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Do teaching fellowships actually improve teaching?

If you want to get promoted in UK academia you will probably need to apply for an Advance HE fellowship. But there is widespread scepticism that this extended ¡®box-ticking exercise¡¯ improves pedagogy, says Amanda Goodall, while Martin Rich considers how the programme might be made fit for purpose

June 22, 2023
The Oxford and Cambridge boat race crews re enact the race to illustrate Do teaching fellowships actually improve teaching?
Source: Getty images (edited)

¡®We are academics, for goodness¡¯ sake¡¯

Many UK academics have grown to despise Advance HE's Fellowship scheme. ¡°It?was the only time in?my life I?didn¡¯t understand English,¡± one associate professor in a?top business school told me. ¡°I?put in a?lot of?effort and my teaching has not improved,¡± proclaimed a?senior teaching fellow in?an economics department.

¡°Avoid it for as long as possible¡± was most people¡¯s advice. So I?did. Until I?could avoid it no?more.

Last year, I?went up for full professor. It?was made clear that I?could not progress until I?completed one of the teaching qualifications accredited by Advance?HE. Most academics I?know undertake the simple fellowship, even if they are professors who have been teaching for years, with a view to ¡°getting it out of the way via the simplest route¡±. But given my tangible examples of leadership around teaching and my establishment of an executive master¡¯s in medical leadership for doctors, my mentor (and co-author) suggested I?should complete the senior fellowship. My teaching scores were consistently strong, and I¡¯d introduced innovative teaching techniques on the executive master¡¯s. These were supported by robust performance outcomes that included evidence of participant progression, obtained through interviews with students and their direct line managers.

So I?took a deep breath, wrenched my mind open, and, inspired by my amazing mentor and referees, began my application.

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Unfortunately, it soon became clear that obtaining the fellowship was mainly a box-ticking exercise. ¡°For Senior Fellowship through the CPD route you will need to demonstrate achievement of Descriptor?3 of UK?Professional Standards Framework (2011)¡± and complete the ¡°Senior Fellow Review Grid¡±. Jargon dominated the ¡°descriptors¡±, which barely seemed to differ from each other. A particularly tedious task was ¡°mapping against requirements for Descriptor?3¡± in a matrix of 44?boxes. To complete this, I?had to scan my 8,000?words over 25?pages, then drop the corresponding page numbers into each of the boxes to indicate where the relevant achievement could be found. Ironically, after I?submitted the document, I?realised that I?had inserted the wrong page numbers, and I?was certain that such a big mistake would be picked up by my three assessors. But not one person noticed, despite several review rounds.

I discovered to my joy that I?made full professor in November. But it would not be recognised until completion of the teaching fellowship. As we all know, gaining a promotion is also arduous, as it should be. I?will be paid by my university as a professor for, I?hope, many years. It is a big investment, so we need to meet research, teaching, administration and impact requirements. Our academic CVs are sent around the globe to numerous stellar scholars in institutions often much better than our own. But at least, where possible, the process is transparent. We know who is on the school and the university promotion panels. Referees can be suggested, though they might not be selected.

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On the other hand, obtaining the senior teaching fellowship is utterly opaque. I?did?not know who sat on my panel nor the quality of the university they came from, although at least one person was from my own institution. Like my assessors, I?was supposed to be anonymised. My publications were attributed merely to ¡°The?Applicant¡±, but my name could easily be sourced through Google, and the MSc focus of my application had numerous identifying details, including my face on the brochure of the executive master¡¯s that I?wrote so much about. Wouldn¡¯t it be fairer to remove the pretence of anonymity?

My fellowship application was rejected twice. My expert referees questioned the panel¡¯s decision and, honestly, I?was furious. My scepticism had motivated me to pass my application on to a number of experienced faculty to glance at, and they all came back with positive comments. Worryingly, the anonymous panel could have sent me away for another year ¨C thus denying me my professorship, which I?had been working towards for nearly 15?years, but, thankfully, they agreed to give me a third impromptu assessment, and I?was able to progress.

