Teaching award winners – (in)visible best-practice examples? Findings from Austria and Switzerland

ABSTRACT

This contribution focuses on the institutional and the individual significance of teaching awards in higher education: (1) How do recipients of teaching awards influence the development of university teaching? (2) (In what ways) Can teaching awards promote academic careers? To clarify these questions, we draw on data from two online questionnaire surveys of award winners from Austria (n=64) and Switzerland (n=131). The results indicate that universities use award winners only to a limited extent as a resource for the institutional development of teaching. In approximately a quarter of the cases, the award had a positive impact on the academic career of the recipients.

KEYWORDS:

• Career
• development of teaching in higher education
• prestige
• recipients of teaching awards
• teaching awards

Teaching awards: visibility and recognition of excellent university teaching

Teaching awards recognise and honour special efforts and achievements in teaching. They reward individual academics or groups of academics for their excellent teaching and, by doing so, make high-quality teaching concrete. ‘Excellence’ is to be understood as a comparative concept, that is, excellent teaching can only be defined in relation to merely technically solid teaching from which it differs because it stands out in terms of its quality and its effects (Huber, 2018). Considering the vagueness of this explanation, efforts are being made to define excellence more precisely: Advance HE’s Fellowships in the UK, for example, which represent a kind of certification process for expertise in teaching and/or supporting higher education learning (not a teaching award in the narrow sense) are awarded based on evidence of personal professional practice that meets the requirements of the Professional Standards Framework 2023 (Advance HE, 2023). This framework includes descriptors for reviewing quality of teaching that focus on the effectiveness and the impact of teaching in higher education. The criteria of such frameworks need not necessarily coincide with the judgements of the students, however, because their perceptions of excellence in teaching may diverge as analyses of data from student-led teaching award nominations show (Lubicz-Nawrocka & Bunting, 2019; Wennerberg et al., 2023).

The characteristics of teaching awards are diverse and can be combined to some extent (Tremp & Scheidig, 2021). Furthermore, the criteria according to which prizes are awarded (e.g. quality of the teaching concept, personal commitment and passion, learning effectiveness and student success, innovative teaching methods, student-orientation and availability, transfer potential for other teachers), the included database, the composition of the jury, or the contributions that are expected from the nominees vary (Efimenko et al., 2018; Kiersma et al., 2016; Tremp, 2010). In a few higher education institutions, the award seems to come as a surprise to the winner, for example when the nomination rests on student proposals or evaluations of teaching. In such cases, the significance that is attached to the students’ opinion and the degree to which their judgments about the quality of teaching are accepted or taken as a basis for the awarding of prizes are of particular relevance because students are the addressees of teaching, attend seminars and lectures, and thus know researchers as teachers (Lubicz-Nawrocka & Bunting, 2019; Madriaga & Morley, 2016; Thompson & Zaitseva, 2012).

Awarding practices are closely related to potential impacts and questions concerning the institutional development of a university and its teaching. At the same time, actual recipients feel valued and recognised as a university teacher and strengthened in their role (Scheidig & Tremp, 2020), which is partly due to their exchange with other recipients (Stockley et al., 2019). Moreover, award winners usually feel obliged to continue to put effort into the quality and the effectiveness of their teaching (Bethel et al., 2021), and their teaching-related self-efficacy is increased (Morris & Usher, 2011). A further effect, which is hardly ever mentioned in the conception of prizes but nevertheless closely connected with awarding practices and emphasised by academics, is ‘the positive impact of reflecting on their work through award applications’ (Bethel et al., 2021, p. 212). An Irish study reported similar results in the context of an awarding procedure that combined self-nomination with a subsequent teaching-portfolio workshop (Fitzpatrick & Moore, 2015).

Overall, it seems that teaching awards are conducive to the teaching of the honoured academics, but, at the same time, they are also intended to have a positive impact on the teaching of peers. Award winners are regarded as a ‘personification’ of excellent teaching (Dunkin & Precians, 1992; Kember & McNaught, 2007; Lowman, 1996), and they are expected to inspire other university teachers. In Austria, for example, the exemplary teachers who were honoured with the national excellence award are portrayed in the digital ‘Atlas of Effective University Teaching’ (https://gutelehre.at). Advance HE’s national Teaching Excellence Awards also aim to provide a platform for sharing the knowledge of individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in higher education. To this end, the member-led charity presents winner profiles on its website and organises annual symposia (https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/awards/teaching-excellence-awards). In contrast to these cross-university platforms, Gan and Geertsema (2018) provide an insight into the strategy of an individual university that uses narrative vignettes to take up and publicise the practice of the teaching award winners.

