Teacher recognition: Avoiding reductionist temptations and developing an ecosystem approach
Professor David Sadler, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic, University of Notre Dame Australia
What is needed now is the articulation of an Australian learning and teaching ecosystem that addresses the recognition and celebration of excellent teaching, the sharing of good practice across institutions and disciplines, and the advocacy of university teaching professionalism as essential for the development of students’ skills and their contributions to the society and economy of Australia. Note, I am not necessarily calling for a return of the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) – although that would be good. In fact, I argue below that many aspects of this ecosystem exist already.
Why a learning and teaching ecosystem?
Why is such an ecosystem needed now? Well, what we have now is essentially a fragmented approach to teaching recognition, and demoralisation which has worsened in a financially constrained sector where institutional programs and structures that support academics, both to develop their teaching and to build evidence-based cases for promotion and/or local and national programs of recognition, are under threat.
In the margins of the Universities Australia (UA) Conference in February, I learnt of a number of L&T units being closed down. Institutions must make their own choices about how to structure L&T units – central or devolved models for example – or even whether the funding for them would be better spent on other institutional priorities. At the federal level, we have been too indulgent in our nostalgia for the OLT and/or for its earlier precedents. Whilst there was an attempt to ensure some kind of federal structure in the submissions to the Universities Accord, which did result in a recommendation to establish a “Learning and Teaching Council” (Recommendation 30 h. iii.), it has not come back as a priority for government where budgets are tight.
In some ways with the OLT, we did have a functioning ecosystem – awards, grants, fellowships, dissemination of good practice/showcasing, advocacy etc. But, in the years since its demise, we have not seen everything lost; rather, the gap of best practice sharing has been the most damaging. We have mitigated this loss partly through efforts within institutions, in regional collaborations or within groupings of universities, yet a national conversation is missing.
The danger of zero-sum choices
There is a danger of further eroding what we do still have if zero-sum thinking colours our choices of what, where and how to (or not) funnel limited funding. This can only damage our fragile ecosystem and further threaten morale. The demands on our academics increase as they respond to the need to integrate technology, respond to AI and also shift to pedagogies better suited for the widening participation agenda, all of which require dedicated support and tailored professional development. There remains the issue of the valuation of teaching relative to other activities such as research.
So, we should consider the full ecosystem of national programs to identify where each addresses critical needs and where there are gaps. Of course, we have the UA Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) and, more recently, UA’s Shaping Australia Awards ‘Future Builder Award’. But we also have, for example, the CAULLT awards, HERDSA fellowships, HERDSA grants, ACSES equity grants and fellowships, ASCILITE awards, ACODE TEL awards, and grants and fellowships offered by various Deans Councils (e.g., the Australian Council of Deans of Science grants and fellowships) and universities (such as the Curtin Academy). With over 39 Australasian members of AdvanceHE, we also have the largest contingent of staff recognised against the Professional Standards Framework (PSF) outside of the UK. Also at the national level, in 2019 Universities Australia (UA) developed an inclusive Statement of Principles for Professional Development and Recognition Of Educators.
Over the last five or so years, we have had to deal with the funding fragility of the AAUT, but we must acknowledge the guardianship of UA and the commitment of its member universities. We have an army of willing assessors and a committed administrative team who support a powerful AAUT Network and national assessment panels. Through the UA DVCA network, we have identified the Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning as the key entry point for the national scheme, as well as the need, in accord with the CAULLT awards, to build more sharing of good practice from the nominations and winners of the various programs. As a sector, we must be worried by recent declines in the quantity and quality of AAUT applications – as symbolised by there being no 2024 recipients of the University Teacher of the Year or the Teaching Excellence Neville Bonner Award. There is not a decline in quality teaching but perhaps there is a sense of the decreased value of national award schemes. For example, the AAUT Awards are less profiled than the UA Shaping Australia Awards.
Complementary national programs serving different ecosystemic purposes
But, while I lament the lower profile of the AAUT, I also recognise that Shaping Australia serves a quite different purpose. Similarly, AdvanceHE membership might be said to offer many things – such as support for the development of women leaders (Athena Swan and Aurora, complementing the Australian Women ATTaining Leadership (WATTLE) program) or executive development (Top Management Program, complementing ACODE’s Learning Technologies Leadership Institute) – but it is through the PSF, at multiple levels of recognition, that a further piece of the ecosystem falls into place. Whilst the PSF is an individual-level recognition, in my experience across three Australian universities, it helps build communities of practice (CoPs) that provide peer support to aspiring fellows and genuine cross-institutional conversations on key issues in teaching such as assessment and artificial intelligence (AI). In this sense, PSF Fellows are potentially integral to the connectivity between the academy and university executives in informing and setting a shared strategic direction for L&T and the student experience. There is work still to do on stimulating cross-institutional networks (i.e., of Principal Fellows for an advocacy role), but the existing Practitioners Network provides a useful forum for sharing practice in respect of the accreditation of fellowship programs.
Given the funding constraints, it is doubly important that this notion of a national ecosystem, and where it may be enhanced, at relatively low cost, gains a wider traction. Whether it be nostalgia for things perceived as lost, resentment at the treatment of peer-led teaching awards compared to other community and/or research awards, or the drop in participation in teaching award programs, we face an issue of morale. As leaders for the sector, we cannot succumb to this and must seek to provide a sense of positivity by championing what we do have in terms of the ecosystem and being brave to address areas where it should be improved.
Professor David Sadler NTF, PFHEA
Chair AAUT Program Awards; Australasian Strategic Advisory Board AdvanceHE
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic, University of Notre Dame Australia