Bringing about Change in Teaching and Learning at Department Level

Report on the GEES Subject Centre Departmental Change Initiative

Mick Healey1, Michael Bradford2, Carolyn Roberts3 and Yolande Knight4

1University of Gloucestershire, 2University of Manchester, 3University of Oxford, 4University of Plymouth

May 2010

Executive Summary

“It was excellent” “It’s been really amazing” “Brilliant” “It was wonderful”

Team leaders’comments about theDepartment Change Initiative residential workshop

Bringing about change to teaching and learning in a department is a key issue for department leaders. The department is arguably the key organisational unit at which the core teaching and learning experiences of most students are designed and implemented. This GEES Department Change Initiative grew out of a desire to be more strategic about supporting changes in teaching and learning. It adapted ideas developed in the ChangeAcademy programme and applied them at a departmental level. It is an innovative initiative and GEES is the first Subject Centre to implement the ChangeAcademy principles at department level. This report investigates curricula changes which are in the process of being implemented. It covers the critical ‘framing’ stage, and the early stages of implementation of changes to curricula.

GEES departments in four different universities established teams of four to five participants with different roles and levels of seniority, including students. Whilst two teams were single-discipline department groups, one team was interdisciplinary and another was seeking synergies in course delivery from the merger of three previous departments. The year longinitiativewas in three phases: a) bidding and support of team development; b) 48-hour three day residential event; and c) development of the projects over the subsequent six months. The programme was designed and delivered by three senior staff from the GEES disciplines experienced in running learning and teaching change workshops, with the active support of the GEES Associate Director.

The main conclusion to emerge from the interviews, self-completed questionnaires and the authors’ observations as participants is that overall the GEES Departmental Change Initiative was highly effective at supporting departmental teams to clarify, design and plan significant curriculum related initiatives. Among the key features of the initiative which made it successful are:

  • The inclusion of the planned initiative’s key stakeholders, including students and where appropriate learning support staff
  • The supported change residential event, which took the teams off campus for at least two days and immersed them in a mixture of activities, particularly emphasising creative thinking, and time to plan
  • The discipline-based nature of the event, which enhanced the benefits of networking with members of the other teams
  • Pre- and post-event telephone discussions, which provided critical support to the team leaders
  • Respected, experienced supporters who acted as independent critical friends of the teams and encouraged them to think of a range of ways of meeting their objectives.

Against these benefits has to be balanced the intensive nature of the programme from the point of view of the Subject Centre. It is difficult to calculate a cost-benefit ratio, especially for changes which have yet to be implemented fully in their departments. However, the indications from the participants are that the initiative has added considerable value to the quality of the teaching and learning which the four departments have designed and planned. Arguably the projects supported in this initiative will impact on the quality of student learning more extensively than many of the smaller projects traditionally supported by Subject Centres, which are usually targeted at individual modules or courses. In the context of restricted resources for Higher Education nationally, serious consideration should be given to moving from this pilot initiative to a full programme of supporting strategic changes at departmental level. This applies not only to GEES, but to work in the other Higher Education Academy-supported Subject Centres, and to whatever other discipline-based initiatives designed to support teaching and learning may emerge in the future.

Contents

Executive Summary 2

Main Report 4

  1. Context and rationale 4
  1. Key features of the initiative 5
  1. Researching the initiative 6
  1. Understanding curriculum design 7
  1. Understanding the management of change in higher education 7
  1. Supporting the GEES department change initiative 8
  1. Expectations of the initiative 9
  1. Experiences of the event11
  1. Post-event developments15
  1. Conclusions16

Appendix 1 GEES Department Change Event Programme18

Appendix 2 Approaches to Curriculum Design20

Appendix 3 Creative Methods for Planning Change25

Appendix 4 GEES Department Change Case Studies26

References39

Main Report

“I want you to imagine that you have been asked to form a new department of geography. Given the rare opportunity to write without constraint, would your curricula bear much resemblance to most of the formal courses of study to be found today? With any luck your answer will be something like, good grief no! If your answer is something else … there is not much hope for the future!”

(Gould, 1973, 253)

  1. Context and rationale

This report is the outcome of a supported change programme. Bringing about Change in Teaching and Learning at Department Level analyses an initiative undertaken by the Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) Subject Centre with the support of the Centre for Active Learning (CeAL), University of Gloucestershire. The pilot initiativewas developed during 2008 and ran for a year from early 2009 to early 2010. It involved four GEES departmentsfrom Aston, Bath Spa, Lancaster and Newcastle Universities, each of which had a significant curriculum-related change project that they were either planning or were early in the process of developing. Each had a team of four or five people with different roles and levels of seniority, including senior managers, experiences lecturers, new lecturers and support staff. Three of the teams had a student member and one bought along two. The report covers the period of project initiation and development through tothe beginning of the implementationstage for the change. Hence it reports on work in progress rather than completed. However, it covers the critical ‘framing’ stage in designing changes to curricula.