These examples raise the question as to whether and how award winners themselves share their teaching concepts and their experience. What opportunities do they receive to tell others about their teaching? This question is relevant because whether teaching awards and their recipients fulfil the function of acting as best-practice examples and stimulating the discussion about excellent teaching in higher education crucially depends on whether award winners provide insights into their practice.

Apart from these effects with respect to the institutional development of university teaching, teaching awards have personal effects as the findings reported above have already indicated: They strengthen the recipients’ dedication and commitment, and they encourage reflection on teaching (Hall et al., 2018). The individual dimension of teaching awards can moreover transcend the teaching as such by enhancing the reputation of the winner. In the academic context, reputation is a highly valuable asset. Awards mark a difference inside and outside academia owing to their exclusivity and their functioning as a signal. The example of research awards in particular illustrates that these prizes can promote academic careers. Despite the fact that university teaching often appears in the shadow of research and although it is not an overt arena of competition (Mitten & Ross, 2018), there have been recent efforts to attach more weight to it, not least in connection with the recruitment, the selection, and the appointment of academic staff. This leads to the question as to whether teaching awards can enhance the recipients’ reputation in the same way as research awards and whether they have a comparably positive impact on their career (Israel, 2011).

In order to address the complex issue of the effect of teaching awards, we identified two separate issues that relate to the development of teaching quality and to the promotion of the academics’ careers respectively. For the purposes of our study, we focused on the following two research questions (RQ):

• RQ1: How do recipients of teaching awards influence the development of university teaching by providing insights into their practice?

• RQ2: (In what ways) Can teaching awards promote academic careers?

So as to clarify these questions, we conducted a survey of recipients of teaching awards from Austria (AT) and Switzerland (CH) whose conception and findings will be presented in the following sections.

Survey of recipients of teaching awards

Context: teaching awards in Austria and Switzerland

Considering the long history of universities, prizes for excellent teaching are a recent phenomenon. In English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the UK, they have been awarded for longer than in German-speaking countries (Carbone, 2021; Tremp, 2010). In Switzerland, the development of teaching awards depends largely on the initiative of the Jubilee Fund that was set up by the Credit Suisse Foundation. Since 2006, the bank has provided 10,000 Swiss francs (which currently equals approximately 11,600 U.S. dollar) prize money annually for each university that wants to award the ‘Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching’ (CS-Award). This prize has established itself as the most important teaching award in Switzerland. Today, almost all universities, several universities of applied sciences and some universities of teacher education honour the achievements of their academic teaching staff with this award.

The situation is similar in Austria where various local teaching awards have been introduced. In contrast to Switzerland, these awards are complemented by a national excellence award, the so-called ‘Ars Docendi-Staatspreis für exzellente Lehre’. This national prize (7,000 euro, which currently equals approximately 7,700 U.S. dollar) has been awarded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research since 2013 in collaboration with the different conferences of university rectors and the National Union of Students. The nominees for this award are proposed by the executive body of a university, student representatives, or both groups together. There are five categories, with themes changing almost every year. The nominations in each of these categories are judged by an internationally composed jury according to clearly defined category-specific criteria.

Method

In order to answer the two questions relating to how the recipients of teaching awards contribute to the development of university teaching by providing insights into their teaching (RQ1) and to whether teaching awards can promote academic careers (RQ2), we draw on data from two online surveys of award winners in Austria and Switzerland. Table 1 lists the items of the questionnaire: Items 1 to 5 address RQ1 by asking about the transfer of teaching expertise. With regard to the contextual level, the items were designed to clarify whether the award winners consider dissemination to be the overall purpose of the awarding procedure and whether they had applied themselves. Items 6 to 8 relate to RQ2 and focus on the positive and the negative aspects of receiving a teaching award.

Table 1. Items of the questionnaire.

