Local needs, global contexts: innovation and excellence in teaching in the modern university

Abstract

Although learning and teaching have always been a central aspect of the shared mission of Australian universities, it is very little of an exaggeration to say that in the last 10 years or so they have been rediscovered. This is not because the universities ever stopped teaching, of course, and teaching of high quality that produces a new generation of well-qualified, thoughtful, and informed citizens continues to be what communities most want and expect from universities. It is undeniable, however, that, in the course of the twentieth century, research emerged as the area of activity within universities of the greatest prestige, perceived status, and personal and institutional financial reward. In a discussion paper prepared for the most recent review of higher education in Australia, the core functions of a university are described in the following terms (Bradley et al. 2008, pp. 1–2): Developing high level knowledge and skills... Generating new knowledge and developing new applications of knowledge... Developing and maintaining a civil and sustainable society... Building the national economy and regional economies within Australia as a major knowledge-based industry in its own right... It is apparent from this strikingly broad agenda that a significant challenge in modern universities is to balance out the contending commitments (none of them in itself unreasonable) that they are asked to make: commitments to local workforce development and to preparing students from a wide range of countries for the shifting and mobile career frameworks that we are told will characterise the future; commitments to readily commercialisable industry-relevant research and to maintaining longstanding traditions in threatened disciplinary specialisations; and commitments to inclusiveness and to providing elite outcomes for graduates. In this context, achieving a balance in the institutional effort and recognition devoted to teaching and research is only one of the constant debates that university managers and academics must have, but it is one that took on some prominence at the level of policy and funding incentives during the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century.