The department, or school, is arguably the key organisational unit in higher education (HE) where teaching and learning is planned, delivered and evaluated. As departments have variously grown and merged in response to the exigencies of the Higher Education market-place for research and teaching, many cover several subject areas, and some draw curriculum strength from the associations. This has led department heads to seek strategic changes in the organisation of teaching and learning which straddle whole departments. Alternatively, in some cases staff from more than one department may collaborate on interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary tuition. Examples of both of these types of change are seen in this study.

The report is based on research undertaken by the authorsduring the course of the programme to explore the department teams’ experiences of designing, developing and beginning to implement specific strategic teaching and learning projects and initiatives. The research involved a mixture of individual participant reflections and semi-structured interviews, observations and group discussions. It aimed to capture the ‘journey travelled’ by the teams in managing their change initiatives, and to draw conclusions about the transferability of the approach.

The programme was originally inspired by Change Academy© – a year-long facilitative programme led by the Higher Education Academy and the Leadership Foundation, which enables teams from HEIs to develop the knowledge, capacity and enthusiasm for achieving complex institutional change (Bradford, 2010). TheDepartment Change programme is innovative in that it is the first to apply the core principles of ChangeAcademy at department level. In its first decade of existence GEES has largely focussed on supporting the learning and teaching needs of individual faculty. This initiative aimed to support the needs of departments. It is the first of the 24 national Subject Centres to develop such a department change event. A thematic-based initiative examining the development and embedding of inclusive policy and practice in 10 institutions by the HE Academy used a similar approach to this programme (May and Bridger, 2010). Although we were not aware of this initiative when undertaking ours we found the structure of their report helpful when preparing ours.

This report disseminates the learning gained from the experiences of the four departments across the GEES subject areas and the wider HE sector. It is hoped that the findings will stimulate others to undertake further work to understand the nature of the change process at department level and how it might be supported to enhance the quality of student learning.

  1. Key features of the initiative

The initiative shared many of the key features May and Bridger (2010) identified in their programme:

  • Self-identified change: Departments were required to identify the rationale and aims of the proposed change and the relationship with the department’s and institution’s strategies. They had also to demonstrate the impact on the students’ learning experiences.
  • A facilitative initiative: The initiative was designed to support the department teams to focus on, and exchange ideas about teaching and learning development and implementation. It offered space away from the home institution, prompted discussion and debate, provided input from change consultants and access to relevant research evidence, tools and resources. The programme provided a mix of institutional, role-based and cross-team working.
  • A longitudinal programme of engagements: The initiative involved a series of supported events for team leaders, and a three-day residential event for all team members.
  • The involvement of department teams: As a condition of participation, departments were required to nominate a team of three to five people drawn from across the department, including where possible a student member.
  • Working alongside other GEES departments: By bringing teams together, the programme enabled the participating departments to work alongside others who were planningteaching and learning changes. This allowed for the sharing of experiences, challenges and solutions and supported networking across institutions.
  • Promoting the development of evidence-informed practice: The initiative was informed by a number of relevant research studies.
  • Seeking to share the learning with the sector: From the start of the process, the initiative was underpinned by research to capture the ‘journey travelled’ by the teams over the course of the programme so that others may learn from the work they have undertaken.

Four departments from different UK universities submitted proposals. One was planning a new interdisciplinary undergraduate programme in sustainable development; another wanted to reconceptualise their first year programme following a merger of geography, environmental science and ecology faculty into a new department. The third wished to develop a programme to support the varied backgrounds of students coming into their twelve month Masters programmes; while the fourth wanted to plan how to engage employers and community groups more effectively in their curricula (Table 1).

The main event in the programme was a 48-hour workshop over three days. This intensive structured event consisted of a mixture of plenary sessions, helping the participants explore a variety of approaches to change and curriculum design and to rethink their projects creatively; team sessions where projects were developed in more detail; and social teambuilding events (Appendix 1). The team leaders were supported in characterising their projects and choosing their teams before the event and discussing progress and issues arising during and after the event. Significantly all three supporters of the teams have experience of being Heads of GEES Departments, leading major national teaching and learning projects, and running workshops designed tofacilitate change. All three are National Teaching Fellows.

Table 1 Summary of the change initiatives

Department and Institution / Theme of change initiative / Key aim(s)
Interdisciplinary Studies, AstonUniversity / Sustainable development and management: designing an interdisciplinary degree / To develop a new degree in sustainable development and management that provides a coherent and innovative approach to the learning and teaching of environmental and sustainable issues
Department of Geography, BathSpaUniversity / Employability and engagement in the curriculum / To develop integrated external engagement opportunities for all students whilst retaining ownership, distinctiveness and academic integrity of programmes
Lancaster Environment Centre, LancasterUniversity / Creating opportunities from a departmental merger: re-evaluating first year teaching across the GEES disciplines / To explore ways of removing overlap between first year subjects, whilst maintaining a high level of embedded skills training
School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, University of Newcastle / Making sense of postgraduate study: transition issues / To improve transition for postgraduate taught students (especially international students) by developing pre-sessional information and integrated skills and academic competency training in the early weeks of teaching
  1. Researching the initiative

A mixture of qualitative methods were used to research the experience of the teams and their leaders, including interviews, discussions, self-completed reflections, and observations. Although the departments and institutions who participated in the pilot are named with their agreement, comments of individual participants have been kept anonymous.