Item text	Response
Who took the initiative regarding the nomination for the teaching award?	Single choice (e.g. ‘Self-initiated nomination’)
What do you think is the main purpose of the award?	Multiple choice (e.g. ‘Individual recognition’)
Have you been asked to share teaching-related expertise and experience in connection with the winning of the teaching award?	Multiple choice (e.g. ‘Yes, by other universities’)
Have you shared your teaching-related expertise and experience before and/or after the winning of the teaching award?	Multiple choice (e.g. ‘Before: informal among peers’)
My readiness to tell others about my lectures and seminars is great.	4-point scale from ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (4)
Has the teaching award had significance for your academic career and if so, in what way?	‘Yes, namely … ’; ‘No’; ‘I do not know’
Winning the teaching award meant a personal gain in reputation to me.	4-point scale from ‘strongly disagree’ (1) to ‘strongly agree’ (4)
Have there been any negative effects of the teaching award affecting you and if so, which ones?	‘Yes, namely’; ‘No’

The survey in Austria addressed all academics who had received the national ‘Ars Docendi-Staatspreis für exzellente Lehre’ between 2013 and 2020. The survey was conducted in June and July 2021. The Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research had invited a total of 96 award winners by email to participate in the anonymous online survey. 64 of them completed the questionnaire (response rate of 66.7%).

The survey of the Swiss award winners included all academics who had been honoured at one of the 18 public higher-education institutions that had awarded a CS-Award between 2006 and 2020. The anonymous online survey took place in May 2020 in a German and a French version of the questionnaire. 131 of the invited 196 award winners completed the questionnaire (66.8%).

Sample

The average age of the Austrian participants was 43.5 years (SD = 10.7 years) when they received the award while the average age of the Swiss participants was 46.5 years (SD = 8.4 years). Table 2 characterises the composition of the two national samples in more detail.

Table 2. Sociodemographic characteristics of the participants.

Characteristics	Austrian award winners		Swiss award winners
	n	%	n	%
Gender
Female	23	35.9	33	25.2
Male	41	64.1	96	73.3
Diverse	–	–	2	1.5
Type of higher-education institution
University	44	71.0	99	75.6
University of applied sciences	15	24.2	26	19.8
University of teacher education	1	1.6	6	4.6
Private university	2	3.2	–	–
Position
Full professor or senior researcher with leadership responsibilities for academic staff	29	45.3	77	58.8
Junior researcher (e.g. PhD student), postdoc, or lecturer	26	40.6	53	40.5
Member of the university management	9	14.1	1	0.8
Collective or individual award
Honoured as a member of a teacher team	46	71.9	29	22.3
Individual award	18	28.1	101	77.7

In the Swiss sample, 77.7% of the participants had received the CS-Award as individuals while only 22.3% had been members of a teacher team. The proportions in the Austrian sample were just the opposite: 71.9% of the Austrian award winners had been honoured as members of a teacher team whereas 28.1% had received the ‘Ars Docendi-Staatspreis’ as individuals. With regard to this distribution, it should be noted that an award-winning team of teachers may be represented in the sample by several people.

Results

Influence of teaching awards through sharing practice

Almost all of the respondents reported that they provide insights into their teaching (Figure 1). The sharing of expertise and experience most often takes place in informal situations with peers. Clearly less frequently, information is provided in a more formal setting such as the annual ‘Day of Teaching’ or the ‘Day of Excellence in Teaching’, in meetings of university-internal bodies, in written form (e.g. in the university magazine), or in courses on higher education pedagogy. Other forms include presentations at congresses, videos on YouTube, working groups that are concerned with, for example, higher education pedagogy, and coaching of team members. Most of the respondents had already provided insights into their teaching before the winning of the award, with which they continued. After the winning of the award, however, the sharing of expertise and experience occurred more frequently in both informal and formal contexts. Nevertheless, 6.3% of the Austrian participants and 12.2% of the Swiss participants reported that they had not provided insights into their teaching, neither before nor after the winning of the award. This finding is noteworthy because according to the large majority of the respondents (AT: 82.8%; CH: 71.8%), the main purpose of an award consists in ‘making best practice visible, presenting role models, and stimulating the discussion about teaching’. That some of the recipients of teaching awards had never presented their teaching practices in a formal context can at least partly be explained by the fact that they had not had an opportunity to do so. The answers show that at the time of the survey 42.2% of the Austrian respondents and 49.6% of the Swiss respondents had not yet been invited to share their expertise and their experience (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Ways in which teaching-related expertise and experience were shared before and after the winning of the teaching award (multiple answers possible).

Figure 2. Invitation to share teaching-related expertise and experience in connection with the winning of the teaching award (multiple answers possible).

As the distribution of university-internal and external invitations indicates (Figure 2), official representatives of the universities (rector, heads of institutes, study programmes or departments, the department of higher education pedagogy) had not expressed more interest in the award winners’ expertise and experience than the media and the press, specialist societies, scientific associations, and other universities. The two national data sets correspond largely in this regard. There are only a few differences: Overall, the Austrian award winners had more frequently been asked to talk about their teaching, and they had considerably more often been invited by other universities than the Swiss award winners (AT: 23.4%; CH: 9.2%).

