Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities Conference

Vivienne Bozalek, Wendy McMillan and I just attended the OLCK Conference in Milan at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - a beautiful old campus. So old that some of the venues had relics on display, one even had a necropolis from the third century AD - I hope that is not a metaphor for the university today! The conference has a focus on organizational management and a theoretical underpinning of the conference was a practice based approach. It was extremely friendly and non-pompous, and one great feature during the parallel sessions was a series of symposia on a theme,

for example authorship, with three presentations and  after each presentation there was a respondent, before the discussion was opened to the floor. This worked particularly well.

A highlight was the second keynote by Silvia Gerardi, who spoke both on affect and on theorizing practice (Gerardi, S. 2012. How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). Her writing is very accessible for those who want to be introduced to theorizing about practices. There were several innovative ways of presenting and communicating at the conference, one of which was a talk artist, who drew on a large surface while Silvia was talking. (See at the beginning of this post.) Another was the conference dinner, where a pianist was accompanied by a percussionist and an artist. His completed work is also shown here.

I gave a presentation on the Structure, Culture and Agency (S, C, A) project. The paper was asking some questions about the kinds of theories we use in our research, how we go about choosing them,  whether theories can be combined, and how. I used the data from the project to illustrate these points, showing in the process that some issues are better explicated through a social realist approach, and some issues through a practice based/socio-material approach. However, there are aspects of these two approaches where they appear to be commensurate, and aspects where they do not appear as commensurate. I am hoping that these questions will receive more airtime in the future, as myself, Vivienne Bozalek and Peter Kahn are planning to edit a book on the question of theorising learning to teach and I am hoping that quite a lot of the data from the S, C and A project will be featured in the book.

Leibowitz being and becoming a good university teacher from Brenda Leibowitz

Presentations at Heltasa, Free State University, November 2014

The Structure, Culture and Agency team presented one panel and two individual papers at the annual Heltasa Conference at Free State University in Bloemfontein in November 2014. The panel consisted of a series of presentations on the research findings in relation to institutional context:

                              

Final structure, culture and ageny panel from Brenda Leibowitz

Jeff Jawitz and Teresa Perez from UCT made an interesting presentation about choices to participate in professional development activities, attitudes towards time and perceptions of risk:

                              

Jeff heltasa conf presentation nov 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

And finally, Lynn Quinn and Jo-Anne Vorster made a presentation about their PGDIP in HE and the need to research lecturers' learning approaches, in the same way that there is a need to research students' learning approaches:

                              

Quinn & vorster heltasa 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Updates

Clever Ndebele has written a new paper using an Archerian framework:

Conceptualizing a Staff Development Agenda for the Professionalisation of Teaching at a South African University: Attempts at an Action Plan, in Anthropologist 18 (2), 629 - 638.

ABSTRACT:  This study was inspired by the author’s participation in a Post Graduate Diploma in Higher Education course at one South African University. As part of the requirements for the successful completion of the Diploma, one had to design an educational development agenda for a university. Using the Archerian social realist theoretical framework this paper conceptualises an agenda for the professional development of academics in their role as teachers at the University of Higher Learning. The study argues that while structures can be put in place, it is the agency enacting those structural roles and working in the domain of culture that can actualize an educational
development agenda. Based on this argument, the study recommends a commitment from management as key agents in the provision of resources for the implementation of the proposed educational staff development agenda.

Vivienne Bozalek, Patience Sipuka and I gave a paper at the UKZN Teaching and Learning Conference, 25 - 27 September 2014, at the Edewood Campus, Durban, thus taking the research to a new audience. The conference itself was interesting, with keynotes by Gayatri Spivak (very refreshing and iconoclastic), William Pinar (he gave a strong critique of the CHE Report on the Four Year Curriculum) and Reitumetse Mabokela, and ex-South African who now works at Michigan State. She gave an impassioned keynote about the state of higher education in South Africa, and the relative inability to transform the sector in terms of student outcomes and staff representativity. She argued that it is the responsibility of all in the sector to try and make a difference, we cannot just blame those at the top. This resonates well with the idea of Structure, Culture - and Agency, I would argue.

