FHEA any benefits to applying

[dumpertruckbigmouth]

Hello,

I have worked in HE for over 20 years. I have a PGCE (PCET) and I am quite happy in my post (distance teaching). At my last review, it was suggested that I consider applying for FHEA.

However, I cannot see the benefits of a fellowship to the HEA. I have a recognised teaching qualification. I am not looking for promotion, and I have heard from many colleagues that the process of application can be a 'time consuming, box ticking' exercise.

Has anyone any experience of applying for the FHEA that may help me to decide whether to apply?

Thanks

Try posting over in the Academic Common Room. But I agree about the tick box exercise. I used to be a Co-Director of a specialist teaching network in HE. We did real on the ground work with colleagues in the discipline. But the national network was disbanded in favour of this corporatist HEA. Like the TEF it has very little to do with the actual whiteboardface (or Teams screen) of teaching.

Same here - 20 years in HE as an academic with a post graduate qualification in post compulsory learning, industry experience and excellent teaching feedback At my place they've made the FHEA a prerequisite for promotion applications to try and force everyone to do it. I am however at the top of my particular tree with nowhere further to climb nor any desire to do so. I get the occasional nag to get my FHEA presumably so someone somewhere can tick a box. I would rather stick needles in my eyeballs. I'm aiming to get to retirement having swerved it entirely

Yes, this is my experience as well. I think I would be more convinced of the validity of FHEA if the application actually 'measured' competence in some way. For example, to gain the PGCE, lessons had to observed and be graded; a portfolio of planning material had to be submitted; presentations showed your knowledge of key subject areas; several essays on various relevant subjects gave you a chance to evidence your knowledge of important topics to post-16 teaching and learning and so on. However, for the FHEA, it is more like an application for a job in which you try to show how your knowledge, experience and CPD fit certain 'criteria', some of which are an uneasy fit in a distance teaching context.

The fact that membership to the FHEA is being made a prerequisite to advancement in HE worries me because, it does not seem to require us to prove our ability to teach, but rather it assesses our ability write a good spin.

Do you not have to do teaching observations as part of it? I had to for mine but I'm not clear how they differ between universities.

I also had to demonstrate subject knowledge and knowledge of pedagogy.

If you've already got a teaching qualification there's probably not much point but what I did for mine doesn't sound like what you described above.

it does not seem to require us to prove our ability to teach, but rather it assesses our ability write a good spin

Yup. Sign of the times. Just like the TEF, which is a total paper/box ticking exercise. At least in the REF, people actually read one's research papers.

@RidingMyBike No, there is no requirement to be observed. For the application I have looked into, you state what you do, reflect on this and say what you will do next. You do have to find two referees, who should be members of the HEA, to support your claim, but there are no observations and no requirement to have 'hard' evidence to support the claim.

I suppose it could be seen as membership to some professional body. Yet the fact that membership to this body is a prerequisite for promotion, yet does not actually check that members are as 'good' as they state they are (I do not doubt that they are) may mean that there is a risk that people who are promoted are not necessarily those who are good at their job.

@dumpertruckbigmouth This is how it runs in my place. It's simply about writing 'reflective' accounts of teaching mapped against a series of vaguely written outcome statements. No requirement for direct observation of teaching or teaching materials

How strange. Mine included two teaching observations done by different people and as part of that they looked at and commented on the teaching materials I'd developed.