Alan Skelton considers what constitutes excellence in higher education teaching, the central case study being the practice of the UK's most excellent university teachers, as judged by the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme.

Marshall Gregory argues that teachers at the university and high school levels can achieve teaching excellence by grounding their teaching in pedagogical theory that takes into account students' abilities and the ultimate goals of teaching: to develop students' capacities for thought, reflection, questioning, and engagement to their fullest extent.

This book explores disciplinary teaching excellence through a diverse range of student-staff partnership research projects. Despite being a highly contested term, ‘teaching excellence’ is something that universities aspire to and are expected to have. However, the editors and contributors argue that not only are definitions of excellence often broad and generic, but they lack nuanced understandings of disciplinary excellence in higher education. This book begins by unpacking some of these contested definitions of teaching excellence, followed by a series of co-authored chapters produced by students and staff who have undertaken research projects where they examine teaching excellence in their respective disciplinary areas. These chapters demonstrate that teaching excellence may be better understood as a process of becoming that is achieved through partnership between teachers and students. This book will be of interest and value to students, educators, and policy-makers concerned about teaching excellence, as well as scholars of student-staff partnerships.

There has been an explosion of interest in teaching excellence in higher education. Once labelled the ‘poor relation’ of the research/teaching divide, teaching is now firmly on the policy agenda; pressure on institutions to improve the quality of teaching has never been greater and significant funding seeks to promote teaching excellence in higher education institutions. This book constitutes the first serious scrutiny of how and why it should be achieved. International perspectives from educational researchers, award winning teachers, practitioners and educational developers consider key topics, including: policy initiatives research-led teaching teaching excellence and scholarship the significance of academic disciplines research into teaching excellence rewarding through promotion inclusive learning and ICT. Teaching Excellence in Higher Education provides a guide for all those supporting, promoting and trying to achieve teaching excellence in higher education and sets the scene for teaching excellence as a field for serious investigation and critical enquiry.

Thomas Jefferson once stated that the foremost goal of American education must be to nurture the "natural aristocracy of talent and virtue." Although in many ways American higher education has fulfilled Jefferson's vision by achieving a widespread level of excellence, it has not achieved the objective of equity implicit in Jefferson's statement. In Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education, William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin explore the cause for this divide. Employing historical research, examination of the most recent social science and public policy scholarship, international comparisons, and detailed empirical analysis of rich new data, the authors study the intersection between "excellence" and "equity" objectives. Beginning with a time line tracing efforts to achieve equity and excellence in higher education from the American Revolution to the early Cold War years, this narrative reveals the halting, episodic progress in broadening access across the dividing lines of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The authors argue that despite our rhetoric of inclusiveness, a significant number of youth from poor families do not share equal access to America's elite colleges and universities. While America has achieved the highest level of educational attainment of any country, it runs the risk of losing this position unless it can markedly improve the precollegiate preparation of students from racial minorities and lower-income families. After identifying the "equity" problem at the national level and studying nineteen selective colleges and universities, the authors propose a set of potential actions to be taken at federal, state, local, and institutional levels. With recommendations ranging from reform of the admissions process, to restructuring of federal financial aid and state support of public universities, to addressing the various precollegiate obstacles that disadvantaged students face at home and in school, the authors urge all selective colleges and universities to continue race-sensitive admissions policies, while urging the most selective (and privileged) institutions to enroll more well-qualified students from families with low socioeconomic status.

This book offers inter-disciplinary, evidence-informed discussion around notions of excellence in higher education teaching. It will act as a key stimulus for institutional and sector-wide debates and a reference point for initiatives around the TEF agenda.

This book provides a contemporary view of the characteristics of expertise for teaching in higher education, based on the strong foundation of research into expertise, and empirical and practical knowledge of the development of teaching in higher education. Taking key themes related to the characteristics of expertise, this edited collection delivers practical ideas for supporting and enabling professional learning and development in higher education as well as theoretical constructs for the basis of personal reflection on practice. Providing an accessible, evidence-informed theoretical framework designed to support individuals wishing to improve their teaching, Developing Expertise for Teaching in Higher Education considers teaching excellence from an expertise perspective and discusses how it might be supported and available to all. It invites a call to action to all policymakers and strategic leaders who make a claim for teaching excellence to consider how professional learning and the development of expertise can be embedded in the culture, environment and ways of working in higher education institutions. Full of practical examples, based on scholarship and experience, to guide individual teachers, educational developers and policymakers in higher education, this book is a must-read text for those new to teaching in higher education and those looking to improve their practice.

This book is intended for faculty and faculty developers, as well as for deans, chairs, and directors responsible for promoting teaching and learning in higher education. Intentionally non-technical, it engages readers reflectively with a process for developing teaching and details the planning necessary to apply this process to teaching within disciplines.The book centers on McGill University’s week-long Course Design and Teaching Workshop that the contributors have offered together for more than ten years. It follows the five day format of the workshop–covering the analysis of course content, conceptions of learning, the selection of appropriate teaching strategies, the evaluation of student learning, and evaluation of teaching–in a way that reflects the spontaneity of the debates it has engendered and the workshop’s evolutionary changes. The structure shows faculty members conceptualizing new courses or re-examining their teaching of existing courses, and translating the insights gained from the workshop to specific disciplinary content and learning outcomes. In addition four previous participants of the workshop write about its influence on their personal thinking about the practice of teaching.The final two chapters describe the structure and evolving role of McGill’s Centre for University Teaching and Learning. The authors describe its objectives in fostering an evidence-based teaching culture and providing a practical support structure with limited resources. They highlight achievements in disseminating teaching expertise across their campus, and their vision for the future role of faculty development.This book provides faculty developers and administrators with valuable non-prescriptive models and challenging ideas that promote faculty development in general and university teaching in particular. It engages faculty members in the process of course design in a way that is learning centered and can lead to deep student learning.

Assessment in higher education is an area of intense current interest, not least due to its central role in student learning processes. Excellence in University Assessment is a pioneering text which contributes to the theory and practice of assessment through detailed discussion and analysis of award-winning teaching across multiple disciplines. It provides inspiration and strategies for higher education practitioners to improve their understanding and practice of assessment. The book uses an innovative model of learning-oriented assessment to analyze the practice of university teachers who have been recipients of teaching awards for excellence. It critically scrutinizes their methods in context in order to develop key insights into effective teaching, learning and assessment processes. Pivotal topics include: Competing priorities in assessment and ways of tackling them; The nature of quality assessment task design; The student experience of assessment; Promoting student engagement with feedback. An indispensable contribution to assessment in higher education, Excellence in University Assessment is a valuable guide for university leaders, middle managers, staff developers, teachers and researchers interested in the crucial topic of assessment.

The first full-length history of college teaching in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, this book sheds new light on the ongoing tension between the modern scholarly ideal—scientific, objective, and dispassionate—and the inevitably subjective nature of day-to-day instruction. American college teaching is in crisis, or so we are told. But we've heard that complaint for the past 150 years, as critics have denounced the poor quality of instruction in undergraduate classrooms. Students daydream in gigantic lecture halls while a professor drones on, or they meet with a teaching assistant for an hour of aimless discussion. The modern university does not reward teaching, so faculty members at every level neglect it in favor of research and publication. In the first book-length history of American college teaching, Jonathan Zimmerman confirms but also contradicts these perennial complaints. Drawing upon a wide range of previously unexamined sources, The Amateur Hour shows how generations of undergraduates indicted the weak instruction they received. But Zimmerman also chronicles institutional efforts to improve it, especially by making teaching more "personal." As higher education grew into a gigantic industry, he writes, American colleges and universities introduced small-group activities and other reforms designed to counter the anonymity of mass instruction. They also experimented with new technologies like television and computers, which promised to "personalize" teaching by tailoring it to the individual interests and abilities of each student. But, Zimmerman reveals, the emphasis on the personal inhibited the professionalization of college teaching, which remains, ultimately, an amateur enterprise. The more that Americans treated teaching as a highly personal endeavor, dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the instructor, the less they could develop shared standards for it. Nor have they rigorously documented college instruction, a highly public activity which has taken place mostly in private. Pushing open the classroom door, The Amateur Hour illuminates American college teaching and frames a fresh case for restoring intimate learning communities, especially for America's least privileged students. Anyone who wants to change college teaching will have to start here.