When award winners do not provide insights into their teaching, this can principally be due to a lack of readiness to do so, for example because they feel uneasy about exposing themselves to the university public or because they prefer to be perceived by their colleagues as researchers rather than as teachers (Hall et al., 2018). Among the participants of our study, this seems to be so only rarely, however. Most of the respondents strongly agreed or at least agreed with the item ‘My readiness to tell others about my lectures and seminars is great’ (AT: M = 3.2, SD = 0.80; CH: M = 2.9, SD = 0.93). As it remains unclear in the case of collective awards whether all members of an honoured teacher team had equally contributed to the success, it is plausible to assume that these award winners may not all to the same extent be ready to provide information about their teaching. Our data do not support this assumption, however. Rather, we found that the readiness of respondents who had received the award as individuals (ad personam) proved to be even slightly less pronounced (AT: M = 3.2, SD = 0.73; CH: M = 2.8, SD = 0.91) than the readiness of respondents who had won the award as members of a teacher team (AT: M = 3.3, SD = 0.84; CH: M = 3.1, SD = 0.95), but the difference is not statistically significant in both national samples. Furthermore, the data analyses show that the readiness of award winners who had applied on their own initiative or had actively sought nomination and asked others to suggest them as a candidate was above average (AT: M = 3.4, SD = 0.67; CH: M = 3.2, SD = 0.85). The difference between self-initiated nomination and other ways to nomination is only significant in the Swiss sample, however (and only compared to nomination by students or based on a student evaluation of teaching: M = 2.7, SD = 0.97, see Scheidig & Tremp, 2020).

Influence of teaching awards on academic careers

Being asked whether the winning of the teaching award had led to a personal gain in reputation, most of the respondents tended to agree or even strongly agree (AT: M = 3.1, SD = 1.10; CH: M = 3.2, SD = 0.83). With respect to the concrete relevance to their career, slightly more than a quarter of the winners reported that the award had been significant for their academic advancement (AT: 28.1%; CH: 26.6%). At the same time, almost as many of the respondents were not able to judge whether this had been the case (AT: 26.6%; CH: 20.3%). Clearly more frequently, the respondents stated that the teaching award had not been relevant to their career so far (AT: 45.3%; CH: 53.1%). Since many of the participants had already been full professors or senior researchers with leadership responsibilities for academic staff when they won the award and their prospects for academic promotion were thus limited, there is reason to assume that the award had a positive impact especially on the advancement of researchers who had been at a lower career level (e.g. PhD students, postdocs, or lecturers). Our data do not confirm this hypothesis, however. Rather, a close look at the group of respondents who had not been full professors or senior researchers shows that they did not agree more often to the item than the rest of the sample (AT: 23.1%; CH: 28.3%).

All respondents who reported that the teaching award had had a positive impact on their career were asked to answer the question concerning the way in which the award had been significant for their academic advancement. A qualitative analysis of the answers to the open-ended question led to three different professional dimensions that appear to be relevant in this regard:

1. enhanced reputation (gain in acceptance among colleagues and peers, ascription of expertise, institutional visibility, compensation for a missing academic title or a lack of qualifications);

2. improvement of the professional situation (teaching award as a relevant criterion for appointment, promotion, salary increase, open-ended contract, conferment of a title, gain in autonomy);

3. extension of responsibilities in the area of teaching and study (study-programme director, membership of a commission, head of a university-internal body).

Besides these positive effects, teaching awards can also have a negative impact, however: 18 of all 195 respondents reported negative consequences (AT: 11.1%; CH: 8.4%). Major reasons were envy, indignation, and resentment. Furthermore, skill in teaching sometimes seems to be associated with modest skills in research. Among the 18 respondents who reported negative consequences, 10 academics had already been full professors or senior researchers with leadership responsibilities at that time.

