The challenges of TEF

Rosemary Deem Vice Principal (Education), Dean of the

Doctoral School, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College

R.Deem@rhul.ac.uk

Prize for the most exciting cover design?

What do we know about TEF?

• It’s going to happen; White Paper & consultation expected in May (but legislation

may be delayed by June 23rd vote to leave EU)

• Likely to be several levels; i) successful QAA audit; ii) first employment/further

study destinations, student completion data, NSS; iii) who knows

• It will be metrics & paper-based with a self-assessment element

• It won’t reward either excellent teaching or excellent teachers (see earlier 2015

HEFCE/HEA debate based on Land & Gordon 2015, Deem 2015, Tsui 2015)

Do you know who this is?

Then you know why we have TEF

Why are we getting TEF?

• Because of high HEU tuition fees (never raised in 3.5 decades of high OS fees)

• To counterbalance RAE/REF (only started 30 years ago …)?

• To ‘drive up’ standards (unlikely as so little money involved)?

• Because most academics are considered to be poor teachers?

• Improving university teaching a global concern now (eg European Commission 2013)

• Changes to academic work occuring – specialisation, collaboration, casualisation (Courtois and O’Keefe 2015, Nyhagen and Baschung 2013, Musselin 2009, 2012 ).

What are the challenges of TEF?

• Finding valid metrics (Wilsdon Report 2015 – use metrics responsibly & not as only source of evidence)

• Meaningful teaching metrics & data difficult to find & affected by gender, ethnicity (Subtirelu 2015, McNell 2014)

• Making it work in a diverse sector & not damaging the reputation of UK HE

• Excellence initiatives are fashionable (Pruvot & Esterman 2014) but rarely properly evaluated themselves

• Finding TEF assessors who are credible in research-intensive universities

• Selling it to students who are cross about prospect of still higher fees

TEF and REF compared

• TEF costs depend on the methodology used and numbers of panels/panellists –

cheaper than REF, no impact case studies or reading outputs

• Selectivity in TEF not an issue so far, unlike REF, though some HEIs may decline

to enter

• TEF not yet about individuals

• Minimal financial rewards for TEF compared with REF

• TEF lower status, though like REF may be copied by other countries

Possible TEF institutional

infrastructure/cultural changes

• TEF coaches, mentors and officers appointed

• External ’mock’ TEF assessors brought in

• Internal TEF committees and panels set up

• Changes to promotion criteria on teaching

• TEF performance management

• More emphasis on CPD for teaching

• Encourages student as consumer emphasis (Naidoo et al 2011)

Why researchers should care about TEF

• Teaching brings in more money than research in most universities

• It will affect institutional priorities

• It will have cultural and infrastructural effects

• It will marginally affect funding

• It may reshape the whole sector

What might be the institutional consequences

of TEF for Business and Management

Schools? • Taking teaching more seriously, not just seeing it as a cash-cow?

• Re-examining the relationship between teaching & research to see how it could be implemented beyond research-led teaching ((see Smith et al 2015)

• Rethinking what some academic staff do? Should everyone do research?

• Reconsidering the roles & responsibilities of some support staff?

• Rethinking by whom and how teaching is led (Gibbs 2009)?

• Valuing those who are excellent teachers in the same way as excellent researchers are valued?

More ‘gaming’ ahead; come back Bourdieu, all is forgiven

• TEF will lead to the ‘gaming’ of metrics as RAE/REF did (Lucas 2006,

Bourdieu 1988)

• Consultants will coach institutions

• Teaching will become understood as what

• can be measured

Some possible scenarios in Management and

Business Studies

• (Re)Discovery of pedagogic research? (but most journals taking such

research downrated by ABS list?)

• Readjusting the balance between research and teaching?

• Having more teaching-focused academics?

• More professional service staff in the field of teaching support?

• Looking at how research time is funded (QR? Grants?) vis a vis teaching

funding (fees)

TEF measures:

Writing lines would be a useful

metric

Some questions to ponder

• What effects do you think TEF will have on your present School/Department?

• Do you consider that TEF might affect your career trajectory; if so how?

• How would you seek to increase the value attached to teaching in M&B Schools?

• To what extent could research/teaching links be strengthened in your current

workplace?

• What are the pros and cons of TEF from your perspective?

• How do you think M&B School students will regard TEF?