Teaching Culture

TU Delft, like Universities across the world, is striving to enhance the quality of the student experience; central to this mission is the establishment of an academic culture that celebrates, rewards and supports university teaching achievement.
A leading person in this international movement is Dr. Ruth Graham. Ruth Graham has led a ground-breaking study, commissioned by the Royal Academy of Engineering, to develop a Framework that enables universities to define and evaluate teaching achievement at each stage of the academic career ladder. This framework was a great inspiration for the TU Delft “Guidance document on career paths with the emphasis on teaching”. A document that sets out the career paths with an emphasis on teaching for Associate Professors and Full Professors and provides guidelines to identify and discuss staff with a teaching profile, and stimulate a development path with the emphasis on teaching.
In 2019 Ruth Graham launched the Teaching Cultures Survey that shines a spotlight on the culture and status of teaching in higher education. The TU Delft, Sponsored by 4TU.CEE, joined this survey in 2019 as well as in 2022 enabling the TU Delft to capture and track the culture and status of teaching across the academic community and compare findings with global peers.
The survey and framework are elements of – the Advancing Teaching initiative – focused on improving the reward, recognition and evaluation of university teaching.

TU Delft Teaching Culture

The content of this overview is derived from the 2 February 2023 workshop sessions on the key findings of the Teaching Culture Survey, presented by Ruth Graham at the TU Delft Teaching Lab.

A good teaching culture asks for good educational leadership by all
"How come we say ‘yes’ when we are asked to peer-review an article for Elsevier - invest our time and energy in an organisation for which we have to pay to return the favour, that is reading their articles; but we say ‘no’ when we are asked to peer-review a colleague lecturer within our own organisation that will make our own teaching and learning practice better. The ‘why?’ behind this might be the central question to the needed cultural change in our community and organisation."