Discussions took place with the team leaders once before the residential, once during the event, and once after. Each of the team members was asked to complete a one-side proforma reflecting on their expectations before the event; 12 were returned. Interviews, lasting between 10 and 20 minutes,were held with 10 team members in the final 24 hours of the residential event and with each of the team leaders in the week following the event. A similar reflection proforma was distributed six months after the event, but insufficient were returned to analyse. Finally, as the researchers were also the supporters of the initiative, an important source of data was our own observations and discussions between the GEES team. This data was supplemented by summary case studies of each of the initiatives written six months after the event by the team leaders (Appendix 4), our reading of the literature on curriculum change and change management, and our experience of facilitating curriculum change in other contexts.

  1. Understanding curriculum design

As the programme was concerned with bringing about change in teaching and learning at department level it is important to put the proposed change initiatives in the context of approaches to curriculum design. Jenkins (1998) usefully distinguishes between the curriculum that:

  • Is intended by staff and designed before the student enters the course
  • Is delivered by the staff or learning materials (including books and software)
  • The student learns and experiences
  • The student makes part of herself or himself and remembers and uses some years later.

A paper outlining three different approaches was prepared for the event (Appendix 2). They were:

  • Engaging the curriculum in HE, based on the work of Barnett and Coate (2005)
  • Developing self-authorship through the Learning Partnership Model,drawing on the work of Baxter Magolda (2001, 2006, 2009)
  • Curriculum design through the analogy of an Ouija board,based on the work of Jenkins (1998)

Delegates were asked in their teams to contrast the approaches and suggest how they might, with appropriate adjustments, inform the design of their team’s project. In the following plenary, delegates identified aspects of each of the approaches that they thought threw light on the issues they were discussing.

  1. Understanding the management of change in higher education

Securing change in HE can be a convoluted process, where there is a tendency to abandon the radical and revert to the familiar in the face of competing pressures, or occasionally of apparently insuperable opposition. Heads of Department, programme leaders, or their equivalents may face hostility from colleagues with different priorities, or from administrative structures that militate against shifts. The precise role of ‘leadership’ for innovation, and the personal qualities allegedly required to be successful, are frequently rather troubling concepts to those placed in positions of responsibility (McKimm, 2004). Lucas and Associates (2000) offer some largely American perspectives on this, emphasising teamwork, shared goals, facilitation and individual reflection, drawing on examples of institutions evolving over decades. Conversely, some of the business-related models for change emphasise decisiveness, rapidity and certainty, and the ability of leaders to motivate and to engage effectively with opposition (for example, Government Office for the South West, 2004).

Bryman (2007), drawing on publications in the UK, USA and Australia, provides a more detailed analysis of HE leadership effectiveness, but comments on the surprising paucity of literature providing meaningful overviews. Summarising, he identifies the need for the leader to be seen to foster a collegial atmosphere, and to advance the department’s cause, as aspects that are particularly relevant to HE. The subtlety of the relationship of academic staff with their work is also emphasised, a more nuanced one than that of many other professional groups, suggesting a need to pay particular attention to the mindsets of colleagues, their views on the legitimacy of the change, and their trust in their leaders. Gibbset al. (2008) take this a little further in the context of research-intensive institutions, but argue that teaching excellence can be achieved in entirely different ways involving widely contrasting styles of leadership behaviour. They conclude that advice and guidance on the leadership of teaching should pay careful attention to the context, rather than make assumptions about the general applicability of leadership theory or advice.

Beyond the level of the individual, the seminal paper on change management in HE, by Trowleret al. (2003), provides an insightful analysis of the different conceptualisations of the change process. This is of value not only in understanding the nature of change after the event, but in providing some sort of map for the journey. They specifically identify the department as the key organisational unit for change, as the intellectual ‘home’ and focus for most faculty. Their analysis includes a classification of models of change into five groups:

  • Technical-rational
  • Resource allocation
  • Diffusionist:epidemiological
  • Kai Zen or continuous quality improvement
  • Models using complexity.

Crucially, Trowler et al.(2003) articulate a view that rational, linear understandings of change (specifically curriculum innovation), and appreciations that are underpinned by an expectation of the journey being simple, are usually inappropriate. Technical-rationalist approaches, such as the well known eight-stage Harvard Business School model of Kotter (1996), are nevertheless of some use in providing a checklist against which to consider different elements of change, whilst recognizing that in practice these do not necessarily occur in the suggested sequence.