A Handbook for Leaders in Higher Education

Transforming teaching and learning

Stephanie Marshall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138909793
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317437550
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Written to assist those seeking to understand the key global drivers, and an overview of key challenges facing senior leaders and managers today, this book focuses on the complex and highly politicised area of teaching and learning in higher education. Providing tried and tested tips and techniques for addressing the 'why, what and how' of leadership and management theory and practice, it is firmly grounded in the context of the teaching and learning arena. A Handbook for Leaders in Higher Education: Transforming teaching and learning can be dipped into to provide knowledge and understanding of theory, best practice examples, case study exemplars and reflective practice activity.

It is structured in four main parts:

• A view from the top
• The leadership and management perspective
• Engendering a change culture
• Looking to the future.

This handbook is informed by senior leaders and experts with expertise in delivering excellent practice in teaching and learning at international, national and institutional levels.

Responding to the need of universities to take the lead in changing cultures and working practices, this book is an essential and forward-looking text for both scholars and practitioners in the senior teams of higher education institutions.

Part I A view from the top

1: Drivers and change

DOI: 10.4324/9781315693798-4

Overview

As higher education (HE) globally is moving into an era of unprecedented change, we are facing uncharted challenges. As educators, we are constantly being told that the past is no longer a guide to the future. Sector-wide, individual higher education institutions (HEIs) are considering how best to determine their own futures. Making sense of this complexity and making the right choices requires agility and flexibility, alongside skillful leadership and management of organisational change. This chapter, therefore, seeks to explore current key drivers of change, and their impact at three levels:

• the global level;
• the government level (i.e. HE policy);
• the individual institution level, with a particular focus on leaders of teaching and learning in HE (i.e. responsible for both translating policy into practice, at the same time as offering their own distinctive approach to delivery).

How these challenges have been interpreted and ‘made sense of’ (Weick and Sutcliffe 2007) is crucial to the success of an HEI. Indeed, those leaders who have responded in a constructive and positive manner to the international, national and local (institutional) drivers of change have found it easier to engage their staff in the journey (Gibbs et al. 2009). This approach of embracing the changes is crucial to ensure that graduates are well equipped to accept and respond intelligently to the challenges of a vastly different future.

Global perspective

Since the 1970s, higher education in developed countries has moved beyond an elite system to one that is more accessible and inclusive. It has expanded enormously, widening its offer with respect to the diversity of subjects offered at degree level and modes of study, and is being delivered by an ever-increasing range of providers. Access to HE, retention, progression and success through to employment are all key issues across the globe. Responses to such drivers have been an increase in blended learning, redesigning learning spaces (to include virtual engagement) and attempts to measure learning and demonstrate return on investment as the cost of HE increases faster than inflation. Ministerial targets for participation in HE across the globe have led to a significant growth in student numbers. Additionally, not only have the numbers of indigenous students increased, but also those from an international market. The growth in numbers of international students seeking undergraduate education outside their own country has been particularly significant and important over the past twenty years.

This chapter will demonstrate to readers that leadership in the global HE system should now be viewed not just as a delivering the greater good (Collini 2012) but also running a successful business providing high-quality graduates to the labour market across the modern world. Global competition between universities to attract international students is intensifying, as is the competition for high-flying staff as excellent researchers but also, now, as excellent teachers. Responding to these drivers, and leading HE at all levels (i.e. globally, nationally and locally), has never been more challenging.

Beyond the importance of international students to the financial health of the higher education sector, there are four recurrent issues within HE for nations wanting to ensure that their providers are offering students a world-class learning experience. Each requires insightful leadership, with each being considered in differing degrees in the case studies which follow:

1. Curriculum development. Curriculum has had to become more multi-faceted in terms of content and use of global case studies and examples. Integral to a future-proofed curriculum are employability, internationalisation, sustainable development, and equality and diversity. These developments, combined with the move to greater interdisciplinary study, are helping universities to produce graduates capable of tackling key global issues.
2. Innovative Pedagogies. Advances in technology, digital literacy and blended learning approaches, alongside more simulations and work-based opportunities, are essential to inspire and engage students. Additionally, pedagogies which involve students as co-producers of knowledge are more likely to assist universities to develop the research capacity required for the future, particularly in STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) subjects.
3. Student transitions. With nations providing greater access opportunities, consideration of how best to ease the transition into HE via different pathways needs to be addressed. Ensuring retention and success for each and every student, to include either transition to post-graduate study, graduate employment or self-employment, has to be a priority. Diverse learners need lecturers who are prepared to deploy diverse approaches.
4. Staff transitions. Lecturers are more aware, with students from diverse backgrounds and cultures in their classrooms, of the challenges of taking an inclusive approach and making fewer assumptions about cultural norms and reference points. Today's HE teachers need to appreciate the different educational experiences that form the background of many of their learners, who may have started their education in different traditions. Increasingly nations are looking to determine appropriate threshold professional standards for those involved in teaching, and teaching at different levels (e.g. programme director, head of school).

Iannelli and Huang (2014) draw attention to a number of these recurrent issues and argue that universities often underestimate the challenges and costs of properly supporting diverse students new to their HE system. An exploration of supportive and properly costed approaches is included in the case studies which follow.

Interrogating practice

1. How are the issues, as presented above, addressed in your institution?
2. Are there any particular areas where you believe you could do better? How?

