We've been busy!

The Structure, Culture and Agency team have been busy. Two new research articles emanating from the project have been published:

James  at the writing retreat, 2015

Garraway, J. 2015. Academic staff development in foundation provision. South African Journal for Higher Education, 29 (1) 26 - 44.
Foundation provision is a specially funded student support initiative for disadvantaged students in South African universities. This research focuses on foundation academic staff development. As with staff development more generally, there is a focus on improving classroom practices to support student learning. Although general and foundation staff development practitioners experience similar difficulties in carrying out their work, there are also particular structural and cultural constraints in foundation academic development. This research analyses foundation staff development as an activity system, using Engestrom’s version of activity theory, in order to better understand and expose tensions in staff development. Issues that are highlighted using this methodology are: confusion between the object of staff development and the means to achieve it; the means to achieve the object may be insufficient; and structures/cultures such as short contracts and marginalisation may constrain how staff development is taken up.

Quinn, L. and Vorster, J. 2015. Pedagogy for fostering criticality, reflectivity and practice in a course on teaching for lecturers. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. Online.

Lynn and Jo at the writing retreat, 2015

Using the concepts of criticality, reflectivity and praxis, the paper presents an analysis of our reflections on participants’ responses to the assessment requirements for a course for lecturers on teaching.  The context in which the course is being taught has changed considerably in the last few years in terms of the mode of delivery, as well as the number and diversity of participants. Our analysis has generated insights into ways in which the course is not meeting all the learning needs of the participants, nor preparing them adequately to demonstrate, in writing, Their learning. Using insights gained, we suggest pedagogic processes and strategies for ensuring that the course focuses on both writing to learn and learning to write; And for assisting participants to acquire the practices to demonstrate their learning in written assessment tasks, using the requisite literacy including criticality, reflectivity and praxis.

A colloquium entitled Contextual Approaches to Professional Development with Regard to the Teaching Role was held at Devon Valley, Stellenbosch, on the 27 July 2015. (The programme is attached). This featured presentations on the research as well as presentations by others in Southern Africa who are conducting research into contextual approaches to academic development. In all, 70 people attended and 20 presentations were made. The day culminated with a panel about theories that may inform research into this field. The final set of findings and recommendations on the basis of the research should be completed in August or September, and will be sent to relevant organizations and role-players. The Structure, Culture and Agency project has funding from the National Research Foundation until the end of 2016. Activities in process and plans are for a book on "Theorising learning to teach in higher education: Sociomaterial, social practice and realist approaches" to be edited by Brenda Leibowitz, Vivienne Bozalek and Peter Kahn, and a monograph on the findings of the project. 

Colleagues at the colloquium, including from the Free State, Rhodes and beyond

John Hannon from La Trobe University and Peter Kahn from Liverpool University, at the colloquium and the retreat. 

The SCA study as ‘currency’ for change: reflections on what this might mean going forward

A key component of the entire SCA project has been that of reflection. Our very first data collection activity required us to reflect on institutional positions, polices and perspectives with regard to teaching and learning. We also essentially asked our interviewees to reflect on their own professional learning, and at then at various points in the project, we as the research team were asked to reflect: on the experience, on the collaboration and on our own professional learning. And then we were asked to contribute to this blog – to share through this less formal yet equally revealing medium, an experience, a process, an event, that came about as a result of the study. Thus, some further reflections …

I spent quite a bit of time contemplating what might be an appropriate title for this posting. What did I really want to say in reporting on a particular outcome of the study? Telling a story was one thing – and might have some value or generate some interest – but my sense was that the sub-text would be more interesting. I was curious about the extent to which my enthusiasm about what had been achieved (uncovered?) as a result of the study at my institution might be clouding my judgment as to what was really happening – and potentially could happen – in changing conversations about teaching and learning at my institution.

But first the story …

As part of the larger study and working with the different data sets (document analysis, survey and in-depth interviews) we (Brenda, Nicoline, Jean and I) worked on our institutional case study report. This was a challenging process as we grappled with issues around audience (who would read this tome?), and argument (what message did we want to get across?). We were fortunate, however. Brenda, as the principal investigator on the project, provided much of the preamble for all of the institutional case studies and this provided an immediate way into the writing process. Nicoline and Jean were both working on their PhDs which were situated within the study. Their scholarly insights helped to strengthen the analysis and the discussion. We shifted between using ‘report-like’ text and following a more discursive approach – highlighting enablers and constraints for the professional learning of academics in their teaching role while seeking to understand what this might mean for teaching and learning at the institution. The institutional case study report is available on request (email brenda@uj.ac.za), its contents are not the focus of this posting. What is interesting is how the document emerged as an instrument for change.

The case study report served at the institution’s Committee for Learning and Teaching at a time when a task team had been commissioned by the Committee to investigate the Promotion and Recognition of Teaching at the institution. This proved serendipitous as the task team took the research findings as set out in the case study report on board as a point of departure for their work. As their set of ground-breaking recommendations (including issues relating to promotion, teaching sabbaticals and fellowships, and peer review of one’s teaching) went out to faculties for comment, an opportunity arose via the annual in-house Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference to capitalise on these different outputs and activities. Thus we conceptualised a closing event for the conference that would bring together the findings from the case study report and the recommendations of the task team in a unique way exploring: “New ways of talking about teaching: Acknowledging teaching as an institutional good”.

The session was made up of short inputs on key aspects from the case study report and the task team’s recommendations. These were interspersed with opportunities for ‘multi-group brainstorm’ sessions during which responses from the audience of over 100 academics were captured in real time and displayed on the screens in the venue. The excitement was palpable and the response both positive and interesting as people spoke about how the recommendations will let them ‘come out of the teaching closet’, but also how they expressed concerns about what exposure of their teaching practice to peer review might mean for them.

I believe the event was special and it felt good to end the conference on a high note. But what about that sub-text I spoke of earlier? The interesting bits lie beneath the story. There is the issue of agency, both corporate and personal. In conceiving the session with colleagues from the Centre for Teaching and Learning in the way that we did – using the audience, the technology – represented a considerable risk on my part as the one who would have to stand in front and manage the process. I was willing to take the chance because I believed that the institutional case study report provided credibility and substance. As a group we were confident as we sought to ‘deal’ with audience in a currency we felt they would understand and value (research!). This same ‘currency’ was recognised when the task team referenced the study in their report.

Another issue relates to the responses of the academics. The excitement about the different recommendations made to recognise teaching, on the one hand, and the hesitancy to accept a review process on the other hand. These are matters that are unfolding as I write and as the faculties submit their responses to the recommendations. Already applications for teaching fellowships have been called for. It will be instructive to see how these processes evolve.

But finally, it is about effecting change (dare we use the word ‘transformation’) across the system. It is about a multi-site study funded nationally to support such change. It is about how change takes time (this SCA study has been ongoing now for four years), and how those of us in academic development (agents) have to take risks both individually and corporately to use what has been achieved to challenge existing structures and adopt new discourses around teaching and learning. To date the project has generated a number of outputs in the form of journal articles (over and above the different institutional case study reports). The three PhD students have all made significant progress and as I write, a number of other publications are in various stages of preparedness. This is important not only for the contribution this makes to scholarship, but also because this is the currency we need to use to effect change, to enable us to take risks and to stand up ‘at home’ for what we believe in so that we might alter the landscape. I remain cautiously optimistic.

Susan

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: