Pursuing Teaching Excellence in Higher Education

Towards an Inclusive Perspective

Margaret Wood, Feng Su

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350216693
• eBook ISBN: 9781350055308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Teaching excellence is a topic of international significance, having importance for higher education worldwide, yet is generally considered to be poorly defined and understood. The current discourse of teaching excellence is narrowly framed, instrumental and performative, with an onus on measurement and quantification. Wood and Su investigate and rethink excellence in higher education, connecting this to the understanding of the role and purpose of higher education. Stakeholder perspectives on teaching excellence are explored, and the authors argue that it is through engaging with higher education constituencies, to examine teaching excellence from different angles and stances, that more inclusive understandings may be built. These stakeholder perspectives, which form the central chapters of the book, include higher education institutions, academics, students, employers and parents. The importance of a commitment to engaging with understandings situated in the diverse experiences and contexts of stakeholders for an 'inclusive perspective' on teaching excellence is affirmed. At the close of the book, the Coda examines some of the implications of the responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic for inclusive perspectives on teaching excellence in higher education.

1

Discourses of Teaching Excellence in Higher Education

In this chapter, understandings of the contested concept of teaching excellence in higher education are examined and located in the wider political context of a competitive market-led education environment, and some of the semantics and debates surrounding notions of ‘excellence’ as a popular and recurrent trope in higher education are considered. This chapter sets the scene for the wider project of this book, which is to examine what teaching excellence is considered to be from the perspectives of different stakeholder groups. It explores some of the implications of a discourse of excellence framed in a market-oriented higher education context and conceptualized in these sorts of terms. We question what this might mean for democracy, which in turn provokes further questions about the purposes of higher education and its value to society.

As we explain, it is timely to examine not only teaching excellence but also the role of higher education and the public good in ways that reconnect with and include the public as stakeholders of higher education, in examination of and reshaping the dominant discourse of teaching excellence. Lefebvre’s theory of moments offers some purchase on possibilities evoked through the civic debate envisaged in the project at the core of this book, disrupting the neoliberal discourse of excellence and presenting an opportunity to reconsider and reappraise questions of purpose. The ‘moment’, as a ‘recurring motif’ (Middleton, 2014: 112) in Lefebvre’s work, is defined as ‘the attempt to achieve the total realization of a possibility. Possibility offers itself; and it reveals itself’ (Lefebvre, 2014: 518). The moment has ‘a certain specific duration’ (Lefebvre, 2014: 515); it ‘reveals the possible’ (Middleton, 2014: 181). The possibility to democratize excellence as part of a wider engaged civic discourse about the purposes of higher education may fill the current vacuum. We explore the possibilities to shape civic debate, by engaging the plurality of the public sphere, and Lefebvre’s conception of the ‘moment’ as ‘somehow revelatory of the totality of possibilities contained in daily existence’ (Harvey, 1991: 429) has helped to inform this exploration. Regarding Lefebvre’s concept of ‘Moments’, Shields (2004: 209) explains that it ‘reappears throughout his work as a theory of presence and the foundation of a practice of emancipation. Experiences of revelation, déjà-vu sensations, but especially love and committed struggle, are examples of “Moments”. By definition, “Moments” have no duration, but can be relived. Lefebvre argues that these cannot easily be reappropriated by consumer capitalism and commodified; they cannot be codified.’

Lefebvre’s work has been drawn on and it is important to acknowledge that while employing Lefebvre’s ideas, the extent of his work and influence is far broader and more extensive than represented here. Lefebvre is described by Shields (2004: 208) as a ‘neo-Marxist and existentialist philosopher, a sociologist of urban and rural life and a theorist of the state, of international flows of capital and of social space’. Gottdiener (1993) described him as ‘perhaps the greatest Marxian thinker since Marx, and certainly one of the greatest philosophers of our time’. His work ‘Rhythmanalysis’ which he wrote when he was in his late eighties (Middleton, 2014) provided ‘a fitting end to his career’ (Elden, 2004: 170). In this work, ‘the abstract quantitative time, the time of watches and clocks’ which has become ‘the time of everydayness’, is differentiated from the natural rhythms, ‘day and night, the months and the seasons, and still more precisely biological rhythms’ (Lefebvre and Regulier, 2004: 73). Rhythms ‘interpenetrate one another’ and music ‘where the measure and the beat are linear in character, while motifs, melody and particularly harmony are cyclical’ illustrates how rhythms ‘may be said to embrace both cyclical and linear’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 205–6). Lefebvre explained that ‘What we live are rhythms – rhythms experienced subjectively. Which means that, here at least, “lived” and “conceived” are close: the laws of nature and the laws governing our bodies tend to overlap with each other – as perhaps too with the laws of social reality’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 206). From our analysis of teaching excellence what appears to emerge are some of the ways in which rhythms of the ‘conceived’ dominate in a discourse framed, for example, by mechanisms of measurement and by commodification and quantification. Rhythms provide a useful framing for our discussion of the hegemony of market logic and linearity and our thinking about the interaction with ‘lived’ rhythms.