Bride using skies to travel on a road
Source:?
Getty images (edited)

Had I?been denied the fellowship and my professorship, would I ¨C should?I ¨C have challenged the decision in an employment tribunal? Very possibly. The application process has little credibility in my view, and it is a sentiment shared by most of the numerous academics with whom I?have ever discussed it, many of whom have clear track records of teaching excellence. I?do?not mean to discount the opinions of those who support the process and found it helpful, but I¡¯m afraid you are a tiny few. If you don¡¯t believe me, be brave and survey, anonymously, all academics in your institution.

over many years shows in all kinds of workplaces that we need core-business experts as leaders and managers to advance organisational performance and raise employee job satisfaction and retention. So do we have an outstanding pedagogical researcher or teacher running Advance?HE? No. Indeed, there are . However, 88?per cent of the 130 deputy or pro?vice-chancellors who responded to a survey last year that the fellowship is being forced on faculty who go for promotion.

British higher education is struggling. Job satisfaction among professional and academic staff has been dropping, as bureaucracy and other pressures have been rising. Brexit has undoubtedly harmed our universities. We were once viewed as a destination of choice by overseas faculty, but less so now. The teaching fellowships are definitely not helping us attract talent.

Of course, most of us want to be great teachers. Lectures and seminars are the stages upon which we can educate young minds or, in my case, motivate and train expert leaders. They are where we can translate our own and others¡¯ research into evidence-based teaching and learning. I?would have so appreciated being exposed to our star teachers, who could have offered helpful tips. I?would have really valued a seminar by a pedagogical expert on the flipped classroom, for instance. But the current process does not inspire, and I?doubt that many feel their teaching has been improved.

When I?wrote to Advance?HE to ask what evidence exists that any of the teaching fellowships actually improve the quality of teaching, I?was directed to the body¡¯s , which details ongoing growth in the number of fellowships awarded, reaching 163,000 fellows in 2022, including 14,000 based outside the UK. However, the fact that more universities are burdening their academic staff with this obligation is not evidence that it is doing anything good. If my GP tried to prescribe a drug that hadn¡¯t been through endless randomised controlled trials and then been approved by the regulator, she would be struck off. We are academics, for goodness¡¯ sake. We cannot say anything significant unless it can be evidenced. Yet these teaching fellowships are being tied to our career advancement without any data supporting their supposed outputs.

Louise Richardson came from Harvard to head the universities of St?Andrews and then Oxford. When she left the UK to become president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, there was a sting in her tail. Richardson was extremely critical of the Office for Students, a body also purporting to support learning: ¡°I?cannot point to a single area in which they¡¯ve actually improved the quality of what we do,¡± she said. ¡°They are constantly evaluating us, but nobody¡¯s evaluating the impact of all this regulation. The impact is primarily to waste funds that I¡¯d much rather be spending giving scholarships to students or hiring more teachers.¡±

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Can the same not be said about Advance?HE¡¯s teaching fellowships?

Amanda Goodall is professor of leadership at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, University of London. Her book is published by Basic Books on 24 June.


¡®It should be a community that is attractive to join¡¯

Good intentions lay behind the creation of the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Academy Fellowships. Launched in the early 2000s, the awards were part of a move to professionalise teaching in universities, making it possible for staff with teaching and learning responsibilities to gain formal recognition for their work.

Submissions were designed to be reflective, with applicants encouraged to relate their experience across different dimensions of professional practice: teaching, assessment, promoting widening participation, and so?on. Four different tiers were created, associate fellow to principal fellow, with each mapping on to different levels of leadership and influence within an institution and beyond. Successful applicants would commit to continuing professional development, and many universities, including ours, provided a route for staff to apply through an accredited scheme that we run internally.

