Determining Teaching Quality

The experiences and capabilities that each individual academic brings to their teaching are diverse and specific. As a result of this idiosyncratic skillset, it is notoriously difficult to establish a fair and equitable teaching quality metric. Many universities rely on one-dimensional metrics such as student evaluations. A perfectly objective method in fact may not exist. Also, teaching quality and teaching qualifications are inextricably linked. A fair measure of teaching quality, which identifies an instructor’s strengths on teaching-related activities and places for improvement, could be used in assessing teaching qualifications for making hiring, tenure, or promotion decisions. We explore how to define teaching quality and offer a general framework for recognizing teaching quality and assessing teaching qualifications. We consider the instructor as a specific example of a service provider, where the student is the recipient or a “co-producer” of learning. We apply service-dominant logic to explore how the instructor and student co-create value. This viewpoint helps define the instructor’s role and what quality teaching means within the context of value co-creation. We present an example of how this framework was implemented: the Danish National Framework for Recognition of Teaching Qualifications. The framework provides criteria that constitute quality teaching and can be used for assessing teaching qualifications.