The Professional Development of Academics with Regard to the Teaching Role – an Inter-institutional Investigation from Brenda Leibowitz

The S, C and A group has been busy - latest news

Completion of Phase One

We have now completed all eight institutional case studies. We have started compiling a full report on the basis of the eight studies, and hope to have the report complete well before the end of this year. Our recommendations at this stage include the following:

• that research be conducted into the ways in which history, resources, conditions of employment and geography impact on teaching;
• the discourse, science and art of teaching needs to be uplifted nationally; 
• the status of teaching and learning should be recognized; 
• time and resources need to be made available for professional development;
• the findings indicate a binary between research and teaching which should be addressed;
• communities of practice should be supported as the data indicates that academics seek assistance from colleagues for teaching; 
• the capacity, image and status of professional developers is variable across institutions, and should receive attention.

Latest Publications

Our two most recent publications are:

1. Leibowitz, B. 2014. Conducive Environments for the Promotion of Quality Teaching in Higher Education in South Africa. Cristal, 2 (1) 47 - 73. 
2. Ndebele, C. and Maphosa, C. 2014. Voices of Educational Developers on the Enabling and Constraining Conditions in the Uptake of Professional Development Opportunities by Academics at a South African University. International Journal of Educational Science, 7 (1) 169 - 182.  

Writing Retreat and Future Plans

18 members of the project participated in a very productive writing retreat at Montefleur, near Stellenbosch. We wrote, we walked and we formulated plans for the future. The plans include: a panel and several papers for the 2014 annual Heltasa conference; a colloquium on professional development, including on the findings from our project, which will be held the Cape in the last week of July 2015; and an edited volume on quality teaching and professional development with a focus on the social and relational aspects. 

Here are photos from the retreat:

What does a 'depth ontology' imply for research on quality teaching and professional development in higher education?

By now several papers have emerged from the Structure, Culture and Agency project, including one which considers significant structural and cultural factors influencing teaching and learning and professional development across the eight higher education institutions in our paper in Higher Education (Leibowitz, Bozalek, van Schalkwyk and Winberg, DOI 10.1007/s10734-014-9777-2) and several others listed in the pages on this blog-site. But I would like to concentrate on the Leibowitz et al study referred to here, in order to tease out something that has been worrying me about our own research using as guiding concept, the interplay of structure, culture and agency. In this article, the focus is on enabling and constraining factors as perceived in particular by academic developers, and this is discussed as they appear to play themselves out across eight sites. The result, in my view, does not lead to 'depth', and makes me wonder how we have benefitted from basing our research on a 'depth ontology'. It feels, by contrast, rather 'flat', and could have been achieved without reference to the work of Margaret Archer at all. It points to a risk associated with multi-site studies, of not looking at the interplay between the dimensions. The way forwards for the analysis of data in studies using the interplay of structure, culture and agency, it seems to me, is provided by three questions which Margaret Archer poses in the article she wrote with Dave Elder-Vass, in 2011. The three questions she poses in the extract below, can be usefully adapted, and can form the base for analysis of data for our own project, and others considering the interplay, and how teaching and learning contexts can be enhanced. I am quoting from the rather enjoyable article to read, by Archer and Elder-Vass, in full:

(a) My own concern as a working sociologist is to develop and refine an analytical

framework that is useful for conducting substantive analyses of why the cultural order

– or part of it – is, in Max Weber’s words, ‘so rather than otherwise’. That is why I call

the Morphogenetic approach an ‘explanatory framework’, in other words, a practical

toolkit (Parker, 2000: 69–85). This means attempting to provide guidelines to produce

particular explanations of cultural phenomena in different times and places, the most

important being:

How the prior context in which cultural interaction develops influences the form it

takes.

Which relations between agents respond most closely to these influences and which

tend to cross-cut or nullify them.

Most generally, under what conditions cultural interaction results in morphostasis

rather than morphogenesis.

One can just as easily apply this to the structural order as well, or to both the cultural and structural, at the same time. In a future article, to come out shortly in Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CRISTAL), I pay more attention to the human and agentic element. I believe that if we do wish to understand how teaching and learning can be enhanced, it is precisely the interplay between structure, culture and human interaction, that needs to be investigated. What interests me personally in all of this, is the human or individual component, and the extent to which this is indeed reflexive, or more unconscious or habitual or conditioned, as critics of the work of Margaret Archer argue. 

O

Archer, M.S. & Elder-Vass, D., 2011. Cultural System or norm circles? An exchange. European Journal of Social Theory, 15(1), pp.93–115. Available at: http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/1368431011423592 [Accessed May 31, 2014].

Leibowitz, B., Bozalek, V., van Schalkwyk, S & Winberg, C. 2014. Institutional context matters: the professional development of academics as teachers in South African higher education. Higher Education. Available at: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10734-014-9777-2 [Accessed July 2, 2014].

