This article reports a study on the effectiveness of university teachers’ training involving 22 universities in 8 countries. A training group of teachers and their students were studied at the start of their training and one year later. A control group of new teachers received no training and both they and their students were studied in the same way. Evidence is reported of changes over time relating to three measures: (i) student ratings of their teachers using six scales from the Student Evaluation of Educational Quality questionnaire (SEEQ) and the ‘Good Teaching’ scale of the Module Experience Questionnaire (MEQ); (ii) the extent to which teachers described themselves as teacher-focused and student-focused in their approach to teaching, using two scales from the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI); and (iii) the extent to which these teachers’ students take a surface approach and a deep approach to learning, using two scales from the MEQ. The article reports evidence of a range of positive changes in teachers in the training group, and in their students, and a contrasting lack of change, or negative changes, in untrained teachers from the control group.

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This paper reports aspects of an international study of leadership of teaching in 19 departments with outstanding teaching records in 11 research-intensive universities. Leadership was found to take different forms in different discipline areas, in different organisational cultures, and in response to major problems affecting the department. While most of the heads conceived of leadership of teaching in similarly sophisticated ways, and there were other common themes across contexts, how these conceptions were evident in action to support and develop teaching was highly context-dependent. To illustrate this point, two departments are contrasted in terms of leadership activities found most frequently across all 19 departments. It is clear from this comparison that teaching excellence was achieved in entirely different ways involving widely contrasting leadership behaviour.The paper argues that advice and guidance for heads of department on their leadership of teaching should pay careful attention to the context rather than make assumptions about the general applicability of leadership theory or advice.Higher Education Quarterly, 0951-5224

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