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At City, we had managed to build up an active community of learning and teaching scholars: as an education-focused academic, and as a course director and, subsequently, associate dean, I?worked with many committed, creative and student-focused educators. Encouraging these people to apply for a fellowship appeared to offer potential to reflect on their contributions. Gaining a fellowship could even, we hoped, incentivise staff to put extra effort into their teaching.

Unfortunately, our practical experience was tempered with challenges. Many academics perceived it as a purely bureaucratic exercise, a set of forms to be completed in the right way, rather than as a genuine opportunity for reflection. When the fellowships were included as a condition for promotion, applicants saw them purely as a barrier to be overcome and not as an opportunity to build on teaching experience and expertise. Witnessing numerous colleagues who had worked tirelessly on their applications and who had great teaching experience continuously being asked to resubmit, often for what looked like petty or unclear reasons, further dented the scheme¡¯s credibility.

Applicants also complained that the Professional Standards Framework fitted uneasily with what they actually taught within a business school. This often motivated a contrived match between their professional experiences and the framework, which rarely enhanced their practice.

Far from adding to any sense of community and collegiality around teaching, the process actually distracted from much of the great educational work that my colleagues were doing, and did very little to encourage them to share and improve on their best practice.

It seems my colleagues¡¯ reservations about fellowships are widely shared. Two years ago, Hendrik van?der?Sluis¡¯ paper on HEA fellowships used a provocative quote from one academic ¨C ¨C for its title. Advance?HE¡¯s own evaluation of the scheme, , focuses largely on the creation of a cadre of fellows in different institutions rather than any tangible benefits to learning.

So how can we rebuild confidence in the scheme and align it better with our pedagogic efforts as a whole? I¡¯d like to offer a few pointers but also stress that, right now, we are a long way from achieving them. Even though applications, by their nature, are individual, we should be doing more to foster the sharing of ideas, whether they are coming from the pedagogic literature or examples of excellent teaching practice. A set of applicants should become a ¡°community of practice¡±, united by a very particular area of common interest and dedicated to building knowledge about that area. It should be a community that is attractive to join, where faculty clearly see the potential benefits for their own practice, not merely promotion. Then, becoming a fellow will appear worthwhile for its own sake.

A more transparent review process is also needed to avoid the corrosive perception that applications are being evaluated by a shadowy group versed in the obscurities of the . In an institution with its own accreditation scheme, this can be particularly uncomfortable given that applicants are often assessed by their university colleagues, albeit typically in a different school or department.

The dimensions of the framework are important, but so are factors, such as pedagogic innovation and research-informed teaching. Aligning with an institution¡¯s vision, and its teaching and learning strategy, could also be considered in applications.

With a few tweaks and the right commitment from both university leaders and Advance?HE, we could create a scheme that has the possibility of being both effective and popular.

Martin Rich is associate professor in information management and associate dean for the undergraduate programme at Bayes Business School at City, University of London.

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A response from Advance HE

Good teaching and how we support students in their learning are fundamental to students¡¯ experience and success in higher education. So it¡¯s vital that we give this our full ¡°professional¡± attention.

Participation in Advance HE¡¯s accredited programmes for teaching and supporting learning highlights an institution¡¯s work to enhance teaching strategies. Fellowships are a commitment by individuals to reflect on their teaching and supporting learning and to continuously develop these as appropriate to their responsibilities ¨C be it in the lecture theatre, the library, in technical or administrative support or in leading and influencing teaching and learning. We have a sector-led professional standards framework for teaching and supporting learning, recently updated as , which has been endorsed by the many people from around the world who use it. We should celebrate it and make full and proper use of it to deliver the impact students deserve.

The PSF is ¡°by-the-sector, for-the sector¡±. The recent 18-month review, by representatives of a diverse range of higher education contexts, reflected the to ensure the PSF 2023 is fit for the future. I am reassured by the sector¡¯s feedback that the review has weeded out unnecessary burden, which, from time to time, may have frustrated some participants.

