Study On The British Teaching Excellence Framework

The British government-led assessment of teaching excellence in colleges and universities is a teaching assessment system aimed at balancing teaching and research,improving students' experience and the education quality.The development of the British teaching assessment in colleges and universities can be divided into five stages: the early university system,binary system,unified system,the QAA system and the teaching excellence assessment.TEF is facilitated by both policy and realistic backgrounds.Policy backgrounds include: the expanding of higher education,the establishment of quality assessment system and the educational reform;realistic backgrounds include: the imbalance of teaching and research,the imperfection of teaching quality assessment,and the decline of quality of talent training in colleges and universities.The standards and metrics of TEF include ten specific criteria involving student engagement,valuing teaching etc.,six core metrics involving teaching on my course,assessment and feedback etc.,and a series of related spilt and supplementary metrics;the specific assessment process include the purpose,panel,scoring,decision-making.This study takes University of Exeter as an example,and concludes that TEF has helped universities like Exeter achieved their commitment of achieving high quality teaching.The policy-making of TEF is gradual,the assessment process is democratic,the contents are student-centered,and the reward mechanism is market-oriented.No evaluation system is perfect at the very beginning,but requires developing and improving in practice continuously.The TEF is no exception.This study summarizes both the positive and negative impacts and hold a positive view toward the development of it.Combined with the assessment of undergraduate teaching in colleges and universities in China,this study draws lessons from comparison: balancing teaching and research,paying attention to the social benefits of higher education,optimizing the database of teaching quality assessment,promoting the diversity of assessment panels,and improving the assessment feedback mechanism.