Beyond numbers: valuing quality teaching in business education : Volumes 1 and 2

The Beyond numbers: valuing quality teaching in business education project addressed the issue of how to identify, assess, support, recognise and value quality teaching within business faculties in a manner that is educationally meaningful and professionally relevant. The rapidly changing business education environment contains an increasingly diverse student cohort, growing student:staff ratios, university funding models resulting in further cross-subsidisation to other disciplines, and industry pressure to produce ‘work ready’ graduates (Cecez-Kecmanovic et al.,2002). These changes alone would create particular challenges for both an effective student learning experience and a satisfying teaching experience within business faculties. The recent focus, however, on a national research quality assessment framework has contributed to a further deterioration of the career aspirations of many teaching driven business academics, as the potential for recognition of teaching, and scholarship of teaching, appears to be less ‘valued’ than mainstream business discipline research (Freeman et al., 2008). The intention of this project was to take a strategic approach to enhancing the value of teaching in business education by implementing systems and processes that support and value quality teaching in business faculties. An action research methodology was adopted in which participative processes, sharing reflective practice, and an orientation towards learning in action characterised the modusoperandi of the project team.