Standards for Australian University Teaching

In looking for material to help teach university tutors, I stumbled across the curious "Australian University Teaching & Criteria & Standards". The first odd thing about this is the title, which uses "and" twice. This Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching funded project set out criteria for those at each university teaching level. The project report proposes seven teaching criteria (Chalmers, Cummings, Elliott, Stoney, Tucker, Wicking, & Jorre de St Jorre, p. 43, 2014). Five of these criteria (1,to 4 and 6) are the same as the five "Areas of Activity" in the UK professional standards framework (HEA, p. 3, 2011). One of the added criteria appears to be from the HEA's Professional Values (V3 "scholarship"). The other, "Professional and personal effectiveness", appears to be an attempt to summarize several of the HEA criteria, but is too general to be useful. It would have been better for the project to simply endorse the HEA's criteria:

"1. Design and planning of learning activities
2. Teaching and supporting student learning
3. Assessment and giving feedback to students on their learning
4. Developing effective learning environments, student support and guidance
5. Integration of scholarship, research and professional activities with teaching and in support of student learning
6. Evaluation of practice and continuing professional development
7. Professional and personal effectiveness"

 Proposed Australian teaching criteria (Chalmers, et. al., p. 43, 2014), with those from HEA (2011) highlighted.

References

Chalmers, D., Cummings, R., Elliott, S., Stoney, S., Tucker, B., Wicking, R., & Jorre de St Jorre, T. (2014). Australian university teaching criteria and standards project. URL http://uniteachingcriteria.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Draft-SP12-2335-Project-Final-Report-21-July-2014.pdf

Higher Education Academy. (2011). The UK professional standards framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education. URL https://documents.advance-he.ac.uk/download/file/7013