The UK Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) as an illustration of Baudrillard’s hyperreality

ABSTRACT

This article examines the ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’ (TEF) for UK universities through the lens of Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality. I argue that the TEF is a hyperreal simulacrum, a sign which has no traceable genealogy to the practice of learning and teaching.

KEYWORDS:

• Baudrillard
• Teaching Excellence Framework
• hyperreality
• teaching quality

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Andrew Hobson, Joel Roberts and Christopher De Thorpe Millard for comments and discussions on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Although education in the UK is devolved to its constituent nations, the TEF is used for the whole the UK, creating what Gunn (2016) calls ‘the paradoxes of jurisdictional plurality’.

2 Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills, which inspects schools and other children's services in England.

3 Retrieved December 1, 2016, from http://www.academicaudit.net/professor-elizabeth-cleaver.html