I’ve been giving a lot of advice to people applying for Senior Fellowship of AdvanceHE (SFHEA) recently. A lot of these colleagues are brilliant educators, but have somewhat struggled to find the focus required in their application. Here I thought I would summarise some of the recurring pieces of advice I have given.

Focus on the criteria

A lot of people start their applications by writing out their career history, or by copying text over from their most recent promotion application. Both strategies can end up with an application that does not meet the criteria for SFHEA, and ends up needing a lot of frustrating re-writes.

In the same way as when applying for promotion or a grant application, start with the SFHEA criteria defined by AdvanceHE:

To be awarded Senior Fellowship, individuals must evidence that their effective and inclusive practice meets the following three Descriptor 3 criteria statements: 

• D3.1 a sustained record of leading or influencing the practice of those who teach and/or support high quality learning
• D3.2 practice that is effective, inclusive and integrates all Dimensions [of the Professional Standards Framework 2023]
• D3.3 practice that extends significantly beyond direct teaching and/or direct support for learning 

Let’s unpick these criteria a little more one-by-one to understand what they really mean

D3.1 A sustained record of leading or influencing the practice of those who teach and/or support high quality learning

There are a few key aspects here you need to focus on:

• A sustained record. You need to have been doing this for a while – usually at least two years, or have influenced the practice of multiple individuals. Mentoring one colleague for 3 months is not sufficient
• Leading or influencing. SFHEA isn’t about your own teaching, however excellent or innovative you are. It is about how you influence the practice of others. This can be through formal leadership roles (e.g. programme director) or through informal leadership (e.g. leading a departmental decolonisation of the curriculum project or organising a national education focussed meeting that has had impact).
• Teach and/or support. SFHEA is inclusive of multiple job roles, not just academic teaching staff. If you can demonstrate your influence in those who support high quality learning, you can get SFHEA. This could be from registry, from a quality team, from the library, from estates management, from student support services. All make invaluable contributions to high quality learning, so can and should be recognised by SFHEA. (I apologise that the examples I use are perhaps a bit too focussed on academic teaching staff, but the advice should still be relevant to all)

The emphasis has to be on how you have changed what other people do. This means you have to use the language of “I led an initiative to …” “I mentored ….” “As programme leader, I supported my team to ….”. This can feel uncomfortable if you aren’t used to writing this way, but the language of leadership and influence matters. Some feel uncomfortable that they are taking the credit for work that other people did. I reframe this as ‘how would that work have been different had you not influenced it? If you can see the change you are responsible for, you can and should take that credit.

D3.2 Practice that is effective, inclusive and integrates all Dimensions

Again – a few aspects you need to focus on:

• Effective. Your need to demonstrate how your practice achieves high outcomes and/or standards, or has improved these. You need to be able to make a clear connection between what you do and that positive impact.
• Inclusive. You have to be able to demonstrate that your work has a positive effect on all learners and/or staff. Work that only impacts an elite self-selecting cohort will not be awarded SFHEA. See www.inclusiveeducationframework.info for resources and checklists that might help identify your inclusive practice
• All dimensions of the Professional Standards Framework 2023. I’m not going to go through all aspects of PSF2023 here, but it is important you address all of them in your application, preferably at least twice.

To ensure you hit D3.2, I would use the language of ‘effective’ and ‘inclusive’ throughout your application. Make it really obvious to the reader how these are embedded in the work you describe.

D3.3 Practice that extends significantly beyond direct teaching and/or direct support for learning

You can’t get SFHEA just by being an excellent classroom teacher – that is FHEA level work. D3.3 requires focus on a breadth of educational activities, not just direct student-facing activity.

Examples of this might be

• Curriculum design and development
• Quality assurance work
• Engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning
• Work shared or conducted within internal/institutional communities of practice
• Widening participation and outreach activity
• Work done through teaching and learning committees
• Work done with professional bodies
• Authorship of published teaching materials (e.g. textbooks, online courses, open educational resources)
• Contribution to external/national communities of practice within your discipline
• Collaborative teaching enhancement projects between institutions, or between universities and external organisations

I would start preparing a SFHEA application by considering the breadth of what you do. I often find people are thinking in a relatively narrow way, but have a lot more to bring into an application than they had initially thought.

