{"id":757,"date":"2011-07-08T18:27:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T17:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=757"},"modified":"2011-07-08T18:27:01","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T17:27:01","slug":"at-last-some-sense-about-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2011\/07\/08\/at-last-some-sense-about-change\/","title":{"rendered":"At last, some sense about change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A kind colleague, someone better read than me, pointed me to a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brad.ac.uk\/sustainable-universities\/media\/SustainableUniversities\/Keynote-Prof-Paul-Trowler.pdf\">Thinkpiece<\/a> by Lancaster\u2019s Paul <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/edres\/profiles\/Paul-Trowler\/\">Trowler<\/a>.\u00a0 In it, are the points he made in a talk to leaders involved in a sustainable university initiative.\u00a0 He set out some tools for thinking and acting in ways which help increase the chances of effective and sustained curriculum change with a focus on strategic, large-scale changes in teaching and learning, and the curriculum.<\/p>\n<p>Trowler began by arguing that common experiences of those set on change in universities include the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>internal embedded practices act and interact to erode reform<\/li>\n<li>structural processes are slow and internally contradictory: there is no institutional learning architecture and so structures are not fully joined-up<\/li>\n<li>decision-making, review and accountability processes are also non-aligned<\/li>\n<li>there is patchiness in delivery of core activities<\/li>\n<li>prioritisation doesn\u2019t happen, so that goals are multiple, unrealistic and frequently changing<\/li>\n<li>there are unformed, inappropriate and changing implementation strategies and tactics<\/li>\n<li>there is lots of talk, but little action, lots of strategic discussion, but business as usual<\/li>\n<li>there is often defence of \u2018turf\u2019 and fear of change<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are all, in effect, barriers to change.\u00a0 How refreshing, then, to find such an in-depth, and thoughtful analysis.\u00a0 I usually have two tests of such statements:<\/p>\n<p>1. Is it generic?<\/p>\n<p>2. Does it have validity \u2013 particularly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/encyclopedia\/ecological_validity.html\">ecological<\/a> validity?<\/p>\n<p>And you hope that the answers are No \u2013 Yes.\u00a0 In other words, [1] could it apply to anything, anywhere?\u00a0 For example you often find the following cited as barriers: \u201c<em>There isn\u2019t time.\u00a0 Anyway, we haven\u2019t been trained<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 These are often true, but utterly irrelevant as there\u2019s no evidence that the offer of more time and training would make any difference.\u00a0 And [2] Is it obviously about the context being discussed and does it reflect \u201creal life conditions\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>The mere text of Trowler\u2019s analysis doesn\u2019t lead, for me, to an unequivocal No \u2013 Yes response.\u00a0 However, 30+ years in HE, much of it change-focused, suggests that this is a valid analysis, and one that those engaged in sustainability-focused change might well heed.<\/p>\n<p>Paul Trowler goes on to argue that, for leaders of change, all this can lead to some very common experiences:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>only the \u2018usual suspects\u2019 are engaged with the reform, others quietly withdraw or actively oppose change<\/li>\n<li>there is slow acceleration to a plateau and then entropy sets in<\/li>\n<li>turf wars and other squabbles result in stalled initiatives<\/li>\n<li>there are difficulties in scaling up and the short-termism of \u2018projectitis\u2019: reform stopping as funding ends<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sadly, all this rings horribly true. \u00a0To learn what Trowler thinks are appropriate \"tools for thinking and acting\" follow from all this, the Thinkpiece is only a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brad.ac.uk\/sustainable-universities\/media\/SustainableUniversities\/Keynote-Prof-Paul-Trowler.pdf\">click<\/a> away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A kind colleague, someone better read than me, pointed me to a recent Thinkpiece by Lancaster\u2019s Paul Trowler.\u00a0 In it, are the points he made in a talk to leaders involved in a sustainable university initiative.\u00a0 He set out some...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}