Ebook: Pursuing Teaching Excellence in Higher Education: Towards an Inclusive Perspective

Teaching excellence is a topic of international significance, having importance for higher education worldwide, yet is generally considered to be poorly defined and understood. The current discourse of teaching excellence is narrowly framed, instrumental and performative, with an onus on measurement and quantification. Rallying against this narrowness, Wood and Su unpack the notion of excellence in higher education and argue for a rethinking, seeking to connect with ideas of the value of higher education in a democratic society and proposing an approach which promotes the inclusion of understandings from the perspectives of higher education stakeholders. They examine teaching excellence through different lenses by engaging a plurality of stakeholder perspectives, including higher education institutions, academics, students, employers and parents, and highlight the importance of engaging different stakeholders in discussions about teaching excellence in higher education. Whilst creating the conditions for public debate and stakeholder engagement is challenging, the authors argue that it is a vital task, and especially necessary at a time when performativity and measurement hold sway and detract from a focus on the processes of teaching and learning. The authors argue that through engaging with higher education constituencies to examine teaching excellence from different angles and stances that more inclusive understandings can be built.