Academic Promotion Policies & Procedures

The project builds on a 2009 UK Higher Education Academy report by University of Leicester on reward & recognition for teaching and internationally recognised work at University of Wollongong on promotions criteria and peer review of teaching-related activities. Both projects pointed to the need to bridge the gap between policy and practice in academic promotion in order to better recognise teaching as core to academic work and therefore core to the assurance of standards in higher education.

International in reach, this project involves two British and two Australian universities developing benchmarks and frameworks for:
  • sharing and comparing promotions policies and processes
  • collecting evidence of impact such as data from promotions committees and staff perceptions of promotion processes.
The benchmarks were trialled in the four universities and validated with sixteen further universities in order to produce a Benchmarking Guide which can be adopted and adapted across the higher education sector in the UK and Australia. Another important resource flowing from this project is a guide to evidencing teaching for promotion, Making Evidence Count.

Material from this project is also available on the HEA website
2012 Project Handout
File Size: 173 kb
File Type: pdf
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2011 UK Professional Standards Framework
2010 Times Higher Education article
2009 HEA Report
File Size: 569 kb
File Type: pdf
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