The meaning-making of educational proficiency in academic hiring: a blind spot in the black box

Abstract

This article develops knowledge about the meaning and value ascribed to educational proficiency in the recruitment of full professors. Hiring processes reflect standards that organize academia and notions of academic scholarship, its value and quality, and agents involved have an institutional gate-keeping function. The empirical data, external peer review letters, is drawn from an old comprehensive research-intensive university, offering educational programmes within a broad range of scientific domains. Although a large variety of aspects are ascribed to educational proficiency, and variations do occur across scientific domains and reviewers, the main finding is a restricted notion. A special value is assigned to the scope of doctoral supervision and teacher training. Internal individual classroom performance is focused, while scholarly interaction is less emphasized. Reviewers primarily serve as gatekeepers of disciplinary research, not the education thereof, thus educational proficiency is no game changer in the context of academic scholarship.