of institutions was then examined to identify their stated rationale, their stated criteria, and the guidance concerning what kinds of evidence applicants should submit, in an attempt to identify implicit models concerning teaching excellence in relation to theoretical models of teaching excellence. From the range of schemes examined, 10 teaching award schemes in different HE institutions and contexts were selected that, on paper, exemplified a range of rather different implicit theories concerning excellence. Interviews were conducted with three judges involved in each of the selected schemes about how and why they made decisions about previously judged teaching award applications, both successful and unsuccessful, in a ‘policy capture’ process to identify the implicit models of teaching excellence actually being used. Interviews involved: · Background exploration of their understanding of the rationale for the teaching award scheme and details of its operation. Scheme documentation was used as a prompt to the interview questions. · Eliciting the basis of decision-making in each of six applications for awards: three that succeeded and three that failed. The applications themselves, which were anonymised, were used as a prompt to interview questions. Further exploration of the rationale of the scheme, the nature of evidence presented for decision making, and the rationale for decisions, in the light of the six examples. In conception this is similar to ‘policy capture’ studies undertaken about the underlying rationales of those who teach on programmes for new HE teachers, prompted by ‘critical incident’ questions, in relation to theoretical models of teacher development (Gibbs and Coffey, 2000), and about assessors of teaching portfolios on such programmes, about how they made their pass/fail decisions (Baume et al, 2004) in relation to explicit course criteria, in which the assessors wrote down their justifications as they made their decisions. The categories of conceptions of teaching excellence that will be reported were not yet available at the time of submission of this proposal.
References Baume, D., Yorke, M. & Coffey, M. (2004) What is happening when we assess, and how can we use our understanding of this to improve assessment? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 29, 4, pp451-477 Dunkin, M.J. & Precians, R.P. (1992) Award-winning teachers’ concepts of teaching. Higher Education 24, 4, pp483-502. Gibbs, G. (1995) How can promoting excellent teachers promote excellent teaching? Innovations in Teaching and Training International. 32, 1, pp74-84 Gibbs, G. (1995b) Promoting excellent teaching is harder than you’d think. Change May/June. pp 16-20. Gibbs, G. (1996) Rewarding excellence in teaching. in Beijaard, D., Snippe, J. & Van der Bor, (Eds.) Werken aan Hoger Onderwijs. Onderzoek van Onderwijs. Academisch Boeken Centrum: De Lier, Holland. Gibbs, G. & Coffey, M. (2000) Training to teach in higher education: a research agenda. Teacher Development, 4,1, pp31-44 Gibbs, G. & Coffey, M. (2003) Researching the training of university teachers: conceptual frameworks and research tools In R. Macdonald and H. Eggins (Eds.) The Scholarship of Academic Development. Open University Press/SRHE Gibbs, G. & Habeshaw, T. (2002) Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teachers. Milton Keynes: Open University. Gibbs, G. & Openshaw, D. (1983) Rewarding Excellent Teachers. SCEDSIP Paper No. 14. Lublin, J. & Prosser, M. (1994) Implications of recent research on student learning for institutionalpractices of evaluation of teaching. In G.Gibbs (Ed.) Improving student learning: theory and practice. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff Development. Macdonald, L. (1998) Points mean prizes: reflections on awards for teaching excellence. Innovations in Education and Training International, 35,2, pp130-132. Parpala, A. (2005) Defining quality in higher education. Exploring university teachers’ conceptions of good teaching. EARLI JURE conference, Cyprus, Sep. 2005. Prosser, M., Trigwell, K. & Taylor, P. (1994) A phenomenographic study of academics’ conceptions of science learning and teaching. Learning and Instruction, 4, pp217-231. Ramsden, P. Margetson,D., Martin,E. & Clarke,S. (1995) Recognising and rewarding good teaching in Australian Higher Education. Canberra: ACT, Australian Government Publishing Service. Trigwell, K. (2001) Judging university teaching. International Journal of Academic Development, 6, 1, pp65-73. |
| Keywords | Faculty development Phenomenography Teacher thinking |
| Appendices | |
| Authors | ||||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | Presenting | |
| Graham | Gibbs | University of Oxford | United Kingdom | graham.gibbs@learning.ox.ac.uk | * | |
| Keith | Trigwell | University of Sydney | Australia | keith.trigwell@learning.ox.ac.uk | ||
