Question put at Vice-Chancellor’s
Question Time,
http://streaming.oii.ox.ac.uk:554/ramgen/archive/adm/vc23022006/livestream.rm starting at
20’00’’ minutes from the beginning and lasting 8 minutes.
SVH There is a startling contrast between
the current extremely vigorous transfer market in outstanding academics who are
research stars, and the complete absence at any time of any market, nationally or
internationally, for those who are teaching stars. Do you accept that this is one of many
convincing pieces of evidence that excellent teaching is inadequately
recognised, and if you do, what are you doing to alter both Hefce
funding mechanisms and Oxford's own policies so as to put some bite into the
mainly toothless platitudes about the importance of first-rate teaching in
universities?
Dr Hood (V-C). Well
first of all let me say that I regard high-quality teaching as of fundamental
importance to this university, and I hope to the life of all universities.
Having said that, and having heard the emotion in your question, I think you
are correct that there is no obvious financial incentive built into the funding
streams both public-policy-wise or institution-wise to recognise on a
consistent basis high-quality teaching.
You will be aware of course that quality of teaching is something that
is taken into account here in tenure decisions.
You’ll also perhaps - and
colleagues elsewhere will also be aware - that our departments and divisions
are in their own planning at the moment and in recent times thinking very
carefully about the way in which they think about the quality of teaching and
the way in which they might better reward teaching. So for example the Social Science Division is
looking at this on a departmental basis, the Medical Science Division is
looking at it on a divisional basis and both divisions are looking at
recognising their teaching stars and providing some kind of financial reward for
those teaching stars as a result of the recognition. I personally come from an
institution before I came here where we took very seriously teaching and whereby
annually we had distinguished teaching awards which were presented initially at
a special ceremony and subsequently at graduation ceremonies, and the citations
were read out by students in recognition of the quality of the teaching
received by the stars in their particular period. And there was a very fine memento of that
award as well as some funding to reinvest in pedagogy and so forth. I think it’s also important though, in the
context of this university and I suspect also in others that have a very strong
research orientation, to say that our teaching links intimately with our
research and that we want our students in this institution to be being taught
by those who are not only active at the cutting edge of research but recognised
internationally for the quality of their research and for their ability to
translate that into their teaching programmes.
So I think that’s not necessarily the case in all institutions but it’s
certainly the case in this institution.
To the question of
what am I doing to convince the authorities to put more money into quality
teaching I have to confess that I have not done anything in the 16½ months I’ve
been here to convince Hefce that they should put more
money into this.
There was I understand a considerable debate in this country through the
latter ‘90s and early into this decade about whether or not there should be a
teaching quality funding stream provided by Hefce and
as many will know there were various assessments done of the teaching quality
in universities that rated scores I think out of 24 from memory, but of course
the sector could never come to a consensus as to (a) whether that was a
sensible methodology - and the answer was ”possibly not” - or secondly how a
methodology might be derived to provide some premium funding stream for quality
teaching. Now I am not sure whether it’s
appropriate that I should myself at this stage say I’m prepared to wage a
campaign to reinstate that debate; but I am prepared to continue to
challenge EPSC on the subject of teaching quality which I have done in the 16
months I have been here and which I will continue to do, in the hope that we will
constantly look for ways in which we can better recognise those who are making
that extra effort.
SVH: Well thank you and thank you too for
addressing both parts of the question.
You emphasised particularly the impact on the individual in the first
part of your answer which of course underlies my question but deliberately was not
explicit. I do hope that you will find some way of adding
Dr Hood (V-C). Well I don’t have any evidential basis certainly that I have seen
since I’ve been here that could lead me to answer your question one way or the
other. I have seen a number of surveys
of student experience which would indicate to me that by and large they are
very very satisfied with the quality of teaching that
they are receiving. When I say I haven’t seen any evidential basis I think one
would need to see far more than just student survey data to come to the sort of
conclusion you’re asking of me. So I’m
sorry that I can’t give a more accurate answer to that question. I’d be interested in your own views.
SVH If you want a quick answer to the
question about distortion, the answer quite obviously from the way I phrased
it, is: yes I do believe that is highly distorting of our preferred academic
emphases overall , that we are under an umbrella of a régime
that does distort what we would like to do, and that it ought to be altered.
Dr Hood (V-C). Might I make just one comment about that? It’s an observation I made yesterday. I wonder whether also there’s a possibility
of a conflation of two things here. I do
think that relative to norms that one would see in other leading universities we
are by and large asking of our colleagues that they teach more hours than we
would see in those other institutions so, while this is not an answer to your
specific point, I think it may ultimately - if we can succeed in becoming through
time a wealthier institution - be one of our priorities and that is to lessen
those teaching demands as we are able, so that colleagues feel that they can
contribute more easily to the teaching challenges that they have.
Prepared
by SVH