Three questions to Ruth Graham

I recently got in touch with one of my role models in inspiring change: Ruth Graham. Ruth Graham has worked as an independent higher education consultant since 2008. Her work is focused on fostering change in higher education and helping to improve university teaching and learning worldwide.

I think we all know Ruth Graham's global Advancing Teaching initiative to improve the reward and recognition of teaching in higher education that is now supporting reform to academic career pathways at over 50 universities worldwide.

We asked Ruth three questions. Below you can read the answers. What a great pleasure it is to hear that so many colleagues from Ruth Graham's large international network are looking to the Netherlands. The developments we work on each and every day are followed all over the world. We don't realise that very often. I think that is a great compliment for all of us!

We’ve heard that you are working on a global mapping study. Could you tell us a little about this project?

‘The mapping study is designed to identify and showcase global best practice in the reward and recognition of university teaching in academics careers. It is guided by an expert advisory group drawn from the co-funding universities.

The past decade has seen a growing momentum for change to the ways that university teaching is rewarded and supported across the sector. Examples of new initiatives include root-and-branch changes to academic career pathways, systems of professional development and ways in which academic impact in teaching and learning is evaluated.

Many of these pioneering developments, however, are happening at institutional level and are therefore often not visible to peers across the global sector. It was in this context that the global mapping study was launched. The study has two aims. The first is to map the scale and ambition of the global movement for change in the recognition and reward of teaching. The second is to identify, explore and showcase the most highly-regarded practices worldwide.

The study is informed by interviews with leaders in the reward, support, and evaluation of university teaching from across the world, conducted between September 2023 and August 2024. The final report will be released in late October 2024 on the Advancing Teaching website (www.advancingteaching.com) as a resource to inspire and inform positive change across the sector.’

What are interesting developments that we should look at more closely in the Netherlands?

‘The study has identified a wealth of innovative and well-regarded practices. Many respond directly to the most acute challenges facing universities as they work to improve how they reward teaching in academic careers.

For example, a challenge that study participants repeatedly spoke about – including many from the Netherlands – was how to offer robust and independent external evaluation of a candidate’s impact on teaching and learning during the academic appointment and/or promotion process. A well-regarded initiative that responds to this challenge is a Swedish programme that trains academics to assess pedagogical competence (as documented in a teaching portfolio). Since its launch in 2010, this programme has established a national resource bank of over 100 academics equipped to offer independent external review of a candidate’s pedagogical competence for academic appointment, promotion, or other merits schemes at peer institutions.’

What kind of feedback do you get from your interviewees about developments in the Netherlands?

‘It is clear from the leaders consulted for the mapping study to date that there is a huge amount of interest in the Recognition & Rewards (R&R) changes underway in The Netherlands. The Netherlands is consistently highlighted as a global exemplar. When describing the R&R programme, interviewees singled out the clarity of its mission and the ways in which this mission has been systemically endorsed and supported across the higher education ecosystem, including by university leaders, professional bodies, and the ministry of education.

Interviewees also spoke about the feasibility of emulating the Dutch R&R programme in their own national and regional context. What many have observed, however, is that there are features of the programme – such as the Dutch collectivist culture and the sustained commitment from university leadership – that may be specific to its national context and therefore difficult to reproduce elsewhere. Nonetheless, components like cross-community consensus-building and targeted communications of the programme goals were recognised as providing models that lent themselves to adoption in other global contexts.’