It can be really helpful to do this as a conversation with an experienced colleague. I regularly sit with colleagues and explore what they do, mapping that activity against PSF2023. I usually find that 75% of PSF2023 is easy to hit, and then focus the discussion on the remaining dimensions. Sometimes people have done something relevant, other times they haven’t. If there are gaps in the PSF I usually then recommend something they could get involved in to hit that requirement.

Note that you don’t have to demonstrate ‘sustained influence on others’ for every single dimension of the PSF. You should be at this standard for most of them, but if there are one or two that you have only recently started to work to that will be ok if the rest of your application is solid

Focus on the evidence to support your case

It is not enough to state that you are meeting these criteria. To be awarded SFHEA you must have evidence of meeting those criteria.

A good SFHEA application will include a variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence all the way through the application. What this evidence looks like will be different for different applications, but common forms of evidence are:

Quantitative

• Positive student outcomes – this might be pass rates, degree completion rates, awarding gaps.
• Student engagement – this could be engagement with your VLE, attendance, enrollments
• Student satisfaction – this could be National Student Survey (NSS) results, module evaluations
• Engagement with published resources – this could be downloads of resources from the National Teaching Repository, hits on a teaching related social media platform, downloads or citations of published papers [note that education related papers typically have lower citation rates than other disciplines, so citations might not be the best evidence of impact]

Qualitative

• Student experience – quotes from students either directly, via module evaluations, NSS etc
• Staff testimonials – quotes from colleagues who have been influenced by you (eg mentees) or those who can verify your influence (eg head of department). If you can get testimonials from outside your immediate department this is really helpful, but you can achieve SFHEA with a really clear narrative of impact on others within your local context.

To get SFHEA, it is essential to be able to relate this evidence to your leadership or influence on others. Evidence of your own classroom practices, however excellent, is not sufficient for SFHEA. For example:

• You mentored a junior colleague to develop their teaching practice. Your evidence could then be (i) a quote from the mentee to describe your impact and (ii) evidence of increased engagement with their module as a result of pedagogies they implemented due to your mentorship.
• You led an assessment review for your programme, developed new assessment briefs and marking criteria that were used by your team. Your evidence would then be (i) a quote your head of department about the impact of your leadership and (ii) evidence of narrower awarding gaps on all modules in the programme (not just yours)
• You presented your pedagogical approach at your institutional teaching and learning conferences. A colleague in another department starts using your approach. Your evidence could be (I) improved module evaluation for their modules, (ii) student quotes from that departments NSS that describe the impact of that pedagogy and (iii) a quote from that colleague to say how positive the adoption of your pedagogical approach has been in their teaching.

It can take time to gather this evidence, but it is an essential part of the process. Without the evidence your application will not be successful. For further guidance see A beginners guide to evidencing your teaching practice.

Overall reflections and advice

I hope this criteria driven advice has been useful to you. Remember that SFHEA isn’t a narrative CV, or a promotion application. It has clear criteria and you need to focus your application on those requirements. Don’t write lots of irrelevant stuff that doesn’t help you demonstrate the criteria. Think about how you advise students to approach an assignment brief – start with the marking criteria and work backwards to ensure you meet all the requirements. SFHEA is exactly the same.

Start with the D3 criteria and PSF2023. Against those, map out what you do, and what you can evidence. If you have gaps you may need to put your application to one side for a little while, in order to ensure that you can hit all of the requirements. If you have done work against them all but have no evidence, focus your energies on assembling that evidence before you spend lots of time writing.

Once you have all of the right activity and evidence of impact you should find it much easier to write your application. The language also matters. Your writing should mirror the criteria, making it clear how you meet all of the elements required. Directly use the language of ‘influence’, ‘effective’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘leadership’ throughout. Take ownership of your influence and leadership through your writing, and a successful SFHEA application should be very achievable.

Further reading

Smith, D and Hubbard, KE (2023). A beginner’s guide to evidencing your teaching practice. The Biochemist; 45 (2): 6–10. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2023_110

For transparency, here is my SFHEA application. This was written against the old criteria though (UKPSF), so doesn’t entirely align with the advice above.