By Marcia Devlin

University teaching appears to be back in fashion in Australia this year. A report, Taking university teaching seriously, was released this year by an independent think tank, just prior to the federal election. The report argues for a greater number of ‘teaching-focused’ academic staff across the higher education sector. The idea is that teaching-focused academics, as the name suggests, focus their time and effort primarily on teaching and related scholarship. The precise split of time between teaching preparation, practice and scholarship varies depending on the particulars of the appointment. This report followed another earlier in the year commissioned by the commonwealth Office for Learning and Teaching, Teaching-focused academic appointments in Australian universities. Both reports outline the reasons for restricting the growth of such appointments to date and the arguments for potentially increasing them. Continue reading →