Discussion

Overall, the results from the two surveys of Austrian and Swiss recipients of teaching awards correspond to a large extent although the type of award and the academic context differ. The winners regularly provide insights into their teaching, particularly in informal situations. This form of teaching-related communication can be characterised as direct, low-threshold, and authentic. At the same time, it is presumably more limited with regard to reach than other channels of communication. The sharing of expertise and experience in a more formal context – for example in written form, at special events, in institutional bodies, or in courses on higher education pedagogy – occurs less frequently. In many cases, the respondents had already engaged in such dissemination activities before the winning of the teaching award. On the whole, the relationship between communication concerning teaching in higher education and the winning of the teaching award seems to be reciprocal: On the one hand, the award can be assumed to have been perceived as confirmation of the honoured teaching and thus to have strengthened the winners’ motivation to tell others about their teaching (Scheidig & Tremp, 2020). On the other hand, the sharing of expertise and experience before the winning of the award may have made the subsequent nomination more likely because these dissemination activities had drawn attention to the nominees’ commitment as academic teachers, initiated innovations in university teaching, or provided a platform for demonstrating teaching-related success and achievements.

That 6.3% of the Austrian respondents and 12.2% of the Swiss respondents had neither before nor after the winning of the teaching award provided insights into their teaching indicates that the potential for using award winners as a resource for the development of teaching in higher education has not yet been completely realized. A reason for this might be, among others, that a considerable part of the winners had not (yet) been invited to share their expertise and their experience. Many universities of honoured teachers do not seize the opportunity to initiate a discussion about excellent teaching that arises in connection with the awarding of prizes although (or because?) many universities usually try to draw the attention of a broader public to the winners and their exceptional performance. In this regard, it is noteworthy that external interest in the winners’ expertise and experience is not lower than university-internal interest. This can be interpreted as a sign of the high visibility of awards (and their recipients). Against this background, the fact that 23.4% of the Austrian respondents had already been invited by other universities to talk about their teaching could be explained by the higher degree of public presence, prestige, and exclusivity that a national award has in comparison to prizes that are awarded in a university-internal context such as the Swiss CS-Award. It remains an open question, however, whether such invitations specifically concern the winners’ teaching concept or whether the winners are thought to have excellent skills in higher education pedagogy in general and thus to possess universal expertise regarding questions that relate to teaching at higher education institutions.

That, at the time of the survey, many of the honoured academics had not (yet) received an invitation to tell other people about their teaching in a (more) formal context conflicts with the original purpose of teaching awards, namely to stimulate the discussion on university teaching and to enrich it with excellent examples. This finding is consistent with the results of other recent studies (Efimenko et al., 2018; Seppala & Smith, 2020) that also concluded that universities seize opportunities to initiate academic discourse on exemplary teaching only insufficiently and that awards thus only rarely provide a starting point for the development of university teaching or serve as a source of inspiration.

Despite these general conclusions, Stockley et al. (2019, p. 4) found in their study on the national Canadian teaching award that ‘almost 40% of 3M Fellows contribute to the teaching and learning centres at their institutions’. Furthermore, the 3M Fellows ‘also mentor early career faculty’ (Stockley et al., 2019, p. 4) and thus contribute to the advancement of academic teaching at their university. At this point, it is important to note, however, that it does not suffice to give award winners the opportunity to talk about their teaching and to do so more frequently than in the past. What is equally important is that the award winners make good use of such opportunities and do not restrict the dissemination of their expertise and their experience to sporadic informal conversations with peers. Rather, they should actively look for opportunities to present their teaching practices and try to extend the reach of their dissemination activities. More formal occasions allow them to provide impulses and to stimulate the development of teaching at higher education institutions in a more effective way than informal settings. Drawing attention to this complementary aspect seems to be necessary because the readiness of award winners to talk about their teaching appears to be rather limited in some cases.

Furthermore, the results of our study indicate that the teaching award had, according to the respondents’ self-perception, enhanced their reputation. Only in some cases did this have positive effects on their academic career, however. In concrete terms, slightly more than every fourth award winner reported a beneficial impact. This can be interpreted as an indication that the quality of university teaching is given institutional weight in various respects. Thus, relevance to the career does not necessarily manifest itself in a measurable or quantifiable improvement of the working conditions that are set down in a contract of employment, for example as regards salary (Ravago & Mapa, 2020) or a permanent position (Carbone, 2021). Rather, relevance can also relate to ‘soft’ factors such as a gain in university-internal acceptance or an extension of the scope for exerting influence on the teaching at an institution (Hall et al., 2018).

