The 'Enhancing teaching quality to support student learning and success in Australian higher education: Eight options for reform' report by Sophie Arkoudis, Chi Baik, Wendy Larcombe, Gwilym Croucher, Raoul Mulder and Chris Ziguras
presents the findings from research and analysis conducted by the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), with input from representatives of the Department of Education (DoE), over a six-week period from August-October 2023. The aim of the commissioned research was to identify and evaluate options to enhance teaching quality in Australian higher education. The findings and policy options identified in the Australian Universities Accord (AUA) Panel’s Interim Report formed the basis for the research and analysis provided by the CSHE. In particular, the Interim report signalled that the Panel was keen to identify ways to encourage the sector to pursue systemic excellence in learning and teaching. The report further highlighted that learning and teaching for both domestic and international students is sometimes falling short of students’ expectations.
The focus of this project was therefore on identifying sector-level reforms to strengthen the quality of teaching.
The research questions addressed by the project were:
1. How should best practice in learning and teaching be identified and promoted across Australia’s expanding HE system?
2. How can we ensure the higher education teaching workforce is able to deliver for the new system, in both size and capability?
3. How can best practice, innovation and collaboration in teaching and learning be encouraged?
4. How can learning and teaching quality be better measured?
The CSHE conducted an extensive review of the Australian and international literature on mechanisms that aim to promote and monitor effective learning and teaching in higher education was conducted. We worked in partnership with the DoE and in consultation with the Panel to develop options to support enhanced teaching quality in a rapidly changing higher education landscape. We also consulted with leading experts in higher education teaching and learning, digital education and quality measurement. This process of working with the DoE and consulting with the Panel member has culminated in the eight options discussed in this report. We emphasize that these options are presented for consideration and do not represent the recommendations of the CSHE authors to the Panel.
While the report discusses several options, the first two have the potential to facilitate systemic change within the sector. These are the establishment of a National Centre for Higher Education Advancement (Option 1) and a Professional Standards Framework to guide higher education teaching (Option 2). These two options provide a framework for institutional uplift in relation to the peer review of teaching and professional development initiatives (Options 3 and 4). Building on evidence for effective student learning in Australian HE and sharing best practice resources are the focus of Options 5 and 6. The last options (Options 7 and 8) discuss possible new measures of teaching quality for the sector, including an option to explore the development of an Australian Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).
The summary overview of options is
Issue 1: How to coordinate and support initiatives to enhance the quality of teaching and learning across Australia’s expanding HE system
Option 1. Establish a national Centre for Higher Education Advancement
Since the closure of the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) in 2016, Australia has not had a national body coordinating and driving initiatives to improve quality in Higher Education (HE). This puts Australia out of step with international best practice. It also means that government and sector- led initiatives to advance quality teaching and learning in HE lack national coordination, amplification and impact.
Johnson et al.’s (2023) submission in response to the AUA Discussion Paper, and earlier research by James et al. (2015), recommend development of a new national body in Australia – that we provisionally call the National Centre for Higher Education Advancement (NCHEA) – to address emerging challenges to quality in higher education and to build on current sector-wide strengths and opportunities.
The existence of such a body – representing the diversity of HE teaching staff – is a key enabler for implementation of a number of the Options proposed in this work package. The NCHEA could be funded in part by institutional subscriptions/contributions.
Issue 2: Addressing the job security, career advancement and professional esteem issues that inhibit development of teaching excellence and innovation in Australian HE.
Option 2. Adopt a national Professional Standards Framework to guide HE teaching staff. Currently, Australia does not have a national statement of the expected teaching-related knowledge, skills, experience and values of HE teaching staff at progressive levels of expertise and responsibility. This contributes to the under-valuing of teaching knowledge and skills and undermines the status of teaching-focussed roles in HE. International experience indicates that a voluntary Professional Standards Framework (PSF) for HE teaching benefits individual staff by enabling them to demonstrate expected teaching-specific expertise and plan professional development; it also enables HEIs to signal the value they accord to quality teaching and learning. A working group would need to be commissioned to consult and advise on implementation options for development and monitoring of a PSF in Australia. The NCHEA (proposed in Option 1) would be an ideal mechanism to foster engagement with the PSF and monitor its impacts.
Issue 3: Maintaining minimum standards in teaching and learning in an expanding HE system
Option 3. Initiatives to increase the quality and uptake of Peer Review of Teaching.
In Australian HE, student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are the current prevailing measure of teaching quality. This is despite a wealth of evidence demonstrating that SETs are not an appropriate measure of either teaching effectiveness (student learning gains), or teaching competency (teacher knowledge and skills) (see, e.g. Boring, Ottoboni & Stark, 2016; Carpenter & Tauber, 2020; Uttl, White & Gonzalez, 2017).
