Torgny Roxå

Significant conversations and significant networks – exploring the backstage of the teaching arena

This article presents an inquiry into conversations that academic teachers have about teaching. The authors investigated to whom they talk and the forms that these conversations take. The findings indicate that most teachers rely on a small number of significant others for conversations that are characterised by their privacy, by mutual trust and by their intellectual intrigue. Individual teachers seem to have small ‘significant networks’, where private discussions provide a basis for conceptual development and learning, quite different from the ‘front stage’ of formal, public debate about teaching. Individual teachers seem to have more significant conversations and larger networks where the local culture is perceived to be supportive of such conversations. The findings are interpreted in relation to socio‐cultural theories, and have clear implications for the development of teaching.

Developing a Quality Culture through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The critical features of a strategy to promote improved teaching and learning are explored in this article from a socio‐cultural perspective in a research‐intensive institution. The paper presents theoretical underpinnings and implications as well as an empirical case study of such a strategy and its seemingly successful results. The strategy builds on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning beyond individual development and aims at cultivating a culture of continuous improvement of teaching and student learning. The case study describes a number of co‐ordinated and interrelated activities at various institutional levels to support the strategy. The results are discussed in terms of academic engagement. Important aspects such as academic freedom, professional identity and leadership are also discussed.

Appropriate Use of Theory in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as a Strategy for Institutional Development

In this article we — as academic developers in two different faculties within a large, research-intensive university — discuss the scholarship of teaching and learning as a strategy for institutional improvement of teaching and learning. We focus on three related issues. Firstly, how can individual engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning be related to patterns of communication within academia and subsequently have an effect on issues concerning academic identity and status; and how can this be related to an institutional strategy for development? Secondly, what is the appropriate use of educational theory when academic teachers make inquiries into their own teaching, considering that in most cases they are not scholars in education? Finally, while a higher education institution evolves to become gradually more scholarly in relation to teaching and learning, how could the evolving use of theory be supported and monitored? Related to this third issue we describe two cases from Lund University where this has been done. The first case describes how individual teachers can be systematically supported in a scholarship of teaching and learning-direction through pedagogical courses. The second case describes how a faculty uses a reward system for the same purpose.

Strategic educational development: a national Swedish initiative to support change in higher education

Conditions for teaching and learning in higher education are changing and, thereby, demand development in teaching practices and the student learning experience. This paper explores some issues and processes in relation to strategic change in higher education institutions (HEIs), with a focus on educational developers and their ability to contribute to the development of teaching and learning. It also describes a national Swedish initiative with the overall purpose to promote professional development of educational developers. This initiative was designed to enhance strategic perspectives, as well as scholarly knowledge formation, within the educational development 1 field. The initiative, its results and conclusions are considered relevant also to other higher education systems.

From quality assurance to quality practices: an investigation of strong microcultures in teaching and learning

One of the main beliefs in quality assurance is that this activity – indirectly – will stimulate change in the work practices associated with teaching and learning in higher education. However, few studies have provided empirical evidence of the existence of such a link. Instead, quality assurance has created an unfortunate divide between formal rules and routines, and the daily practices in academia associated with teaching and learning. This article reports a study of ‘quality work’ – concrete practices in academic microcultures with a reputation for being strong in their teaching and learning as well as in their research function. We argue that the relationship between quality assurance and enacted quality practice needs to be understood in the light of how formal organizational structures, as well as cultural characteristics and academic aims, are balanced within working groups in universities.

Microcultures and informal learning: a heuristic guiding analysis of conditions for informal learning in local higher education workplaces

This article contributes to knowledge about learning in workgroups, so called microcultures in higher education. It argues that socially constructed and institutionalised traditions, recurrent practices, and tacit assumptions in the various microcultures influence academic teachers towards certain behaviour. In line with this perspective, we present a heuristic with the potential to differentiate various types of microcultures: the commons, the market, the club, and the square. The heuristic is based on a socio-cultural perspective and research on collective action. Its purpose is to assist academic developers to fine-tune their approaches while engaging with colleagues, but also to aid further inquiry into how institutionalised norms and traditions influence academic teaching and student learning.

The role of academic developers in transforming Bologna regulations to a national and institutional context

Academic developers (ADs) often participate in the implementation of programmes or reforms in higher education. Sometimes they agree with these and sometimes they disagree. This paper discusses possible agentic positions during a genuine policy implementation – the National Qualification Framework at a Norwegian university. Through reflexive interpretation, and by applying concepts from ‘discursive institutionalism’ the process of implementation from the national level to university departments is described and analysed. The actions and arguments of the ADs involved in the process are presented and their educational rationale is described. The ADs’ agency is discussed through educational and political science concepts and in light of power and of a tension between two competing world views: professional accountability and professional responsibility.

Encouraging students in large classes

Our experiences and results of encouraging our students in a large CSI course to keep up with the pace of the course at a reasonable cost for us are presented. We have successfully managed to pinpoint students who are about to fall into the anonymity and passivity trap and give them the extra attention they need to avoid the trap when they need it. Since we managed to pinpoint the most needing students we can give them the extra personal recognition and encouragement they need at a very reasonable cost in the perspective of the whole course. For the two years we have tried our concept we can see a significant increase in the pass rate of the final exam.

Agency and structure in academic development practices: are we liberating academic teachers or are we part of a machinery supressing them?

Abstract This text taps into an ongoing discussion about academic development. It challenges an image of academic development as precarious and liminal and explores academic development as powerful. Sources of power are described and put into the context of values, ideologies, and policies governing higher education of today. It is our hope that readers will be inspired to problematise their own academic development practices and to reclaim a phase in the history of the profession where members displayed more of a political awareness.

Leadership at a local level : enhancing educational development

This paper explores, mainly through a socio-cultural perspective, the role of mid-level leadership in higher education in relation to educational development. It is argued that supporting and engaging local-level leaders, such as academic programme directors, increases the potential for development of local teaching and learning cultures. The paper describes a programme in a research-intensive university, where leaders conduct scholarly projects focused on contextualised educational development and leadership. Projects are reported in writing and peer-reviewed within the programme. In this article 25 project reports are analysed through a framework focusing on the relational and contextual aspects of leadership. Four projects are specifically elaborated to illustrate important aspects of leadership that become visible through the analysis. These aspects relate to external and internal mandates to lead, i.e. the potential actions available to leaders when navigating the need to build and maintain legitimacy in the formal organisation as well as in the group/s that they as leaders try to influence.