An the award goes to…

Having collected a couple of green stars in primary school, Joseph Gora understands the importance of peer recognition. When I was a snotty-nosed little upstart at primary school in the heady 60s, our assignments were graded by less-than-diligent teachers with small coloured stars. These glossy emblems meant much to us – especially the bottle green ones, which signaled what university teaching and learning specialists might refer to as excellence. If awarded the star, I’d be ecstatic and race home to present the evidence to my proud dad. Rewards would quickly follow: new caps for my plastic Lugar, assorted chocolates or, best of all, a ticket to the children’s Saturday matinee at the Empire cinema. The problem with this sort of meritocratic culture, however, was that it fostered deep resentment amongst the lowly yellow, red and blue star recipients, many of whom would resort to extreme violence to relieve their anger and frustration. The green star recipients would quickly band together and separate themselves from the rabble. Obtaining three consecutive green stars was tantamount to sainthood. Whatever you think about meritocratic symbolism, it has both positive and negative effects. When I see people receiving numerous awards – and I personally know of at least two serial recipients – I can’t help thinking of those Soviet leaders at the May Day parade weighed down by rows of medals pinned to their winter coats. It didn’t matter that some of these establishment stalwarts had never seen action, the medals were designed to set them apart from the proletariat and to make them seem really important – which of course they were. The fact is that we love awards, especially when they are conferred upon us. Meritocratic symbolism pervade just about every walk of life. Award ceremonies are as common as bovine flatulence, often with the same appeal. That marvel of democratised dot-point pedagogy, Wikipedia, tells of countless whacky awards like the bad sex in fiction award, bent spoon award, most phallic building award, golden raspberry award, world stupidity award, and the stinkers bad movie award. This dizzying array of the grotesque and bizarre finds its mirror image in various walks of life, including in today’s strange world of higher education. Such awards are designed, so the usual blurb goes, to encourage, recognise and promote excellence and innovation in teaching and learning. To back this up the candidate requires support from colleagues (mates), teaching specialists, and fawning or corraled students. A panel comprised of important people (T&L experts, pro vice-chancellors, deans, heads of school, former award winners) adjudicates the evidence and decides which contender should be the esteemed recipient. Teaching awards are then conferred and duly pinned (by the gushing recipients) on doors, entered into CVs, announced at staff meetings and, perhaps most importantly, included in promotion applications. In addition to in-house awards there are numerous regional, state and national awards all of which act as magnets for applicants with a keen eye on career advancement. But let’s take one step back here: how rigorous is the process that leads to an award? Put differently, how do we explain those many instances where a colleague comes into the staff room, announces a teaching award and everyone stares open mouthed in disbelief, knowing full well that a trained chimpanzee could produce more credible pedagogical content? The criteria for awards are many and varied but tend to highlight such attributes as the ability to motivate, inspire, influence or enhance the learning process, foster independent learning, improve service delivery, or enhance curriculum development and assessment items. For the NSW Quality Training Award – a prestigious award if there ever was one – professional portfolios and three referee reports are required to assess the candidate’s credibility. Further, applicants’ teaching is observed directly and interviews are conducted with colleagues, supervisors, students and others. Like many other teaching awards, the eligibility criteria for adjudication are broad but are meant to demonstrate the candidate’s knowledge, understanding, skills and values associated with their preferred teaching style. This all sounds very rigorous. One wonders why anyone would subject themselves to such a process, or how she or he might find the time to meet the demands of such an onerous evidence-based process? I may be wrong, but demonstrating excellence (a word surely reaching its sell-by date) seems far more difficult for state and national awards than it is under some in-house schemes. Here the main objective is to amass enough convincing paper evidence to woo panel assessors – or more importantly, to demonstrate that students have been sufficiently influenced by the chosen teaching strategy. In one case I can recall how the candidate developed an application through the following process: subtle hints to her students that she would welcome a nomination or two, generous grades for assignments, strategic befriending of key students, handing out sweets before lectures, lots of PowerPoints with bells and whistles during content-free lectures, and self promotion