In place of SETs, Peer Review of Teaching (PRT) should be established as the preferred measure of HE teaching effectiveness and teacher capability in Australian HE. PRT typically involves review of a teacher’s ‘teaching portfolio’ (evidence of understanding and application of effective teaching and learning principles) alongside classroom observations (to evidence effective teaching practices) and, ideally, evidence of students’ learning gains (teaching effectiveness) (see Schweig, 2019).
In Australia, while PRT is widely practised across the compulsory education sector, its adoption in HE policy and practice is unsupported nationally, meaning that its uptake is piecemeal and reliant on institutional policies and champions. Two initiatives are explored to improve the quality and uptake of PRT in Australian HE. They would achieve synergies if delivered in tandem.
Initiative 1. Develop and pilot a scheme for national accreditation of Higher Education Institutions’ PRT programs.
Initiative 2. Commission a national project to synthesise and disseminate research findings on effective, efficient and ethical means of evaluating HE teaching effectiveness and teacher competency.
Issue 4: Enhancing the professional development of HE staff in teaching
Option 4. Initiatives to improve the teaching-related professional development of existing and future HE teaching staff
Induction, initial training, mentoring, supervision and professional development of the teaching- related capabilities of HE staff are currently a matter for institutions – often devolved to faculties or departments and addressed at varying levels of commitment, resourcing and expertise. This means that the quality of professional development and support for teaching staff varies widely within and across institutions.
To achieve the aims of the Accord process and deliver on the government’s ambitions for equitable, inclusive and flexible (online, hybrid) learning across an integrated HE ecosystem, the sector will need to ensure that all current and newly-appointed HE staff have access to high-quality professional development that enables them to establish and continually improve their teaching-related knowledge, skills and competencies.
We outline five potential initiatives to address the professional development needs of the HE workforce.
• Initiative 1. Mandate minimum teaching qualifications for HE teaching staff, with an initial focus on newly-appointed academic staff (taking up ongoing roles).
• Initiative 2. Establish a dedicated program to support PhD ‘teaching fellowship’ positions that offer doctoral candidates training, experience and certification in university teaching alongside their research training.
• Initiative 3. Create a mechanism for certification (quality assurance) of institutional and sector-based professional development programs for HE teaching.
• Initiative 4. Investigate creation of a portable professional development entitlement for sessional staff.
• Initiative 5. Require all HEIs to report to TEQSA on the implementation, uptake and effectiveness of their strategies and programs designed to ensure that all teaching staff have access to relevant, high-quality teaching-related professional development opportunities.
Issue 5: Facilitating dissemination and take-up of best practice in HE teaching and learning
Option 5. Enable identification and uptake of ‘what works’ to improve student learning in Australian HE.
Available research into best practice teaching and learning approaches in Australian HE needs to be updated to take account of the rapid changes currently taking place in HE, including advances in educational technology and generative artificial intelligence, wider participation of students from all walks of life, and changing patterns of student engagement. That new research also needs to be translated into policy and practice via accessible implementation guides and tools that enable strategies to be readily adapted for different institutional contexts and missions. We propose two initiatives that have an uptake strategy hard-wired into the project design to ensure that research findings on evidence-based best practice are actually translated into practice and benefits for students.
Initiative 1. Commission a repository of ‘what works’ evidence for effective student learning in Australian HE, curated by a panel of experts and embedded within teaching networks and communities of practice. A model for the proposed repository and network is the Best Practices Repository initiative of the US-based Healthy Minds Network (https://healthymindsnetwork.org/best-practices-repository/).
Initiative 2. Pilot a ‘Student Success Project’ that: a) analyses available data to identify institutions with better- and poorer- than-expected outcomes for equity-bearing students, b) appoints a Panel of Experts (POE) to explore factors driving student success in the high-performing institutions, and c) enables the POE to mentor leaders and staff from ‘under-performing’ institutions to take-up the learnings from more successful HEIs. Participation in the mentoring program could be monitored by TEQSA, consequent on the HESF (Threshold Standards) requirement that HEIs’ learning and teaching programs ‘create equivalent opportunities for academic success regardless of students’ backgrounds’ (HESF, 2021, 2.2.1). This initiative is based on the work of the US Foundation for Student Success (FSS) Project.
Option 6. Share best practice educational resources through discipline-based learning and teaching repositories, housed in Centres of Excellence for learning and teaching.
We currently lack the infrastructure, protocols, conventions and rewards that are needed to facilitate and encourage sharing and reuse of educational content materials in HE. This results in sector-wide inefficiencies and inconsistency in the quality of students’ educational experiences.
Internationally, sharing of educational resources through digital repositories has become a widespread practice over the past decade, aimed at advancing student learning and promoting global access to higher education. Missing from that landscape of open access resources are quality- assured, research informed and student-centred learning materials designed in and for Australian HE institutions, aligned with AQF standards and course-specific intended learning outcomes, and reflecting Australian social, geographic, environmental and economic contexts.
