Alan Skelton considers what constitutes excellence in higher education teaching, the central case study being the practice of the UK's most excellent university teachers, as judged by the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme.

There has been an explosion of interest in teaching excellence in higher education. Once labelled the ‘poor relation’ of the research/teaching divide, teaching is now firmly on the policy agenda; pressure on institutions to improve the quality of teaching has never been greater and significant funding seeks to promote teaching excellence in higher education institutions. This book constitutes the first serious scrutiny of how and why it should be achieved. International perspectives from educational researchers, award winning teachers, practitioners and educational developers consider key topics, including: policy initiatives research-led teaching teaching excellence and scholarship the significance of academic disciplines research into teaching excellence rewarding through promotion inclusive learning and ICT. Teaching Excellence in Higher Education provides a guide for all those supporting, promoting and trying to achieve teaching excellence in higher education and sets the scene for teaching excellence as a field for serious investigation and critical enquiry.

This book explores disciplinary teaching excellence through a diverse range of student-staff partnership research projects. Despite being a highly contested term, ‘teaching excellence’ is something that universities aspire to and are expected to have. However, the editors and contributors argue that not only are definitions of excellence often broad and generic, but they lack nuanced understandings of disciplinary excellence in higher education. This book begins by unpacking some of these contested definitions of teaching excellence, followed by a series of co-authored chapters produced by students and staff who have undertaken research projects where they examine teaching excellence in their respective disciplinary areas. These chapters demonstrate that teaching excellence may be better understood as a process of becoming that is achieved through partnership between teachers and students. This book will be of interest and value to students, educators, and policy-makers concerned about teaching excellence, as well as scholars of student-staff partnerships.

Marshall Gregory argues that teachers at the university and high school levels can achieve teaching excellence by grounding their teaching in pedagogical theory that takes into account students' abilities and the ultimate goals of teaching: to develop students' capacities for thought, reflection, questioning, and engagement to their fullest extent.