about excellence and professionalism in staff meetings and other venues. What counted as innovative in this candidate’s application was in fact a rehash of interactive teaching approaches observed in other arenas. Invariably, the lecture content of this pedagogical genius – paper-thin at best – was cobbled together from two dated text books and a sprinkling of journal articles. The eventual award – and the criteria that led to its presentation – made no mention of whether or not there was anything significant taught in the unit, other than the appearance that the candidate was in command of her field. At the risk of sounding more arrogant than I already am, I was convinced after several conversations with this esteemed orator that she not only operated in a theory-free zone but had done no significant reading in her subject area for many years. Another award winner I once observed gave a display of PowerPoint wizardry, accompanied by sound bites, heavy metal thrash and low-brow techno rap. He was especially fond of dot points that would emerge from the left, right and centre of the screen to a noise very much like a steel zipper. Although I have absolutely no recollection of what his lectures were about, I was in awe of the techno excesses. As I walked out of the lecture theatre, a student looking suspiciously as if she might be on ecstasy, said: “Hey, what a great lecture that was, eh?” His award was conferred a month later. The fact is that teaching awards are subject to the same kind of idiosyncrasies, cultural biases and errors of judgment as any other meritocratic process. Sure, there are some great teachers out there who possess great rhetorical skills, charm, humour, and whose pedagogical content stays in the mind long after degree certificates have been awarded. It’s usually clear when someone knows their stuff and is able to convey it in an interesting and entertaining way. In short, some awards are entirely justified, others are not, but then again, who says? Much depends on people actually being prepared to apply for such honours. I have steadfastly refused to participate in this meritocratic hogwash because I gave up seeing stars years ago. Having said all this, I would like to recommend the following awards be funded by universities and their private sponsors: • Workload survival award • Psychopathic manager of the year award • Least published award • Headless chicken award • Con everyone that I can teach award • Most knocked back for promotion award • Least attendance at boring meetings award. And feel free to make up your personalised awards like: • Narcissist of the year award • Ambitions toad award • Wake me when it’s all over award • Award seeker of the year award. l genius – paper-thin at best – was cobbled together from two dated text books and a sprinkling of journal articles. The eventual award – and the criteria that led to its presentation – made no mention of whether or not there was anything significant taught in the unit, other than the appearance that the candidate was in command of her field. At the risk of sounding more arrogant than I already am, I was convinced after several conversations with this esteemed orator that she not only operated in a theory-free zone but had done no significant reading in her subject area for many years. Another award winner I once observed gave a display of PowerPoint wizardry, accompanied by sound bites, heavy metal thrash and low-brow techno rap. He was especially fond of dot points that would emerge from the left, right and centre of the screen to a noise very much like a steel zipper. Although I have absolutely no recollection of what his lectures were about, I was in awe of the techno excesses. As I walked out of the lecture theatre, a student looking suspiciously as if she might be on ecstasy, said: “Hey, what a great lecture that was, eh?” His award was conferred a month later. The fact is that teaching awards are subject to the same kind of idiosyncrasies, cultural biases and errors of judgment as any other meritocratic process. Sure, there are some great teachers out there who possess great rhetorical skills, charm, humour, and whose pedagogical content stays in the mind long after degree certificates have been awarded. It’s usually clear when someone knows their stuff and is able to convey it in an interesting and entertaining way. In short, some awards are entirely justified, others are not, but then again, who says? Much depends on people actually being prepared to apply for such honours. I have steadfastly refused to participate in this meritocratic hogwash because I gave up seeing stars years ago. Having said all this, I would like to recommend the following awards be funded by universities and their private sponsors: • Workload survival award • Psychopathic manager of the year award • Least published award • Headless chicken award • Con everyone that I can teach award • Most knocked back for promotion award • Least attendance at boring meetings award. And feel free to make up your personalised awards like: • Narcissist of the year award • Ambitions toad award • Wake me when it’s all over award • Award seeker of the year award. Joseph Gora is an academic in a regional university somewhere in Australia.