The rhetoric and reality of good teaching: A case study across three faculties at the Queensland University of Technology

Universities now have a lot to say about tertiary teaching. University poli cy, teaching units, and promotion criteria have a very specific understandi ng of good teaching within the academy. This case study of Queensland Unive rsity of Technology (QUT) found that good teaching has two central features : it is necessarily student centred, and it is 'innovative', a characterist ic that, at QUT at least, is increasingly equated with the use of technolog y. This paper - based upon interviews with twenty-four QUT academics across three faculties (Education, Science, and Law), an analysis of QUT's teachi ng and learning policies, and some additional historical research - will su ggest four things. First, that the concept of student centred learning, bas ed on ideals of progressive education, is neither an historical inevitabili ty nor theoretically unproblematic. Second, that irrespective of discipline , all lecturers espouse an underpinning 'progressive' teaching philosophy, even though, in practice, teaching style appears to be determined primarily by subject-matter. Third, given that, in practice, the progressive model s eems to suit some faculties and subject areas better than others (i.e. Educ ation, as opposed to Science and Law) this has significant professional imp lications for the lecturers concerned. Finally, that rather than promoting a 'progressive' pedagogy, the use of technology in teaching actually appear s to reinforce traditional teaching techniques. Consequently, it is suggest ed that monolithic understandings of good teaching, when applied across the academy irrespective of context, are often inappropriate, ineffective and inequitous, and that universities need to think through their teaching poli cies and programmes more thoroughly.