The word ‘discourses’ in the title of this chapter refers to the language we use to describe teaching excellence, which is underpinned by certain ideologies, and sometimes even competing ones. This chapter explores some of the tensions in applying language associated with commerce and business to higher education and ideas about teaching excellence. The language influences the ways in which we think and speak about teaching excellence. However, discourses go beyond consideration of words and language; they ‘constitute a way of acting in the social world as well as describing it’ (Forrester and Garratt, 2016: 10). Within teaching excellence discourse, the language of the customer or purchaser, for example, constructs particular ways of being a student that may influence expectations of roles and behaviours fashioned by the logics of consumerism and market forces. We begin by examining how teaching excellence is conceptualized, shaped and fuelled by market logics.

Drivers and Conceptions of Teaching Excellence

Badges and trophies of excellence ostensibly inform consumer choice and, according to the policy rhetoric, choice is a driver and a spur to excellence. In this marketized world of higher education, the cost passes to the individual consumer in exchange for the benefits of future higher earnings which, in a deferred way, also acts as a tax on earnings at a future date, but one which is so far hence that it may not impinge on the thi nking of students at the time. Arguably, too, the model is flawed if a large proportion of student debt is later written off, at a cost to the taxpayer. While a focus on productivity, employability and future earnings potential may present an apparently compelling rationale for higher education and its contribution to economic prosperity, trends have been towards a decline in graduate incomes and the underemployment of overqualified graduates. Ford (2016: 129) reported that ‘Between 2007 and 2012, average starting salaries for UK graduates with bachelor’s degrees fell in real terms by 11 per cent’ while total outstanding student debt in the UK more than doubled. Participation in higher education is likely to mean high student debt incurred, with uncertainty regarding future availability of graduate jobs and graduate earnings. The potential student is faced with what we might term a ‘double bind’, the essence of which is captured in Blacker’s (2013: 143) observation that ‘The time has long passed when post-secondary education constitutes some kind of exceptional vehicle of social mobility, where four years of college places one on an upward path.’ While a college degree may be considered necessary for ‘the good life’ and economic security, ‘The education that was supposed to be the ticket out of a lifetime of economic difficulty is for more and more now a ticket into chronic economic difficulty. Yet it is still necessary as the alternative of not attending college promises even worse prospects for individuals’ life chances’ (Blacker, 2013: 128). The future ‘upward path’ and potential economic dividend for graduates appear to be uncertain.

Blacker (2013: 125) suggests that ‘the cold-eyed context created by economic crisis’ renders ‘non-economic rationales’ for education vulnerable. In some similar respects, conceptualizations of teaching excellence stemming from a ‘non-economic rationale’ are difficult in a pervasive market-driven discourse of higher education where the ‘extrinsic “goods” that are easily quantifiable and therefore amenable to measurement’ (Nixon, 2008: 60) hold sway. How might considerations of teaching excellence go beyond productivity, outcomes and cost to embrace intangible and vital questions of the value of higher education to society? This is a pressing concern given how instrumental views of higher education and teaching excellence have gained traction in a discourse dominated by metrics and outcome measures. Against the narrowness of this backdrop there is a need to rethink teaching excellence and to consider whose voices might be invited into this debate.

In the UK context, the Office for Students’ overview of the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) (June 2019) says, ‘The TEF measures important aspects that matter to students’ and ‘It sharpens the focus on teaching and outcomes that matter to students, by encouraging universities and colleges to deliver the best experience for their students and achieve higher ratings.’ The TEF can be seen as one way of quality-assuring the value for money of their investment in higher education, quality-assuring the experience that students, as customers, have ‘purchased’. The Office for Students website (Office for Students, n.d.) notes the role of the TEF as a tool to encourage excellence and inform student choice.

An environment of consumerism and customer satisfaction ratings does not sit easily alongside the idea of higher education as a challenging, though not necessarily always a ‘satisfying’, learning experience. If chasing student satisfaction ratings is the aim, then logically one option may be to minimize challenge and risk-taking and to ‘play it safe’. By contrast, Healey (2011: 203) has argued that ‘being prepared to take risks, and as a consequence at times failing, is integral to striving for excellence for both our students and ourselves’. Furthermore, New Public Management of higher education has encouraged universities to be defensive and inward-looking (Nixon, 2008: 22), which are arguably inimical to risk-taking, trying out new practices and innovative pedagogies. The issue of risk aversion and its implications for teaching excellence are returned to later.

