The Teaching Recognition and Reward (TR&R) Learning Circle aims to be able to inform institutional deliberations on issues of:

• Parity of research and teaching
• Teaching career development
• Recognition and reward of teaching activity

This Learning Circle aims to provide scholarly evidence-based advice and input to the institutional consideration of these issues. It will achieve this by a systematic review and critical appraisal of the corpus of research conducted in this field in recent decades and, to provide a focus to this intention. We aim to help inform all aspects of recognition and reward of the full diversity of teaching activities, and to support and enthuse the promotion and adoption of excellent teaching practices across the institution.

It is a further intention to engage the WIHEA Fellowship in focus groups to gather structured data that may best represent the current situation across the institution as well as the aspirations of the teaching academy.

Learning circle outputs

2022 - 2024 (Current Projects)

Pathway to Professor for Teaching Focused Staff. Warwick and the wider sector’s understanding on “teaching-focused” career pathways is still emerging. This project allowed the learning circle to capture examples of success that provide insight into how teaching-focused staff can create a career strategy that leads to professor. These insights were provided by the trailblazers that have already reached professorial level. Teaching Focussed Professorial Career Advice produced by this project can be accessed here.

Project to Capture Practices in TR&R (Supported by WIHEA funding). The University of Warwick has established a working model for the recognition and reward of teaching activity in its academic promotions process. Hailed as a step in the right direction by internal members of teaching staff, there remains a need to benchmark and calibrate Warwick's promotion criteria, process and wider institutional and departmental support structures to facilitate promotion of teaching staff against wider practice within the HE sector. The purpose in this pilot project is to undertake a desk-based survey, scraping publicly available information on teaching staff promotion criteria and processes adopted by comparable HE institutions, to allow for an initial cross comparison of institutional practice. The ambition is to gauge whether guidance from Advance HE has trickled through within the sector, and whether this has lead to the creation and publication of clear and transparent documentation to capture institutions' teaching staff promotion criteria and processes.

The Meaning of Excellence in Learning and Teaching to Students(Supported by WIHEA funding) This project built on the work of the Teaching Recognition and Reward Learning Circle and the 2021 WIHEA Masterclass celebrating everyday excellence in teaching and learning. The project adopted a mixed methods approach. A short survey was sent to UG and PGT students on what excellence means to them, and the results guided the development of semi-structured questions to be posed in two follow-up student focus groups. The questions were co-created with students, who facilitated the focus groups to encourage open discussion. The results enabled production of a resource inclusive of student perceptions, themes and examples of excellence, for the evaluation and development of pedagogic practice, awards and building promotion cases.

You can read the focus group and survey data here:

2021 - 2022

Case study on teaching and learning seminars. The Teaching Reward and Recognition Learning Circle has brought together case studies on some of the teaching and learning interest groups and seminar series that take place across the University of Warwick. You can find more on these studies by clicking on the link below.

Case Studies

Study leave advice. Guidance to colleagues who are considering applying for a teaching focused academic (study) leave and Warwick Academic Returners Fellowships (WARF) Applications: Teaching and Learning Focused. Guidance (Word) Guidance (PDF)

Teaching profiles for promotion applications. Guidance on writing the teaching profile of excellence document that should accompany teaching focused promotion applications. Guidance (Word) Guidance (PDF)

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Isabel Fisher and Kerry Dobbins created a blog to highlight how to commence Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and how you can measure impact.

2020 - 2021

Teaching Excellence Event: Everyday Excellence in an Extraordinary Year. This half day workshop-style event organised by WIHEA's Teaching Recognition and Reward Learning Circle, aimed to take us from the Warwick (and sector) understanding of teaching excellence (i.e., where policy is made, awards granted etc.) to the idea of the ‘Everyday Excellence’ we all embody in our teaching practice, most particularly in the challenging circumstances of the last 12 months.Promotion applications. The TR&R Learning Circle is pleased to share the output of some work conducted to support teaching-focused staff in developing their promotion applications. See link below for a set of example activities and evidence that teaching-focused colleagues have previously used in successful applications across the spectrum of levels of promotion. These authentic, anonymised examples are intended to supplement the examples given within the University Academic Promotions Criteria documentation to support teaching-focused colleagues in articulating their evidence against the criteria.

Academic Promotions - Teaching focussed staffLink opens in a new window

Department good practice guide. The TR&R Learning Circle has also shared a Good Practice guide for departments in supporting promotions applications for teaching-focused staff.

Academic Promotions Flowchart

Earlier work.

Areas of activity include continued work on the recent changes to the promotion criteria following the first round of promotions 2019. We are also exploring ongoing reward and recognition of teaching activities and revisiting earlier outputs to see what further work may be needed.

Teaching Study Leave Briefing Paper - September 2018Link opens in a new window

On 13 December 2017, the Learning Circle held a Teaching Recognition and Reward Symposium which included presentations from three particularly well-informed speakers a video of the symposium is available to watch.

Teaching Recognition and Reward Briefing Paper - September 2017

Teaching Recognition and Reward Symposium Report - 13 December 2017

Previous Learning Circle co-leads

2022 - January 2024	Dr Claudie Fox and Dr Martyn Parker
2021 - 2022	Prof Caroline Elliott and Dr Nicholas Jackson
2020 - 2021	Prof Lucy Hammond and Dr Elisabeth Blagrove
2019 - 2020	Dr Lydia Plath and Jessica Humphreys
2018 - 2019	Prof Sarah Richardson and Prof Ian Tuersley

---

---