Feature highlighted: External peer review
The Pedagogical Merit (or Pedagogical Academy) model is a distinctive system of reward for university teaching that operates in parallel to and independent of university’s academic career pathways. It is designed to reward and empower academics who have had the most profound and sustained impact on the quality and culture of university teaching at their institution, regardless of their seniority or academic profile.
The model offers rewards both to the merited academic and their department/program:
1.
at the individual level, the merited academic – who is given the title of Excellent Teaching Practitioner or similar – typically receives a permanent salary increase equivalent to a promotion grade. Some institutions support two different ‘levels’ of merit, with a larger salary increase given to those that achieve merited status at the higher level.
2.
at the community level, the merited academic’s department or programme benefits from additional support to strengthen university teaching and incentivise collegial cultures and practices. While the focus of this support differs between universities, many come with financial resources. For example, some universities redistribute the proportion of educational funding allocated to departments according to the number of merited academics they employ; others offer dedicated funding for merited teachers to advance an educational innovation project. What links all activities, however, is their focus on advancing community-wide collegial cultures and practices in university teaching.
Candidates apply for merited status via a reflective teaching portfolio that is assessed through external peer review. The assessment criteria typically call upon candidates to exhibit: (i) a scholarly educational approach that demonstrates clear development over time and focuses on the student learning process; and (ii) an inclusive approach to educational leadership that advances collegial educational cultures and practices across their department and/or programme.
While adoption of the Pedagogical Merit model to date has been largely confined to the Nordic region (as outlined in Section 11.2 of the Global Mapping report) interviewee feedback made clear that the ideas and practices underpinning this approach have had a much wider global influence. Interviewees repeatedly spoke about how explorations of the Pedagogical Merit model had precipitated far-reaching conversations about how collective cultures in university teaching could be encouraged and incentivised at their own institution. Several universities were noted as sources of particular inspiration. However, the model most consistently cited was based at Lund University, as outlined in Box 4 of the Global Mapping report. When making these recommendations, interviewees often suggested that they viewed the Pedagogical Merit model as a valuable “stepping stone” towards enabling more deep-rooted changes to institutional reward systems or academic career pathways, as seen at Lund University.