University of Sydney: Accreditation drives culture change and educational excellence
The University of Sydney’s strategic approach to achieving educational excellence is informed by their institutional Academic Excellence Framework (AEF), which is directly informed by the PSF 2023. All the university’s learning and teaching priorities including sustained leadership feature in the PSF.
This case study shares insights from interviews with Professor Adam Bridgeman, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning), at the University of Sydney, who stresses the centrality of the PSF 2023 to the AEF, the use of Fellowships as a key promotion criteria as a means to get '...the status of teaching and educational leadership on a par with research or maybe above research...', and other strategies adopted to achieve educational excellence.
Heads of Schools and Deans are advised to have conversations along the lines of: ‘You are applying for promotion to level E [senior post] and you’ve not got a Fellowship… we’re not going to promote you’. Fellowship is ‘recognised as an expectation and a measure of performance and potential’.
He says there is no doubt that the impact on the student experience has been positive: ‘We have…quantitative data where we can demonstrate the classrooms of the people who are engaged…not only are they better...we can see marked improvements in individuals pre- and post-engagement... This has been fundamentally successful’.
His advice for senior colleagues looking to achieve similar results is:
- Use the ‘multi-dimensional and international benchmarking’ afforded by the PSF to evaluate your institution’s performance in education.
- Develop promotion criteria that act as drivers for academics to align with the educational vision of excellence, innovation and leadership.
- Gather data that demonstrates the impact of staff engagement in accredited provision to the student learning experience.
- Grow active educational networks to enable alumni to collaborate, innovate and contribute to the development of their peers.
Read the full case study and one page summary below.