Used as intended and designed, the PSF helps us to challenge, shape and enhance our approaches to teaching and supporting learning from both institutional and individual perspectives. Self-reflection and change can be demanding and time-consuming, though, at the same time, the PSF has to be robust and not short-circuited, and certainly not a ¡°box-ticking¡± exercise.

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We have recently shared some of the of fellowship. Few examples illustrate better what can be achieved than our project with Walailak University in Thailand. Since 2018, we¡¯ve worked together through their strategic approach to develop a ¡°culture of teaching¡± aligned to the PSF, ¡°in which staff could work together to share good practice and continuously develop their teaching practice¡±. The university reports that this has led to a 30 per cent increase in student retention and to 93 per cent of teaching staff being rated four out of five or better by their students. Ninety per cent of Walailak University teaching staff have achieved fellowship.

Alison Johns is chief executive of Advance HE.

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Reader's comments (11)

Really nice article that highlights the costs associated with well-intentioned but ultimately meaningless endeavours on the part of accreditation bureaucracies. It also reflects the failure of such endeavours to fully cost the time of academics (particularly in terms of trade-offs) and the value to the academics. First, universities never allocate time to academics adequately and invariably all of this activity impacts on research conduct (so the HEF may actually negatively impact REF/KEF outcomes). In one of my academic roles as a research dean I fought to get HEF activities taken from the teaching allocation. Second, HEF have no global value. Before coming to the UK, I never heard of HEF and thought it was just something that weaker institutions used to make themselves look more legitimate (and UK universities administrators just love accreditations and badges) or something that teaching fellows were required to do in lieu of scholarship. If you have a HEF it not only gets you nothing when wanting to move internationally, it may actually be a negative in the sense that it could erroneously be viewed as a signal that you are focused on teaching over scholarship. Third, as noted, it has almost no relationship to anything related to better classroom performance or pedagogy. When I was a junior scholar, I invested heavily in my teaching capabilities. I took acting classes, voice classes, classes on improvisation, workshops on case teaching and case writing, etc. Interestingly, none of this really would be viewed as an alternative to the box ticking bureaucratic exercise associated with HEF. However, it was really useful for teaching MBAs and executives and doing speaking on the more public circuit. In some sense, HEF is like impact case studies in the REF. Impact case studies are a bureaucratic exercise designed by bureaucrats without any real academic experience that are concerned about bureaucratic documentation. I am constantly involved with the Boards and top management of major corporations (and have been for 30 years). However, nothing I do would count as an impact case study because it does not meet the requirements designed by a bureaucracy that has little experience of the thing they believe they have a right to regulate. There is the old adage that those that can do, do and those that can't do teach. We can add to this that those that can't do and can't teach regulate those that teach.
Hmm. This is completely contrary to my experience with fellowships of the HEA. Unlike you, I started out with the first level about 12 years ago, and found this a hugely interesting and actually enjoyable reflective exercise. Did it make me a better teacher? I don't know, but it certainly made me think about my teaching and furthermore allowed me to really appreciate that I was doing well, something that was important to me. Going through the CPD courses I had done was also helpful, as it showed me that I had been focusing well. For the senior fellowship, which I obtained six years ago, there was a writing workshop/mentoring system in place at my institution. I found it less enjoyable, perhaps largely because of having to be sure to complete all descriptor boxes. But there was no grid to complete then, and when I was a referee for a colleague recently, I did not see one either. The statement does have to refer to them of course, and that is indeed cumbersome. I think it is a type of quality assurance. I have also mentored some younger colleagues to take the first level, and I do think it is helpful. The advice to "avoid it as long as possible" is probably counter-productive. I am also surprised it was rejected - maybe the review panels have completely changed their tack recently? Finally, I did it before applying for promotion, and found it very useful, as I had thought about a lot of things, and listed them, and had the documentation to hand when it came to filling in the promotion forms....