The idea of excellence seems to be pervasive today in advertising and the marketing of goods and services, giving it the ring of a familiar and somewhat hackneyed refrain. It ‘has become ubiquitous as a popular slogan’ (Clegg, 2007: 91). So too in education, excellence is ‘rapidly becoming the watchword of the University, and to understand the University as a contemporary institution requires some reflection on what the appeal to excellence may, or may not, mean’, as Readings (1996: 21), writing in the North American context, suggested. Excellence can be understood in different ways, and with reference to teaching excellence, as Skelton (2005: 10) pointed out, ‘Educational writing and policy documents often appear to assume that we all know what excellent teaching is, and terms like ‘excellent’, ‘good’ and ‘competent’ are often used interchangeably.’ Lack of agreement about the idea of excellence was highlighted in Gunn and Fisk’s (2013) review of the literature, 2007 to 2013, on university teaching excellence. They noted that ‘How excellence is defined, operationalised, and measured in relation to teaching and learning still lacks a clear consensus’ (p. 9). Similarly, prior to this, the CHERI report (Little et al., 2007: 4) had drawn attention to the need at a national level for further clarity about meanings attached to the term ‘excellence’. However, opaqueness may be expedient for some purposes, and as Collini (2017: 43) observed, ‘No determinant meaning can be ascribed to the claim that a university is “committed to excellence”. Every institution presumably thinks that ideally it should be trying to do whatever it does as well as it can. Of course, it is “committed to excellence”: what else could it be committed to?’

Making a similar kind of point, Readings (1996: 23) suggested that ‘Today, all departments of the University can be urged to strive for excellence, since the general applicability of the notion is in direct relation to its emptiness.’ Collini (2012: 109) has pointed to critiques of conceptions of excellence and the ‘no standing still conception’ of ‘excellence’, observing that ‘the “excellent” must become “yet more excellent” on pain of being exposed as complacent or backward-looking or something equally scandalous’. In addition, ‘Excellence, by definition, is a normative conce pt’ (Elton, 1998: 4, cited in Little et al., 2007: 5), while Robson (2017: 114–15) has suggested that lack of clear consensus compounds the difficulties when challenging normative notions of excellence inherent in quality criteria and frameworks. Yet, despite the absence of clarity and agreement, the imperative to evidence excellence has become an all-important one for the higher education sector, and ‘Those involved in teaching increasingly have to monitor performance and provide evidence of excellence to satisfy managers and external stakeholders’ (Skelton, 2007: 1). The ‘discursive migration’ (Clegg, 2007: 92) of the concept of excellence from business to higher education and its implications for higher education discourse are considered by Clegg, who notes (p. 94) that ‘Excellence, therefore, comes to us as a term with a particular genealogy and discursive location. It cannot be understood as a neutral descriptor, rather higher education has become colonized by a language not designed to debate the purposes and functions of higher education.’

Gunn and Fisk’s (2013) reference to the measurement of excellence is a significant and vexed question, echoing the earlier CHERI report (Little et al., 2007: 3) that ‘the current focus on teaching (and to a lesser extent learning) excellence is symptomatic of an ever-present contemporary desire to measure higher education performance by means of systematic criteria and standardised practices’. This point is echoed in Collini’s (2017: 43) argument that a professed ‘commitment to excellence’ signals ‘acceptance of the coercive fiction of competition’ and ‘implicitly, it also signals acceptance of the conventional forms of the measurement of achievement’. Discussing why excellence requires measurement using metrics, Saunders and Blanco Ramírez (2017) note how through the emphasis on measurement and comparison, the quantification of every educational act and outcome is normalized and that ‘commitments to excellence require ubiquitous and commensurable measurements which work to reduce complex processes to simple quantifiable and comparable metrics’ (399–400). The market logic requires that data is collected and made accessible to students to demonstrate outcomes, facilitating comparison of universities and courses and informing their consumer choices.

‘Teaching excellence’ is in common parlance now in higher education and a manifestation of the influence of a particu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms
• Preface
• 1 Discourses of Teaching Excellence in Higher Education
• 2 Institutions’ Perspectives on Teaching Excellence
• 3 Academics’ Perspectives on Teaching Excellence
• 4 Students’ Perspectives on Teaching Excellence
• 5 Employers’ Perspectives on Teaching Excellence
• 6 Parents’ Perspectives on Teaching Excellence
• 7 Towards an Inclusive Perspective on Teaching Excellence
• Coda: Teaching Excellence in Challenging Times
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Copyright