‘Left with a title but nothing else’: the challenges of embedding professional recognition schemes for teachers within higher education institutions

Spowart, Lucy; Winter, Jennie; Turner, Rebecca; Burden, Penny; Botham, Kathryn Ann; Muneer, Reema; Sluis, Hendrik van der; Huet, Isabel

doi:10.1080/07294360.2019.1616675

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Further research comparable to past work which investigated the impact on practice from teaching professional standards/accreditation, primarily the UK PSF and associated HEA fellowship (Turner et al, 2013;Botham, 2018;Spowart et al, 2019), would be valuable. The questioning of the correlation between standards and impact evident from this work does not justify halting the endeavor of embedding personal tutoring standards.…”

Section: Value Recognition and Rewardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional Standards and Recognition for UK Personal Tutoring and Advising

Walker

2020

Front. Educ.

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The Higher Education and Research Act established both a regulatory framework and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) with associated metrics for student retention, progression and employability in the United Kingdom. As a key site in meeting these requirements, the significance of personal tutoring is clear. Despite this, according to existing institutional research, there is a need for developmental support, greater clarification on the requisite competencies, and adequate recognition for those undertaking this challenging role. Moreover, arguably compounding these concerns is the lack of distinct professional standards for personal tutoring and advising against which to measure effective practice, only recently addressed by the publication of The UKAT Professional Framework for Advising and Tutoring. Through a review of the literature supported by findings from a survey of practitioners, this paper discusses the need for such standards, and the skills and competencies populating them. Additionally, the usefulness of pre-existing standards pertinent to tutoring work (such as the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in HE) are evaluated and the value and recognition with which personal tutoring standards could be associated are advanced. The survey supported the need for specific standards-represented by the UKAT framework-as evident from the literature. Justifications provided for both this and the opposing view are examined. Clarity for both individual practitioners and institutions was stipulated along with meaningful recognition and reward for this work which is considered highly important and yet 'invisible.' The participants and literature reviewed identify relevant content along with illuminating the debate about the relationships between personal tutoring, teaching and professional advising roles. Valuable analysis of standards, recognition and reward also emerged. This is considered by discussing the connection between standards and changes to practice, responses to policy developments and the purpose of 'standards' in comparison to 'guidance.' The paper proposes that the recent introduction and use of a bespoke framework is a necessary response to alleviate some of the current tensions which beset personal tutoring and advising in higher education.

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Section: Value Recognition and Rewardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional Standards and Recognition for UK Personal Tutoring and Advising

Walker

2020

Front. Educ.

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“…Institutional accreditation via Advance HE is part of a broader agenda to raise the status of teaching and learning, and to support teaching-focused academics to be as well qualified and rewarded as their research-focused colleagues [16]. Concerns over teaching quality, preparedness for the workplace, the lower status of teaching compared to research and a lack of recognition drove this agenda from the late 1990s [23].…”

Section: Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the increasing prevalence of Advance HE accreditation across the sector in recent years, research which examines its impact remains limited [33]. In the UK this has been reflected in a recent emphasis on institutionally-focused evaluation studies examining the impact on individuals of achieving HEA Fellowship, for example, [3,16,[34][35][36][37]. With some notable exceptions [13,38,39], this latter work has so far been largely UK-centric [33], and the wider institutional impacts of Advance HE accreditation have not previously been considered in any large-scale, cross-institutional studies.…”

Section: Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the extent to which this ambition has been realised is debated [5,15]. Equally though the growth in accredited provision that has formalised professional development for new, and experienced staff, has been documented, both in the UK and beyond [13,16], and evidenced through the widespread use of Advance HE accreditation services. The impact of these developments has been contested by some [5,17] raising concerns over local resistance, and conflict between the long-term goals of professional development and institutional priorities to raise the profile of teaching.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Institutional Accreditation and the Professionalisation of Teaching in the HE Sector

Spowart¹,

Turner²

2022

Higher Education - New Approaches to Accreditation, Digitalization, and Globalization in the Age of Covid

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Institutional accreditation is an integral part of moves to professionalise teaching and learning in higher education (HE). Despite this growing trend, there is a paucity of literature which examines the benefits and challenges of institutional accreditation. In this chapter we draw on survey data collected in 2020 from 55 HE institutions globally which are accredited by Advance HE to award Fellowships. These teaching Fellowships are aligned to the UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning (UKPSF). Findings show that institutional accreditation supports the career development of teaching-focused academics and impacts on teaching and learning in a number of ways. These impacts include providing an external benchmark, raising the profile and quality of teaching and encouraging teaching-related professional development, including engagement with scholarship in teaching and learning. Accreditation was also found to align with neoliberal agendas of quality, league tables and marketization. The perennial issue of how to evaluate the impact on student learning is something respondents continue to grapple with. Finally, these data demonstrate there is a clear need to develop a more systematic and embedded approach to evaluation that captures the outcomes of teaching-related professional development.

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“…Instead the emphasis is on training to use new technologies (Jacob et al, 2015) or reflective practice (Kandlbinder and Peseta, 2009), which is a major focus of faculty development for HE (Henderson et al, 2011). Teaching staff report engaging in the reflective professional development programmes for a variety of reasons unrelated to the development of their teaching skills, for example in order to meet criteria for promotion (Spowart et al, 2016;Jacob et al, 2019), or as a result of institutional requirements driven by league tables (Spowart et al, 2019). The efficacy of such programmes varies widely (ICED, 2014;Jacob et al, 2019), and there is limited evidence that they contribute to the strategic priorities of HEIs (Bell and Brooks, 2016;Newton and Gravenor, 2020).…”

Section: Pragmatic Practical He Teacher Trainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Case for Pragmatic Evidence-Based Higher Education: A Useful Way Forward?

2020

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Arguments for and against the idea of evidence-based education have occupied the academic literature for decades. Those arguing in favor plead for greater rigor and clarity to determine “what works.” Those arguing against protest that education is a complex, social endeavor and that for epistemological, theoretical and political reasons it is not possible to state, with any useful degree of generalizable certainty, “what works.” While academics argue, policy and practice in Higher Education are beset with problems. Ineffective methods such as “Learning Styles” persist. Teaching quality and teacher performance are measured using subjective and potentially biased feedback. University educators have limited access to professional development, particularly for practical teaching skills. There is a huge volume of higher education research, but it is disconnected from educational practice. Change is needed. We propose a pragmatic model of Evidence-Based Higher Education, empowering educators and others to make judgements about the application of the most useful evidence, in a particular context, including pragmatic considerations of cost and other resources. Implications of the model include a need to emphasize pragmatic approaches to research in higher education, delivering results that are more obviously useful, and a pragmatic focus on practical teaching skills for the development of educators in Higher Education.

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‘Left with a title but nothing else’: the challenges of embedding professional recognition schemes for teachers within higher education institutions

Cited by 16 publications

References 19 publications

Professional Standards and Recognition for UK Personal Tutoring and Advising

Professional Standards and Recognition for UK Personal Tutoring and Advising

Institutional Accreditation and the Professionalisation of Teaching in the HE Sector

The Case for Pragmatic Evidence-Based Higher Education: A Useful Way Forward?

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