Interesting to see the coincidence of this article with a bit of product placement. If you use the opportunity to reflect on your practice that the Fellowship process provides, it does indeed enable you to take steps to enhance your practice and hopefully provide better learning experiences (both mine and students). Being a skilled and evidence-informed enabler is essential to support students from all backgrounds. It is one of the greatest privileges of working in ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø and a key reason why many of us do Fellowships. It has nothing to do with ticking boxes. I am a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow. I don¡¯t use these as ¡®badges¡¯ of credibility. Their power comes from being within networks, supported by Advance HE, of really talented colleagues whose criticality causes me to question how my own work can be held to ongoing account, which I absolutely welcome in pursuit of achieving better outcomes for all our students.
Advance HE itself is unaccountable and expensive and has managed to insert itself into a major position with its scheme of ever-expanding levels. Scepticism is long overdue.The whole thing began as a bastard child of simplified ed tech at the OU in the 1970s and new managerialism and is now positively Stalinist.
Hmm. I found the main benefit of doing SFHEA was the personal reflection involved in preparing my submission... and the main drawback was having it sent back with the instruction to "Brag more". It has perhaps helped career-wise, moving from professional support (an e-learning specialist) to becoming a Teaching Fellow, but it hasn't made any difference to my teaching. I documented stuff I was doing and just carried on doing it.
I'm not sure I see the value in it. Yes it can be useful as a reflective exercise, but it's also one that's mandated in so many places that the reflection becomes secondary to the box ticking; the reflection becomes forced and so appeals to a different audience. Then there's the requirement for promotion, but with no purpose to the level. If one level is better than another in terms pedagogy and leadership in teaching then why do you see people promoted to leadership positions with remits focused on learning and teaching with associate fellow only? What exactly was that entry level badge evidencing? Then finally there are the levels one can acquire once one is no longer actually teaching and is now at an executive or otherwise strategic position by using examples of teaching related successes and reflections that come not from direct student facing teaching, but from the student related institutional impacts they have had. Is having established an international partnership or franchise of a course in your university really relevant to a teaching fellowship qualification? Particularly if that's your actual job now (maybe you're faculty director of international partnerships or something). I just don't know. Certainly I have no issue with a formal qualification. Having a PhD does not automatically make one a great teacher. But the AdvanceHE way of doing things is both a drain on your will, and an inconsistent use of evidence of anything to help in career progression. Certainly when you have an SFHEA and someone secured an executive position in learning and teaching with only an FHEA it hardly gives you reason to try to attain PFHEA now does it? They clearly aren't pre-reqs for anything.
I have only done the first level of this process and I hated it. I intensely resented having to devote so many hours to it when I was very busy finishing my PhD thesis, and also teaching pre-honours and honours courses because I had a lecturer post (temporary, replacing a colleague on research leave). I gained absolutely nothing from doing it - it was a complete waste of time. The worst part was the weekly two-hour lectures. The people delivering them clearly did not have enough material for two hours - they didn't have enough material for fifteen minutes. This meant that, although they were only one hundred and twenty minutes in reality, each one felt like a geological age of the Earth. Thank goodness we were doing it on Zoom so at the very least I could turn off my camera and walk around the room while listening.
Having long held a series of fixed term posts thought I'd better apply for an AFHEA this year and found the process ok, probably as less onerous as the other fellowships. It is useful insofar as prompted some reflection on teaching and gathering evidence (useful when applying for jobs and interviews to respond to questions about teaching philosophy etc). But it did seem a bit like a self-certification process in my case and not sure it will be much use going forward. I completely take the point about the jargon used - really found this difficult to master and off putting to be frank. The scheme is popular because mandated by universities as part of probation process or requirement for promotion, if it was voluntary it would likely have few takers in its current form, I suspect.
