A Provocation: Quality is service

In this article I trace the process of uncovering a unifying thread in the multiple meanings of quality in work. I do this by reflecting on the process of assembling my evaluation dossier after my first year as an assistant professor. As a parallel and alternative process to the traditional assessment of the work of academics, I perform a critically reflexive self-assessment exercise that applies the action-research methodology of appreciative inquiry to the artefacts of my working autobiography. I re-present the quality moments of other university actors in the process of remembering the best of my lived experience of quality related to the traditional evaluation categories of teaching, research and service. I arrive at a provocative account of quality to the effect that quality across the span of teaching, research, and service work resembles service constituted as a morally response-able relationship.