With respect to the finding that almost half of the respondents did not perceive the teaching award to be relevant to their career, several aspects need to be taken into consideration: Firstly, most of the respondents had received their teaching award only a few years before the survey was conducted. It is therefore possible that the award can become academically relevant in different ways in the future. Secondly, the answers show that the respondents were sometimes not able to judge whether or in what way the award is taken into account when institutional decisions, for example about the appointment or the promotion of academic staff, are taken. Thirdly, many of the respondents had already been full professors or senior researchers with leadership responsibilities when they won the award so that the possibility of an increase in academic status was less likely than in the position of PhD students, for instance. Nevertheless, if universities want to give more weight to the quality of teaching and reduce the dominance of the usual orientation towards research, teaching awards should become a significant factor in staff-related decisions – although it is, with good reason, debated whether teaching awards can rightly be regarded as a valid indicator of excellent teaching skills.

The tension between research and teaching manifests itself in the finding that several award winners mentioned negative consequences. Some of them reported that it had been questioned whether excellent university teachers are also capable of conducting good research (see also Hall et al., 2018). Moreover, the competitive nature of awarding procedures and the public recognition of individuals can cause feelings of envy, indignation, and resentment. This finding confirms the results of other studies that point to a certain dysfunctionality of teaching awards (Seppala & Smith, 2020). In view of these findings, the question arises as to whether and how institutions that reward excellent staff with prizes can lessen the unintended negative effects at least to some degree by putting the contrastive perception of the relationship between achievements in teaching and achievements in research into perspective.

Conclusion and limitations

Teaching awards are sometimes considered to be a mere fig leaf to cover up that teaching has not the same significance as research (also in pecuniary respects). If such prizes are to be more than just a low-price and largely pointless symbolic gesture, it is not only necessary to ensure that awarding procedures meet certain standards and to sharpen the criteria for nomination. In addition, the question as to how the potential for stimulating the development of teaching in higher education can be used effectively needs to be addressed. A consistent use of teaching awards as an instrument for increasing the quality of university teaching has to regard the honoured academics as a valuable resource for the development of teaching practices. Nevertheless, the potential of teaching awards with respect to the advancement and the improvement of teaching should not be overrated either.

Our study draws attention to several instructive aspects. The results show, for example, that award winners share their expertise and their experience primarily in informal situations and that their institutions only occasionally offer them the opportunity to present their teaching in a more formal context. The data are subject to certain limitations, however. The only source were self-reports that can be distorted in various ways. One critical factor could be that at the time of the survey the winning of the award had already been five, ten, or even more years ago, which might have made it difficult for the respondents to remember the exact situation and the circumstances. While the question concerning the sharing of teaching-related expertise and experience in connection with the winning of the teaching award should be examined in the short term (RQ1), the question of career effectiveness is to be considered in the long term (RQ2). So as to obtain a multi-perspective answer to the question of whether and how teaching awards are effective in terms of academic careers, those who are responsible for staff-related decisions, for example members of appointment committees, should be interviewed as well. Furthermore, the institutional context in which teaching awards are embedded needs to be taken into consideration, for example by addressing the question as to whether nominees are required to submit a teaching concept that is to be presented in public. That is to say, the question as to why award winners are not invited to inform others about their teaching cannot be answered by surveying winners of teaching awards only. Furthermore, the question as to how the readiness of award winners to talk about their teaching can be increased (e.g. through the nomination procedure, institutional communication, or follow-up formats) should be investigated in more detail. In this context, qualitative studies can be expected to provide valuable insights because they can document different university contexts, the specific teaching cultures of different academic disciplines, and individual factors in a more comprehensive way than standardised questionnaires such as the ones that had been used in our study. Moreover, it needs to be clarified whether our findings from Austria and Switzerland can be transferred to other countries, particularly to countries in which teaching awards have a longer tradition (Carbone, 2021). Our study shows similar results for Austria and Switzerland although the Austrian award winners received a national teaching award while the Swiss award winners were honoured with a university-specific teaching award.

Despite the limitations mentioned above, we hope that our findings can at least serve as a starting point for further in-depth research and stimulate the discussion about teaching awards in academia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2024.2378790.

Additional information

Funding

We would like to thank the Credit Suisse Foundation and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research for their financial support. Moreover, we are grateful for the funding in the context of the project ‘INternationalisation/INclusion/INnovation’ (Erasmus+ Key Action 3: ‘Support to policy development and cooperation’).

Notes on contributors

Falk Scheidig

Falk Scheidig is a Professor for Lifelong Learning at the Ruhr University Bochum. His research focuses on teachers’ professional development in formal, non-formal and informal contexts.

Peter Tremp

Peter Tremp is a Professor for Education Sciences at the Lucerne University of Teacher Education. His research focuses on teaching and learning in Higher Education.