A lot of the negative points ring true here. It sounds like some people get something out of it - albeit those who seem to most defend the thing are in a pedagogy based roles. But there's a huge issue hanging everyone's internal chances of promotion on a scheme like this. Its defenders say people approach the thing in the wrong way. But it's really tough to convince busy people that a training exercise will be great if they just throw themselves into it. Particularly when that exercise involves thousands of words, weird jargon/labelling, absolutely vague training sessions that have to simultaneously appeal to sociology lecturers, physicists, librarians and many others, a completely opaque assessment process, and applications being failed, ultimately, because they are not self reflecting well enough (whatever that means). There's broader problems here however. Such schemes underpin teaching and learning departments at universities - the budgets for which (in times where frontline teaching/admin are threatened with redundancy on an annual basis) seem questionable. Such departments then in turn generate internal facing paperwork to justify their own existence. AdvanceHE really just sits on top of that mountain of bureaucracy, albeit itself raking in ?15m a year (no doubt through means wider than the HEA fellowship). Equally, the HEA fellowship essentially amounts to an exercise in self reflection, which then is used to in part underpin an internal promotion bid document (itself maybe 3,000 words) which again involves an opaquely judged exercise in self reflection. This is a really weird way to judge career progress. Surely the best practice element of HEA fellowships could be best achieved through internal annual review, internal teaching reviews, NSS/module evaluation forms, subject specific best practice and probably a whole host of other more tangible forms. If people want to "create a space" to discuss their teaching, email a colleague and go grab a coffee. Don't make thousands of people go through this stuff. It evidently breeds a large degree of resentment.
I find the whole HEA fellowship scheme, as well as it's utilization in my institution in particular incredibly disappointing. Three simple reasons: Judgement as to the quality of your teaching is based on little more than reflection and rhetoric - no actual "evidence" present. This means people can obtain one by waffling on for thousands of words provided they use the right descriptors. It is supposed to be an necessity for promotion along at least a teaching and learning pathway. But in my experience is its largely ignored or seen as an optional extra. I know of numerous individuals who have been promoted to more senior teaching related posts in management who have a significantly lower fellowship standing than myself. Therefore I see no point in subjecting myself to another time wasting exercise in order to move up to the next level of principal fellow as clearly it means nothing in terms of career progression. The number of people in management or senior leadership positions who are able to obtain principal fellowships on the basis of reflections and case studies that are rooted in their literal leadership jobs and not in their actual teaching and learning from way back when they actually did teaching and learning is deplorable. If you are in a management or senior leadership position you should not be eligible to apply for a qualification in teaching and learning if you no longer teach. It makes a mockery of the efforts of those of us who do not have documented management roles to draw on as evidence of "leading" in something by virtue of just being in charge of it on the basis of our jobs.
I'm usually the first to denounce the proliferation of pointless box-ticking exercises in academia, but the Artist Formerly Known as the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Academy strikes me as one of the more harmless ones. Unlike the never-ending REF, TEF, NSS, annual performance review, etc, it's a one-off: once you've got your Fellowship you need never engage with the process again. I found it surprisingly easy - yes the mapping grid was complete gobbledegook, but the written part was straightforward: if you've been teaching for a long time you will probably have reflected on your teaching in an organic way anyway, so you can just write about that, drawing where necessary from previous occasions you have reflected on it. In fact I got my Fellowship despite using almost none of the 'correct' teaching-and-learning-speak jargon, and the assessors at my institution seemed to find that quite refreshing. I was also interested to read in the article that some people use Fellowship in applications for promotion to Professor. At some teaching-led universities it's a requirement for all academic staff regardless of level: I did the Fellowship application via the quick route for experienced teachers because after I'd been teaching for about 18 years it became a requirement where I work. In fact I referred in my Fellowship application to the fact that I'd never applied for promotion, because I still enjoy being at the coal face of teaching, as evidence of how committed I am to teaching. I can't see any convincing principled objection to people who spend most of their time teaching having a qualification in, well, teaching.

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