Study Of Teaching Excellence In Higher Education Of Britain

As the global competition, market and managerialism have exerted graterinlfuence to the higher education in UK than before，the teaching of higher educationin UK has to face with a series of problems and challenges: Reduction in resources ofteaching, diversiifcation of students, decline in the quality of teaching, imbalance ofteaching and research, and so on. On the other side，after people had realized thatteaching should be a kind of specialized activity, and it should be in the equal status asresearch, all kinds of measures that enhance teaching in higher education have comeout.The government of UK has realized that, in the global competition, highereducation has a great meaning to the economy. Teaching excellence in highereducation become a commonly used term that familiared with university teachers andscholars in higher education. And it also becomes a regular teaching practice andresearch activity. Teaching excellence in higher education is a teaching philosophy.When it explicits in teachers’ teaching behaviors, teaching excellence in highereducation is a series of excellent teaching practices, the excellence embodies in theprocess of teaching. For example, the good relationship between teachers and students,the enthusiasm and effectiveness of feedbacks between teachers and students, theapplication of modern teaching methods, Ect.. UK has its own achievements andsystems about study and promoting measures to teaching excellence in highereducation.This paper is a study of the concept and promoting measures of teachingexcellence in higher education. It consists of ifve parts, the basic content is as follows:Introduction inetrprets the reasons, significances, purposes, methods andconcepts of teaching excellence in higher education.The ifrst chapter is about the backgrounds of beginning and developing ofteaching excellence in higher education. And the fo’ur ‘ideal type understandings ofteaching excellence in higher education is: traditional, performative, psychologizedand critical.The second chapter interprets the connotation of teaching excellence in highereducation in four respects: generation, nature, propose and quantization and control.The third chapter is about the promoting measures to teaching excellence inhigher education in UK. These measures can be divided in two respects and three levels. Two respects mean that teaching excellence awards and teaching excellencecentres that UK sets up. And two of the three levels refer to the national level and theuniversity level on which UK sets up its teaching excellence awards and centres, andthe third is the teachers’ level which teachers react to the promoting measures.In this chapter, on national level, we take the74Centres for Excellence inTeaching and Learning which are set up by the Higher Education Funding Council forEngland’s in2005as a whole example, and the National Teaching Fellowship Schemewhich is set up by The Higher Education Academy in2000is another example. Onthe university level, we choose the University of Warwick as a case study, and mainlytalk about its Reinvention Centre which is one of the74centres, the relationshipbetween the centre and teaching excellence in higher education at Warwick, and itsinlfuences to teachers, students and teaching at the university. On the teachers’ level,it is hard to choose a typical teacher to analysis as different teachers act differently tothe measures, so here we simply analysis the reasons which affect the teachers’participation in the teaching excellence in higher education.In fourth chapter, we summarize the peculiarities of teaching excellence inhigher education. Though there are lots of arguments not only on the theoretical sidebut also the practical side of teaching excellence in higher education, based on thediscusses and analysis of this paper, there are ifve peculiarities that we can have:uncertainty and diversity, cooperative and competitive, reflective, the commondevelopment of teaching and learning, and the future orientation. At the ifnal of thepaper, we think teaching excellence in higher education in a critical way, attend tounderstand why there are so many arguments about it, and think about its meaningsand values in its future development.