Rolf Tarrach, former President of the University of Luxemburg and now President of the European Universities Association (EUA), identifies three key drivers of change in HE: firstly, knowledge now being ubiquitous; secondly, the increase in student participation (with the associated concern to meet diverse learning needs); and, finally, the need to prepare students for employment, irrespective of discipline. He additionally argues for greater interdisciplinarity to better prepare our graduates for the future.

Case study 1.1: Today's challenges in teaching

Rolf Tarrach, European Universities Association (EUA)

It is a time of profound change. During the first thirty years of my adult life the Encyclopaedia Britannica was a reference work which helped me to find relevant information, and for a couple of centuries that has been the case for many scholars. I have seldom used it in the last twenty years since most information can now be instantaneously found on the web. This is great but has also led to an enormous amount of ubiquitous, non-vetted information, which could be put to good use. Today, this is one of the main challenges of education and a driver of change in HEIs: to learn how to find the information one is looking for efficiently, to be able to judge its quality and to know how to deal with it, so that it becomes knowledge.

A second driver is the democratisation and inclusiveness of today's HE: never before has the percentage of secondary school leavers who go to university been so high. This has two consequences: (a) it is difficult to keep the old standards if one does not want to increase the failure rate, and (b) a degree is no longer a guarantee of finding an adequate job and in some countries any job. Part of the solution to these changes is personalised teaching and more suitable pedagogy.

The third driver is partially a consequence of the second: it is the mismatch between the discipline-spectrum of degrees offered by HEIs and the skills sought by the job market, if not globally certainly locally. Indeed, a considerable amount of teaching supposes most students will get a job in academia or blue-sky research, which evidence tells us is not the case. If this is not dealt with, mobility (i.e. migration) is often the only solution left for graduates. Well-selected adjunct staff providing a large part of the teaching is one of the responses to this challenge, in addition to appropriate changes to syllabii.

There is a further step to be taken if we want education to be gold- (or even platinum-!) starred: to learn how to turn knowledge into understanding, i.e. to be able to explain the causes of something, allowing us to guess and assess the consequences within a wider context. But this is nothing new; it was always like this, but it is a notion that continues to be little heeded. To tackle this we need to move away from Fachidioten (i.e. specialists, expert in their field, who only see a multi-faceted problem through the lens of their own discipline), to bring about the genuinely interdisciplinary teacher.

Now, having learnt how to retrieve information, how to turn it first into knowledge and finally into understanding, what do we need it for? For almost everything, but in particular for assessing and solving the problems we encounter in our personal and professional lives as well as those of mankind. And this also tells us how to teach: start with a real, simple problem, and then acquire the information and the knowledge you need to deal with it. You don't understand a problem until you have a rough blueprint of its solution, and you don't find the correct solution without understanding it. Teaching has to help us to quickly find what we need.

For all this, undergraduate teaching is the most important; that is where the best teachers should be, since it is here that the potential added value of good teaching is greatest.

Much of the vision and methodology proposed by Tarrach is in the European Commission Report (2013) which appeals for universities to focus on the preparation of graduates capable of addressing the global wicked issues. This can only be achieved by moving away from subject specialism to interdisciplinarity. Tarrach is arguing for an HE system which produces critical thinkers, problem solvers and those with an appetite for working across boundaries, generating new knowledge and understanding. To bring about such change requires visionary leadership, whereby the desired skills, behaviours and capabilities expected of graduates are modelled by the leadership. An institutional leader's key delivery mechanism for bringing about such change is the curriculum.

Interrogating practice

1. How are your graduates prepared to tackle the world's ‘wicked issues’, viewing them through the lens of the different disciplines?
2. How well are your staff equipped to offer such disciplinary approaches? Could more be done to inform and support them?

Following on from Tarrach's plea for greater interdisciplinarity to prepare graduates for an unknown future, Sir Alan Langlands, in Case study 1.2, focuses on this delivery mechanism, highlighting the centrality of the curriculum to the learning outcomes of students. He outlines a rich and multi-layered curriculum, which has been a response to his commitment to widen participation, and prepare each and every graduate to lead fulfilled lives. Whilst recognising the need for continuity, he additionally implores leaders ‘not to be afraid of change’.

Case study 1.2: A view from the top

Sir Alan Langlands, University of Leeds

I have held chief executive or equivalent posts for more than thirty-five years but, with a strong hinterland in healthcare, I still regard myself as a relative newcomer to HE. That said, I have developed my insights into ‘student education’ – the term we use at Leeds to replace ‘teaching and learning’ – under the watchful eyes of Vivien Jones (University of Leeds, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Teaching and Learning), Heather Fry (Higher Education Funding Council England) and James Calderhead (Vice-Principal, University of Dundee).

All three have taught me the importance of increasing knowledge and opportunity in powerful combination. This means providing outstanding education and opportunities for all-round personal growth for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. In an increasingly competitive environment, this gives the best universities a fighting chance of attracting, exciting and retaining high-quality students from diverse backgrounds, equipping them to succeed in a competitive global employment market and to make a difference to society and the economy. All three also enco...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of case studies
• Case study contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I A view from the top
• Part II The leadership and management perspective
• Part III Engendering a change culture
• Part IV Looking to the future
• Postscript
• Glossary
• Index