Date

8th December 2015

Royal Society – Teaching excellence: Can one size fit all?

In its newly-published green paper (Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice), the Government has outlined its plans to boost teaching standards, increase participation in higher education by people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and ensure students get value for money from higher education.

At the heart of these plans is a new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), which will use measures such as student satisfaction, retention rates and job prospects to identify universities offering excellent teaching. The TEF has the potential to transform attitudes in higher education, making quality teaching a higher priority for all universities.

However, higher education is an enormously diverse sector. Different institutions attract different students, with very different career paths and goals. Teaching also differs across disciplines. Can a one size fits all system really be made to work?

Can there be a consistent definition of excellent university teaching? Are there metrics which can measure and compare teaching quality across the full range of different courses? How can the TEF take universities’ differing missions into account? Can the Research Excellence Framework teach us how – or how not – to recognise quality in a diverse field? Can the TEF make a real difference to student choices and satisfaction?

Discussing these questions will be an expert panel from across the sector. The event is chaired by Professor Steve Sparks FRS. The speakers on the panel are:

  • Professor Sir Martin Taylor FRS, Warden of Merton College, Oxford
  • Maddalaine Ansell, CEO, University Alliance
  • Bahram Bekhradnia, President, HEPI

 

Further details here.