I am sure I have been guilty of this myself at times; this is simply how we operate nowadays. And of course, you should be proud of good research and share it with the world. The question is, why don't we do this with the successes we achieve in education? After all, we are lecturers, university lecturers, senior lecturers and professors. The word “professor” itself traditionally refers to a person who gives public lessons. In other words, our job titles suggest that we are primarily concerned with education, rather than research.
Recognition and rewards remain a difficult and ongoing issue in the academic world. There is an imbalance in the way the work of academic staff is valued. Research performance is decisive in job applications, career ladders, and status within the academic world. This is despite the fact that the average academic employee has a number of other tasks, the most important of which is teaching. And that is precisely what is in our job title, not research. The discussion about recognition and rewards is therefore actually more about re-evaluation. We have drifted away from our core task of teaching, and this has been replaced by a focus on research. I don't know how and why this happened; I'm sure there are analyses of this, but the question in the discussion about recognition and rewards is rather: how do we drift back?
I think that the first step should be to recognise good education. For research, we have all kinds of (often questionable) lists, from Impact Factors and citations to H-indices and NWO grants. These help us to qualify our research as best we can. When it comes to education, however, quality is much more difficult to capture in lists or indices. We all know that student evaluations say very little about the quality of education. Firstly, they are hardly ever completed by our students, and secondly, a student's assessment says little about what they have actually learned. In addition, in my opinion, but I know this is widely shared, teaching is the “executive work”. It is a task that you “just” have to do, which is ticked off during the performance review.
Education forms the basis of virtually all research conducted at the university. Without good education, many scientific staff would lack the inspiration and knowledge to conduct research. When I studied Business Studies at our university, Jacques van Hoof was the lecturer who inspired me to consider pursuing a PhD. Before Jacques taught me, it had never, ever occurred to me.
Today, countless wonderful initiatives are being developed across the campus, aimed at providing education that motivates and inspires students and potential researchers. Let's start recognising this and giving it a platform. Make interesting educational developments part of faculty newsletters, Town Hall meetings, and performance reviews. In times of budget cuts and declining student numbers (and increasing competition for students!), the future of the university will not depend on a nice publication or grant. It really depends on innovative and inspiring education.
So it is not a question of whether we should recognise and re-evaluate good education; it is an absolute necessity. There is nothing “ordinary” about good education. It is the past, present and future of our university.