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at Lingnan College
on 15 May 1999
"Encouraging Quality Teaching in Higher Education"
It seems hardly possible that two years have passed since I was here last to attend the opening of the first T & T Conference in May 1997. But time flies when you are having fun... In the belief that even those who were here the last time will probably have forgotten what I said, and anyway because it bears repreating, I would like again to speak a bit about the UGC's vision and aims in promoting quality teaching and learning in the UGC-funded tertiary institutions in Hong Kong.
First however let me say how delighted I am to see the way the T & T2 Project Team has built on the success and achievements of the first T & T initiative in pursuing this project. I wish all concerned continuing success in this worthwhile endeavour.
One of the more enduring myths about higher education in Hong Kong is that the UGC places more emphasis on research than it does on teaching and is inclined to reward research-intensive institutions more than others. Indeed a recent newspaper article has gone even further and suggested that the UGC wishes to encourage institutions to demote or cut the salaries of academic staff who do not publish a sufficient number of research articles. This is simply rubbish.
Nevertheless, I do not expect to be able to dispel the myth entirely, because like many myths there is some truth in it. The impact of increased public funding for research since the establishment of the Research Grants Council in 1991 and the subsequent focus on research performance and output by the UGC's Research Assessment Exercises in 1993 and 1996 (and later this year), and the linking of the outcomes of these RAEs to part (I stress part) of institutional funding, have inevitably affected the culture of Hong Kong's tertiary institutions. If they had not done so, we would have been wasting our time pursuing these initiatives!
However I would like to stress that the UGC has never attached less importance to the quality of teaching and learning as a result. The UGC has indeed repeatedly stressed that it still regards teaching and hence learning as the primary mission of all the institutions under its aegis. I would remind you what the UGC said in its major report on the development of higher education :
"Good teaching... is what every student in an HEI has a right to expect, and what that student, directly or indirectly, is paying for. Departments which fail to produce good research outputs should be pitied; departments which fail to provide good teaching should be closed." 1
Research and scholarship are undoubtedly valuable companions and contributors to good teaching, but they are not a substitute for it.
I would also suggest that the UGC's support for good teaching is evident in its various initiatives to support new developments and quality improvements in teaching and learning. Over the past six years we have awarded a total of $281 million in the form of Teaching Development Grants and Central Allocation Vote grants to support such initiatives, including of course the T&T Projects and many others aimed at integrating information technology and teaching development. A further $115 million worth of grants is to be awarded later this year (in July, on present planning).
A further indicator of the UGC's concern to ensure the quality of teaching and learning in our institutions was the round of Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs) undertaken during 1996 and 1997 which aimed to focus attention on teaching and learning as the primary mission of Hong Kong's tertiary institutions; and to assist institutions in their efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
The UGC, and I personally, believe that these objectives were largely achieved, but then we would say that, wouldn't we? So at the end of 1998, some 18 months to two years after the first TLQPRs, the UGC invited a group of highly respected independent consultants based at the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente in the Netherlands to look at the outcomes and impact of the TLQPR process, and to some extent also at the impact of the separate funding schemes to support teaching quality initiatives (TDGs, etc), and give their opinion on the results.
The CHEPS team was here for their second and main visit last month, and they will be presenting their findings to the UGC formally in August, but I am pleased to say that preliminary indications are favourable. Indeed as far as the TLQPRs are concerned, it appears that what we have been doing in Hong Kong is regarded by international experts as exemplary as an approach to quality assurance in higher education.
So much for the commercial...
However, whatever may be done at the system level by the UGC, I am sure colleagues here will agree that the greatest aid to good teaching lies in its recognition by colleagues at all levels in the institutions and in its being recognized and rewarded in terms of substantiation and promotion. No amount of rhetoric, reviews and even funding initiatives from the UGC will counteract the pressure to publish or perish, if that attitude becomes widespread.
This concern is already engaging institutions like the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in the United States, where clearly the cause for concern in this respect is much greater than in Hong Kong or indeed almost anywhere else. Ernest Boyer's seminal book on scholarship and the professoriate "Scholarship Reconsidered" (1990) addressed this issue, as did a more recent publication of the Carnegie Foundation.
To assist in addressing this issue, the UGC has agreed to adopt the Carnegie classifications of scholarship--of discovery, of integration, of application and of teaching--as the basis for the 1999 Research Assessment Exercise. Again we are breaking new ground, since no previous attempt has been made to operationalise the Carnegie classifications in this way at anything above the institutional level--and even there it has only rarely been attempted, I gather.
I am therefore pleased to announce that, all being well, Prof Lee Shulman, the current Director of the Carnegie Foundation and two of his colleagues will be coming to Hong Kong in September 1999 to participate in a workshop for the RAE Panels. We shall be aiming to sensitize all panel members to the four categories of scholarship in an effort to ensure that they do assess outputs submitted in all four categories, including the scholarship of teaching. But we should be under no illusions that this will be easy or will be immediately embraced by all concerned - the focus on the scholarship of discovery as the principal currency for evaluating research output is too ingrained.
Moreover, I repeat that whatever we do at the system level must be supported and enhanced at the institutional level if it is to have the effect we all wish to see, namely the continuous improvement of the quality of teaching and learning in our institutions.
It is through conferences like this that the culture of quality teaching is spread among all colleagues at "grass roots" level in the institutions. I therefore wish the organisers and all participants in this conference a very successful and fruitful series of discussions
May 1999
UGC Secretariat
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