Conference presentations by Structure, Culture and Agency team

June has been a busy month for the Structure, Culture and Agency team. We made five presentations at the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) Conference in Stockholm and one poster presentation at the Propel Conference in Stirling. Most of these have been written up for publication or are being written up at our up and coming writing retreat at the end of July. They are mostly based on the idea of the interplay between structure, culture and agency, and are mostly based on the institutional case studies.

Chris Winberg's presentation at ICED, Stockholm, 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Clever Ndebele's presentation at ICED, Stockholm, June 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Leibowitz, Bozalek, van Schalkwyk and Winberg presentation at ICED, Stockholm June 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Leibowitz, Garraway and Farmer presentation at ICED Conference, Stockholm, June 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Jeff Jawitz also made a presentation on the UCT case study, which is available as part of the ICED proceedings. And finally, Wendy McMillan and Natalie Gordon made a poster presentation based on an interview with one lecturer, using complexity theory:

Here are some photos of some of the South African gang enjoying Stockholm:

New article from project on the influence of institutional context on quality teaching

The latest article based on the Structure, Culture and Agency project is entitled Institutional Context Matters: the professional development of academics as teachers in South African Higher Education, by Brenda Leibowitz, Vivienne Bozalek, Susan van Schalkwyk and Chris Winberg (Higher Education, DOI 10.1007/s10734-014-9777-2).

Abstract: This study features the concept of ‘context’ and how various macro, meso and micro features of the social system play themselves out in any setting. Using South Africa as an example, it explores the features that may constrain or enable professional development, quality teaching and the work of teaching and learning centres at eight universities in varied socio-cultural settings. The article draws on the work of critical realists and their explication of the concepts of structure, culture and agency. The research design was participatory, where members of teaching and learning centres at the eight institutions defined the aims and key questions for the study. They collected the data on which this article is based, namely a series of descriptive and reflective reports. The findings clustered around six themes: history, geography and resources; leadership and administrative processes; beliefs about quality teaching and staff development; recognition and appraisal; and capacity, image and status of the TLC staff. These features play out in unique and unpredictable constellations in each different context, while at the same time, clusters of features adhere together. Whilst there is no one to one, predictive relationship between university type and outcome, there is a sense that socio-economic contextual features are salient and require greater attention than other features.

Presentation by Susan van Schalkwyk and Julia Blitz at Ottawa Conference, 25 - 29 April 2014

Julia Blitz and Susan van Schalkwyk, members of the Structure, Culture and Agency research project, made a presentation on data from the project at the 12th Canadian Conference on Medical Education in Ottawa, Ontario, on 25 - 29 April 2014. They used the work of Lieff to show that the qualitative data derived from the open ended responses to a survey conducted at participating universities could be analyzed in terms of four lenses: political, structural, symbolic and human resource. (See S Lieff 'Faculty development: Yesterday, today and tomorrow: Guide supplement'. 33.2-Viewpoint, Medical Teacher, 32, 429-431, 2010). Their conclusion is contained in the slide below.

Interplay of Structure, Culture and Agency: A study on Professional Development in Higher EducationAccessing 

development activiTheyteaching role

Research Findings

The initial three year funding cycle for this project has come to an end. We are waiting to hear whether the application for a new round of funding has been successful. In the meantime we have reported on this first cycle to the National Research Foundation. While we were busy with this first cycle there were high points, when it felt like our collaboration was making a real difference to our working lives and we were really getting somewhere. (The photos below give a sense that working together is fun, as well as a lot of hard work.)  But there were other moments when it felt we were so busy with our personal and professional lives, or so mired in a morass of data, that we were merely treading water. Now that I complete this report, I realize we have really achieved a great deal. The synthesis of findings is in the page on Report to NRF 2014, and the conclusion is the following:"The requirement by the National Research Foundation that proposals on education research be based on a collaboration amongst at least three institutions, one of which is rural, has stimulated a valuable mode of inquiry, one which could not have yielded the richness and variety of data, had it been conducted in one institution, or similar institutions.  The key finding of this not-as-yet concluded research project, is that there is a great need for attention to the teaching role in South Africa, and for capacity building of the institutional role-players, both management and professional developers, to support this role. Change at the level of the system (structural and cultural) are required to effect this." 

