Examining the Effects of Knowledge-action Integration Policy

1. Examining the Effects of Knowledge-action Integration Policy Explain by Teaching Excellence Project in Taiwan Yen-Ling Lin Dian-Fu Chang Tamkang University, Taiwan 2015.10.15

2. Introduction • Taiwan’s Teaching Excellence Projects (TEP) for Universities and Collegesbegan in 2006 for improving teaching quality in higher education institutions, and for developing best practices in teaching excellence in Taiwan. The primary objects are: • improve instructors' professional quality in teaching, • establish and improve institutional teaching quality related structures and systems. • strengthen students' needs in learning and their learning effectiveness, • establish evaluation systems.

3. Literature Review • Quality teaching has become an issue of importance for higher education. • Devlin & Samarawickrema (2010) • facilitating student engagement; • developing curriculum that demonstrates mastery of the field and anticipates students’ future needs; • fostering independent learning through approaches to assessment and feedback; • being respectful of both individual student needs and broader equality and diversity agendas

4. TEP: • To recognize innovation and enhancement from local initiatives through mainstreaming within institutions (Southwell, Gannaway, Orrell, Chalmers & Abraham 2010) • effective leadership and management at a variety of levels: i.e. clear goals, a shared vision, stable and consistent leadership and a level of commitment to the success of the project • recognition of the need for change and the necessary skills to enact it, via reflective practice and engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning • funding design

5. to support and recognize Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Brew & Ginns 2008) • to provide and explicitly value inter-professional support in the process of supporting teaching excellence award applications (Layton & Brown 2011; Southwell, Gannaway, Orrell, Chalmers & Abraham 2010) and excellence in teaching practice (Bluteau & Krumins 2008); • to support a range of significant social networks or communities of practice which interact through enforced intersections within the institution. These have an explicit role to assist individual teaching expertise development and ensure both sustainability and a variety of influences on enhancement (Jones 2010).

6. The measurement of quality teaching • many researchers have argued that it is possible to consider a student as a customer (Shank, Walker and Hayes, 1995; Joseph, Yakhou and Stone, 2005) • Many researchers have seen a link between service quality and satisfaction (Theodorakis et al. 2001; Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Bigne, Moliner and Sanchez, 2003; Sultan and Wong, 2012).

7. Gaps in the literature • Not only student but also teacher is an important role (customer) under the project of teaching excellence (TEP). • Policy effects: How big does the difference between universities with TEP and without TEP?

8. Empirical Data • 12 universitieswith TEP + 8 universities without TEP • Collected from TEP application proposals (projects) of the Ministry of Education. • All are technological institutes and colleges. • Student satisfactions are surveyed on four-year undergraduate students. • Teacher satisfactions are surveyed on assistant professors, associate professors, and professors.

9. Method • Group comparison: With TEP vs. without TEP • Regression model: • Effects of Knowledge-action Integration includes: • License pass rate (2013) • Employment rate (2013) • Satisfaction: • Teachers’ satisfaction • Students’ satisfaction

10. Empirical Results

14. Conclusion • Teacher’s Satisfactions > Students’ Satisfactions under TEP • Universities with TEP have higher License pass rate, but employment rate are not significant higher than that of universities without TEP. • The TEP can improve teachers’ satisfactionsbut not students’ satisfactions. • TEP can improve License pass rate, but employment rate can improve students’ satisfactions.