a model of collaborative working for higher education
DESCRIPTION
This presentation was the first of two that addressed the challenges of collaborative work, and offering strategies to make this a reality of academic life. It presented a model, detailed at length in Walsh and Kahn (2009), which was developed through a theoretical synthesis of perspectives from a body of literature and experience on collaborative working. The work draws on critical realist perspectives, including Bhaskar’s (1998) notions of stratification in social reality. The presentation focused on professional dialogue and social structures with a view to stimulating discussion around the role of collaborative working as an informed and meaningful approach in addressing the current challenges to cohesion of academic practice.TRANSCRIPT
Addressing division within the
academyA model of collaborative working for HE
SRHE Seminar ~ 29th April 2010
Lorraine Walsh, University of Dundee
Peter E. Kahn, University of Liverpool
Drivers, change & challenge to the cohesion of C21st academic practice
�
The academy divided?
Research Teaching
Physical
separation
Psychological
separation
Different staff?
Different focus?
What effect on practice?What effect on academics as
individual scholars?
‘Training the mind to go visiting’(Arendt, 2003)
� Teaching and research as increasingly separate and ‘ideologised’ aspects of practice (Barnett, 2003: 146-7)
� Kinser’s (1998) concept of the ‘unbundling’ of traditional academic work into specialist roles (MacFarlane in
Barnett, ed., 2005: 173).
Model of Collaborative Working in Higher Education (Walsh & Kahn, 2009)
Practice
Engagement
Professional Dialogues
Social Vehicles
Context
Collaborative Vehicles
� Virtual
� Conceptual
� Local or Global
� Single or multi-disciplinary focus
� With colleagues, students, industry
Collaborative Vehicles
Professional Dialogues
� Ownership and empowerment
� Opportunities for re-discovery, re-invention or revitalisation of scholarly relationships
Idea of the Teaching Commons
‘a conceptual space’
Huber & Hutchings (2005)
Case studies – collaborative spaces in action
� Parker (2009)
� Collaboration around writing in the disciplines.
� Mackenzie (2009)
� A learning community of university teachers.
� How do collaborative vehicles and
professional dialogues open up space for
collaboration and ensure cohesion?
� Collaboration centred around courses for students within the discipline.� Underpinned by an institute, endowed
research student fellowships, roles linked to establishing and teaching courses within disciplines.
� Contrasting perspectives from across academic hierarchies, focusing attention on the most significant questions.
A Learning Community
� Understanding, and possibilities for common
action, emerge from dialogue.
� Learning community, roles and small groups
focused on progressing projects.
� Roles focused primarily on teaching may
sideline the collaborative space required to engage in research.
Opportunities and Challenges of Collaborative Working
� Dealing with ‘supercomplexity’ (Barnett) or ‘troublesome activity’ (Walsh & Kahn)
� Empowerment of the academy
� Identity – ontological shift
� Dunbar’s number
Collaboration and Empowerment in Action
� Friday Fry-Up
Club
‘It is through action that we have the chance
of renewing our common world’ (Arendt)
Collaborative spaces may be one of the last areas of the academy which can be owned
and shaped by academics
References
� Arendt, Hannah. 2003. In Kreber, C. (2010). ‘Empowering the scholarship of teaching & learning. Towards an authentic practice.’ Presentation at the Developing Pedagogic Research seminar, University of Dundee, 20.4.10
� Barnett, Ron. 2003. Beyond all Reason. Living with ideology in the university. Buckingham: SRHE/OUP.
� Barnett, Ron. (ed.) 2005. Reshaping the University. New relationships between research, scholarship and teaching. Buckingham: SRHE/OUP.
� Huber, Mary & Hutchings, Pat. 2005. The Advancement of Learning. Building the teaching commons. Jossey-Bass.
References
� Parker, Jan. 2009. ‘Collaborative academic work: writing in the disciplines’. In Collaborative Working in Higher Education, L. Walsh and P.E. Kahn, 157-62. London: Routledge.
� MacKenzie, Jane. 2009. ‘A learning community of university teachers: an exploration of the scholarship of learning and teaching’. In Collaborative Working in Higher Education, L. Walsh and P.E. Kahn, 20-5. London: Routledge.
� Walsh, Lorraine. & Kahn, Peter E. 2009. Collaborative Working in Higher Education. London: Routledge.
Further Reading
Collaborative Working in Higher Education. The Social Academy
(Routledge, 2009)
Lorraine Walsh
Peter E. Kahn