New paper by team members on professional development - and the ethics of care

A new paper has been produced on professional development, by Vivienne Bozalek, Wendy McMillan, Delia Marshall, Melvyn November, Andre Daniels and Toni Sylvester. Just appearing in Teaching in Higher Education,  it is entitled: Analysing the professional development of teaching and learning from a political ethics of care perspective. This is very useful if you want to learn a bit more about the political ethics of care, and how it can be applied to the professional development of academics. It is also a very interesting paper in that it is written by a group who operated as a team, to lead professional development retreats. 

 To cite this article: Vivienne Grace Bozalek, Wendy McMillan, Delia E. Marshall, Melvyn November,
Andre Daniels & Toni Sylvester , Teaching in Higher Education (2014): Analysing the professional
development of teaching and learning from a political ethics of care perspective, Teaching in

Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2014.880681

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2014.880681

Here is the abstract: 

This paper uses Tronto’s political ethics of care as a normative framework to evaluate
a model of teaching and learning professional development. This framework identifies
five integrated moral elements of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence,
responsiveness and trust. This paper explicates on each of these elements to evaluate
the piloting and implementation of a teaching and learning professional development
model at a South African higher education institution. The political ethics of care was
found to be a useful normative framework for a group of higher educators to reflect on
the process of engaging in teaching and learning professional development in that it
revealed the importance of differential power relations, the importance of working
collaboratively and being attentive to the needs of both caregivers and care receivers.
Keywords: political ethics of care; normative framework; professional development;

higher education; teaching and learning

We were concerned about the findings and the process

This project has had a primary aim, namely to consider how contextual influences influence the take-up of professional development opportunities by academics in South African universities. The research design has been participatory, where the investigators are members of centres for teaching and learning, and thus have a key stake in the outcome of the research. The data has been collected at macro and micro levels: we analyzed national higher education policies and initiatives; we interviewed senior managers at each institution and we interviewed a minimum of ten lecturers at each of the institutions. we also generated descriptive and reflective reports on the conditions for teaching and learning at each institution. By December 2013 we have collected all the data (over 120 interviews transcribed) and have completed four of the eight case studies and have sent a number of manuscripts to journals.

It became clear early on in the project that the attention was both on the research findings and on the research process: we were concerned to build the research capacity of the team members and to reflect on the optimal conditions for researchers to collaborate and support each other's identity development as researchers. Here we were in session, learning about social realism, coding and talking about collaboration:

Short summary of the project

This was a National Research Foundation (NRF) funded project entitled “The Interplay of Structure, Culture and Agency: contextual influences on the professional development of academics as teachers in Higher Education in South Africa” which was undertaken by researchers at eight universities during 2011 – 2013. The project was an investigation into contextual influences on the professional development of academics as teachers in higher education in South Africa. It was based on an analysis of the national context and eight case studies at public higher education institutions. The eight institutions and sites for the case studies were: Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Durban University of Technology, Fort Hare University, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University, University of Cape Town, University of Venda and the University of the Western Cape. The lead research institution was Stellenbosch University.

The project emerged out of a call from the NRF for educational research to be undertaken collaboratively, by researchers from at least three institutions, of which one should be rural. A team of 18 researchers were motivated to become involved in this project as they all work to enhance teaching and learning in their universities. The team saw this project as an opportunity to reflect on their own institutional contexts and on quality teaching and the way professional development with regard to the teaching role is supported at their institutions and their academic development units.

The purpose of the research was threefold:

·       to make suggestions about how to enhance professional development with regard to teaching at each of the eight participating institutions;

·       to make suggestions at the national level for appropriate and context-sensitive policy to enhance teaching and learning in South Africa;

·   to contribute to the international debates on professional development with regard to teaching and learning with specific reference to the concepts of ‘structure, culture and agency’ as developed in the work of social realist Margaret Archer. 

Research team members:

Cape Peninsula University of Technology:

James Garraway

Chris Winberg

Durban University of Technology:

Gita Mistri

Julian Vooght

Rhodes University:

Chrissie Boughey

Lynn Quinn

Silvana Barbali

Jo-Anne Vorster

University of Cape Town:

Jeff Jawitz

June Pym

Kevin Williams

University of Fort Hare:

Vuyisile Nkonki

University of Stellenbosch:

Nicoline Herman

Brenda Leibowitz

Susan van Schalkwyk

Jean Farmer

University of Venda:

Cosmas Maphosa

Clever Ndebele

University of the Western Cape:

Vivienne Bozalek

Wendy McMillan

The principal investigator was Brenda Leibowitz, from the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Stellenbosch University. 

A new funding proposal has been submitted to the NRF for 2014 - 2016. The team is awaiting the outcome.