About
Advancing Teaching is a global initiative designed to improve the support, reward and recognition of teaching and learning at universities across the world. It brings together a range of activities to advance these goals, each of which are driven and supported by a global network of university leaders, change makers and experts in teaching and learning from across the world. These activities include the development of a Framework to inform the design of university academic career pathways, a survey that captures and tracks the culture and status of teaching amongst the academic community and annual meetings that bring together this global network.
Who we are
The Advancing Teaching network brings together pedagogical researchers and university leaders from across the world with a shared goal to improve the reward and recognition of university teaching. The activities are directed by members of the network and led by Dr Ruth Graham. This community comes together for periodic face-to-face meeting to discuss progress, address common challenges and share ideas.
Initiative sponsors
The Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK has been a major project sponsor through funding the development and launch of the Career Framework for University Teaching. Sponsors of other project components – such as reviews of practice, annual meetings and project publications – include the 4TU Centre for Engineering Education, the Dutch Ministry for Education, Culture and Science and the participating universities.
Timeline of the Advancing Teaching initiative
The initiative was seeded in 2014 with the publication of a small-scale survey of UK academics that explored perceptions around the reward and recognition of university teaching. The survey findings were the springboard for the development of the Career Framework for University Teaching, a tool to guide and support the career progression of academics on the basis of their contribution to teaching and learning. Following four years of development and piloting at universities across the world, the Career Framework was published in 2018 and has subsequently been adopted and adapted by over 50 universities worldwide. Annual meetings of this growing network have been held since 2016.
More recent projects have been guided by the activities and priorities of network members and have included the Roadmap for Change and the Teaching Cultures Survey.
Further information about the timeline for the Advancing Teaching initiative is provided below.