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This chapter attempts to capture what teaching excellence looks and feels like for students. Our research reports on research conducted by two student authors at separate institutions. It suggests that the most crucial aspect of the student experience of ‘teaching excellence’ is a teacher's ability to build rapport and create meaningful interpersonal relationships with their students. Leanne Hunt's research was conducted with her fellow students at the University of Bradford. She outlines how, for her participants, the student–teacher rapport informed a positive learning experience which translated into a mutual understanding of excellent teaching. Widening participation, college-based HE student Hollie Shaw, now at Sheffield Hallam University, defines teaching excellence as flexible enough to respond to student learning needs, but strong enough to inspire interest in the discipline. In this chapter, we consider their separate testimonies carefully: we argue that exploring unconscious bias furthers understanding of how differences between student and teacher may compromise interpersonal relations and so student recognition of a tutor's positive and crucial role in the student experience and the implications of how one might measure this given the emphasis on proxies for teaching excellence in the TEF. We suggest breaking down unconscious bias calls for embracing differences, reflection and recognising the complexities of contemporary staff and student university lives. This chapter's exploration of staff–student partnership opens up potential for the creation of more equitable and honest learning dynamics in higher education – where a nuanced understanding of ‘teaching excellence’ can be defined, understood and evidenced within a HEI, with external bodies such as the Office for Students, and included in the Teaching Excellence Framework.

For more than a decade there have been calls to change professional development and teacher education. A central task and challenge for teacher educators is to design learning experiences that offer the greatest potential for improving teacher practice. Recently, videos of classrooms have emerged as tools for teacher learning. This chapter will consider the issues we faced attempting to create a coherent, sequenced professional development curriculum using video to help teachers improve mathematics teaching and learning. We will share some of the principles that guided the work, what we’ve been learning and indicate where we feel more research is needed.

This chapter starts by interrogating the notion of teaching excellence. It then moves on to discussing some of the data sources currently used in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to monitor and measure the quality of teaching. What do these sources actually reveal about teaching excellence and how might we make better use of them? From large-scale national censuses like the National Student Survey (NSS) to institutional data sets such as teaching observations, the contribution that each source makes to our understanding of the quality of HE teaching is underexplored and contested. It is argued that there is a need for more transparent debate across HEIs and the sector as a whole about the benefits and limitations of such data as well as greater acknowledgement of the role of collaboration over competition. The chapter concludes that teaching excellence is a marketised misconception of the complex reality of the reciprocal relationship between teaching and learning. Contrary to policy rhetoric and far from encouraging an environment of collegial improvement, it introduces an unhelpful ethos of contrived competition into what is essentially an interdependent relationship underpinned by collective collaboration. It is by focusing attention on the latter where the real gains and insights are likely to be made.

This chapter explores the notion of teacher identity and how teacher education might help to create a strong and clear vision for what it means to be a professional teacher. Within the organizational features and structures of teacher education, the pedagogy that students of teaching experience is crucial in shaping their understanding of their sense of identity. Teacher education needs to acknowledge and respond to the needs, issues, and concerns students of teaching have and create expectations that push beyond the personal and strive for the professional. This chapter suggests that in recognizing the importance of pedagogical reasoning and understanding learning about teaching through an inquiry stance, that students of teaching might begin to not only recognize the importance of knowledge of practice but also begin to see how to create knowledge from practice. A vision for their professional identity is then borne of a need to see value in “noticing” through practice in order to become more informed about teaching and learning. In doing so, the importance of pedagogy as a relationship between teaching and learning and the teacher’s role in mediating that relationship can support the development of an identity as a professional teacher.

Narrative assessment is a strengths-based approach that stories children’s learning and makes visible teaching and relationships that are critical to quality education. This case study explores narrative assessment in the learning area of literacy in a New Zealand primary school. Listening to a child’s voice means, he can be an active participant in his learning and engage in the rich curricular opportunities alongside his peers. As his capabilities and communicative skills are made visible, meaningful relationships develop within the classroom community. In this case study, narrative assessment supports authentic belonging in a culture where care and respect are valued.

In Spain, despite the increase of initiatives that promote the institutionalization of the Service-Learning (SL) methodology in the university sphere, the development of SL has been slow. The academic literature has noted this normative support, and in recent years there has been a proliferation of publications collecting research results, teaching innovation projects, and theoretical reflections on the benefits of SL. However, a current situation analysis of SL in Spain is still to be performed. Hence, this chapter aims to provide an overview of the current situation of SL in Spanish universities. A qualitative systematic review of the Spanish literature on SL in higher education is carried out by searching for original articles in English and Spanish in several databases. The principles established by PRISMA declaration for systematic reviews were followed.

The study reveals an increasing trend in the number of publications on the subject, although with significant differences between territories. Likewise, most of the studies used descriptive methods. In relation to the categories analyzed, the interest of the literature in the benefits obtained by university students through their participation in the experiences stands out, compared to the benefits obtained by the target group, the university–community relationship or the promotion of university social responsibility. The 50% articles included in the review refer to the effect of SL on the curriculum through teaching practices. Others evaluate the impact of the service, analyze dissemination actions of the experiences carried out, the future challenges for research on SL in Spanish universities, and the obstacles in the implementation of the experience.

A growing body of evidence confirms that good teaching is the most important school-specific factor impacting student achievement and growth. Concerns over teachers’ effectiveness have led to escalating demands for reliable systems that measure teachers’ effectiveness. Such performance systems require a stable and explicit definition of knowledge, skills, actions, and dispositions that comprise the work of teaching. In this chapter, we refer to these as teacher “core competencies” (CCs). Well-defined core competency constructs can anchor investigations of teacher effectiveness for purposes in many different settings, but the field currently lacks a set of common stable descriptors. The descriptors encoded in current standards and assessments are plagued by confusion arising from multiple ideological perspectives, conflicting political views on teacher preparation, and disconnects between stakeholders (e.g., university versus alternative preparation routes).

This chapter presents a study designed to move from descriptive, “input-based” ways to describe teaching to the development and early testing of specific construct descriptors. We begin by distilling many disparate sources of authority regarding what teachers should know and be able to do and assess the validity and usefulness of the resulting descriptors across several measurement applications. We find evidence of stability across multiple populations and different settings and evidence that the constructs can describe preparation program emphases, as well as evidence that some program-level aggregate scores correlate with student assessment scores. We also investigate the stability of competency constructs in different settings, attempting to understand the implications of k-12 school contexts for interpreting core competency measurements of preparation programs.

This chapter analyzes one teacher educator’s development of a pedagogy of reflection over a period of 25 years. My personal interpretation of the meaning of reflective practice leads to seven principles of a pedagogy of reflection that focus on relationship, listening, metacognition, modeling, and learning from experience. Justification of my pedagogy of reflection includes an account of books that influenced my development as a teacher educator and the insights gained from living and teaching in a different culture. Excerpts from and discussion of the work of two preservice teachers illustrate my pedagogy of reflection and emphasize the importance of replying supportively to each individual who shows awareness of the unique learning process involved in becoming a teacher. The research methodology of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices supported the development of my pedagogy of reflection and helped me to overcome the conditions that can constrain that development.

Leading edge practice in university teaching uses the affordances of technology to engage students in development of essential literacies for 21st-century learning. Learning designs are aligned with core principles of learning psychology, both general and specific to the discipline. Technology offers unique opportunities for every learner to acquire key literacies along with discipline knowledge and without increasing faculty workloads. This chapter presents a literature review tracking development of learning theories and design principles, and then describes their application in three blended learning cases from the author's institution.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) in Australia shape the country's economic, social, and political landscape and equip students with the skills they need to succeed in ever-changing work environments. Embedded within Australian HEIs are sets of values that reflect and reinforce collective Australian values, which describe the shared beliefs of the leadership, academic staff, students, and the local community. These shared values then direct all members of the university community. Using a top-tier university in Melbourne, Australia, as a case study, this chapter explores how the values of accessibility, inclusion, and collaboration are embedded into the curriculum, teaching, and assessment practices. Relationship-building and positive student interaction within learning contexts are also crucial to learning contexts in higher education (HE) and are essentially driven by values in HE. Furthermore, values identified in this chapter align with broader Australian values relating to fairness, equity, cooperation, and support. Utilizing the experience and reflection of four contributing academics in HE, this chapter offers ideas and strategies on how these values can be fundamentally rooted within learning and teaching programs, thereby increasing student engagement, interaction, and success. This chapter acknowledges that the needs of contemporary education have changed, as the HE sector now accommodates students from all walks of life. Additionally, a fundamental premise of the discourse is that learner diversity can be accommodated more effectively if it is spurred by values that respect and appreciate learner diversity.