To meet that need, we endorse Austin’s (2023) proposal to establish collaborative, discipline-specific Centres of Excellence (COEs) for creating and sharing educational resources through purpose-built digital repositories (2023, p. 4). Each COE would have a home institution that hosts the learning repository and acts as a ‘hub’ for cross-institutional collaboration.
In addition, the NCHEA would be tasked with co-ordinating and supporting the COEs and distilling lessons from the early trial phase of the project to inform subsequent roll-out of further COEs.
Issue 6: Improving metrics and data which measure learning and teaching quality
Option 7. Consider an Australian Higher Education Teaching Quality Framework.
Australia does not currently have a national measure of learning and teaching quality in Higher Education (HE), notwithstanding the fact that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are required to report a wealth of data about students to the Department of Education. Is it possible to develop a comprehensive measure of learning and teaching quality in Australian HE using available data? International experience suggests any attempt to develop a national indicator of learning and teaching quality in HEIs needs to carefully consider the intended policy aims, availability of appropriate indicators and the potential for unforeseen consequences.
With that caution in mind, we suggest that an Australian Framework’s aim could be to make transparent to government, students and the public who contribute to the funding of the HE system how and whether those funds are effectively expended in the advancement of student learning and attainment for students from all walks of life. With that purpose in mind, a Learning and Teaching Quality Framework could draw on data about institutional decision-making that reveal the value HEIs place on student learning, and whether HEIs’ learning and teaching programs ‘create equivalent opportunities for academic success regardless of students’ backgrounds’ (HESF, 2021, 2.2.1).
We outline 7 dimensions of such a framework: 1. Institutional investment in learning and teaching programs 2. Diversity of the student cohort 3. Student academic attainment and attainment gaps for equity-bearing students 4. Employment outcomes, fee costs and education value gaps for equity-bearing students [optional] 5. Institutional expenditure on staffing of teaching mission 6. Teaching staff skills, experience and diversity 7. Teaching staff professional development
This Framework would impose a minimal additional administrative burden on HEIs, beyond the routine data collection and reporting they currently do.
Option 8. Consider new metrics for measuring learning and teaching quality in Australian HE Are there new measures that could usefully be implemented at a national level to inform and drive quality improvement in HE learning and teaching? This paper considers options for new metrics within and beyond the current Student Experience Survey (SES).
New indicators within the SES:
Education research identifies various student-side factors that influence learning and are modifiable by institutions (see, e.g. Yorke, 2016; Zimmerman & Kitsantis 2007; Pintrich 2004; Pintrich et al. 1993; Kuh, 2009). Among those, the three that we would identify for potential inclusion in the SES are: • Commitment to learning (Learning behaviours self-assessment) – e.g. How often did you skip classes this semester? • Confidence as a learner (academic self-efficacy) – e.g. rates of agreement with statements such as: I believe I am a capable student. • Learning and teaching climate (perceived climate) – e.g. rates of agreement with statements such as: My institution … cares about students and their learning.
New indicators beyond the SES:
Initiative 1. A Survey of HE Teaching Staff.
Other industries’ efforts to drive quality improvement at a system level commonly include staff surveys – e.g. Your Voice in Health – WA Health https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Reports-and- publications/Your-Voice-in-Health-survey. The fact that the voice of teaching staff is currently absent from measures of educational quality in Australian HE is a sign of the endemic under-valuing of the knowledge, skills and expertise of teaching staff. To address that gap, we propose development of a national survey of HE teaching staff (sessional and continuing) asking them to reflect on factors impacting teaching and learning in their unit/course – including the quality of: • Learning environments, curriculum and teaching resources; • Teacher induction, skills development and mentoring programs and opportunities; • The support they receive from colleagues and supervisors; • Students’ preparedness and engagement, and their academic and wellbeing needs; and • The climate for learning and teaching at their institution – including the extent to which teaching staff feel valued, recognised and rewarded.
Such a survey would assist the sector to identify the extent to which teaching staff feel equipped, supported, rewarded, trusted, and able to work flexibly alongside experienced colleagues. That is, it would identify opportunities to improve the working conditions of staff, which inform the learning conditions of students.
Initiative 2. Expert peer evaluations of educational quality.
A second initiative to improve program and teaching quality is to make expert, external evaluations of learning programs and institutional learning strategies (expert benchmarking) more widely available. While external benchmarking of student attainment and course quality is often practised within disciplines to assure and enhance quality, it is possible to conduct elements of an external quality review at the institutional level with a ‘lighter touch’, as is current practice in Scotland (see the Productivity Commission Inquiry Report, 2023, p.110). External peer review of institutional teaching policies and programming would need to be undertaken by appropriately qualified, skilled and knowledgeable HE educators. Such a group could be recruited, trained and certified by the new National Centre for HE Advancement (Option 1)
