halftime summary cormac mcgrath

Understanding the inertia of change: Exploring educational change in a Medical Education Institution.

Half-time summary Cormac McGrath Department of LIME

Outline

§  Aim §  Academic habitus §  Background

à What is the problem? à Universities as complex organisations à What kind of changes do we encounter? à Different discourses of change agency

§  Specific research questions §  Studies in the research project §  Work remaining §  References

16-02-24 Cormac McGrath, Halt-time summary

Aim

§  explore how educational change is carried out at different levels of a higher education organization.

§  more specifically the aim is to explore how meso or departmental level collegial leaders enact and bring about educational change.

§  How do change agents go about enacting change in higher education and what challenges do they encounter?


Academic habitus

Organisational theory

Theory of change

management

Theory of faculty development •  Theory of

organisational learning

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Research project

Cormac McGrath, Halt-time summary

Background: what is the problem?

§  70% of planned initiatives fail §  Change is effervescent in higher education institutions §  Change agents are often identified as colleagues §  Change processes are often run unsystematically

à  Novice-expert paradox §  There is a paucity of research related effects of change and leadership

programmes on organizations in particular within medical education

§  High costs of higher education §  Money needs to be spent wisely

à  Accountability


(Stensaker, 1999; Meyer & Stensaker, 2005; Fullan & Scott, 2009 McKeown, 2013; Trowler et al, 2013, Stensaker, 2006; Steinert et al. 2012; Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. 2012)


Universities as complex organisations

Levels of Higher education institutions §  Micro §  Meso §  Macro

(Hannah & Lester, 2009)

Three lenses to understand organisations §  Strategic §  Political §  Cultural (Ancona et al, 2005, 2009)


Background: Universities as complex organisation

Strategic Political Cultural

Micro (individual)

Creates scope for official or sanctioned individual action

Dictates an individual position Interacts with cultural aspects of the organisation

Meso (network)

Creates rules for a network operation action

Dictates relationships and chain of command

Is where individuals engage with working groups.

Macro (system)

Creates a framework for how an entire organization is expected to work.

Dictates relationships and chain of command throughout the organization at large

Is where networks made up of cultured individuals engage with a systems perspective. Defines action vis-à-vis the political and strategic dimensions.

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Table 1: Bi-focal approach to levels and dimensions of a higher education institution


What kind of changes do we encounter, and why do they fail? §  (1) Small-scale bottom-up initiatives or projects led and driven

by a small number of enthusiastic and committed individuals: Changing the curriculum to be more student centred.

§  (2) Larger-scale organizational (top-down) initiatives involving wider institutional support, staffing and/or resources: Investing in a MOOC

§  (3) Integrated whole-institutional (top-down) initiatives with significant institutional support linking multiple sustainability activities, often with an added dimension involving wider cultural change: Bologna

(Paul Trowler, Hopkinson, & Comerford Boyes, 2013).


§  Rationalist, §  Contextualist, §  Dispersalist §  Constructionist

(Caldwell, 2006).

Rationalist -------------------------------Dispersalist centred-----------------------------------decentred

(Barman, et al, 2014)

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Different discourses of change agency

© Name fotograph © Erik Cronberg


Overall aim & specific research questions

§  explore how educational change is carried out at different levels of a higher education organization.

§  more specifically the aim is to explore how meso or departmental level collegial leaders enact and bring about educational change.



Studies in the research projects

Change in the meso

How do educators experience the

negotiations of meanings around initiatives for

educational change in the light of a move towards

capacity building? Study one

How do change agents go about enacting

change? Study two

What are the different conceptions around change?

Study three

How do work groups organise around

change? Study four

To which extent is a scholarly approach to

change agency a sustainable one?

Study five


Results

§  How do educators experience the negotiations of meanings around initiatives for educational change in the light of a move towards capacity building? Study one

§  Results: à Stakeholder don’t understand each other. Without understanding

each others’ point of departure any change initiatives may be rendered futile.


Results

§  How do change agents go about enacting change? Study two §  Results

à Change agents often lack systematic approaches to change. Are “stuck” doing things here and now.


Results

§  What are the different conceptions around change? Study three §  Results:

à Stakeholders have different conceptions of MOOCs, and different expectations on what a change can lead to.


Results

§  How do work groups organise around change? Study four §  Results:

à When lacking structure and guidance, teachers self organise around and make sense of experiences related to the development of assessments and the use of joint criteria.


Contribution: The so-what question

§  In line with current research it is clear that we know too little about the effects of “change programmes”

§  Change processes do not sort themselves out §  Faculty are poorly equipped to systematically work with change

implementation à  May need support and training, but à  Upper management may also need support and training to understand the extent

to which of knowledge faculty have §  Faculty often get “stuck in the present” when working with change

implementation and management. §  Case studies are needed to model change for faculty

à  Enabling them to understand what expectations may lay ahead à  Facilitate leadership figures about the difficulties of change programmes

§  Action research studies are needed to better facilitate change processes.


Work remaining

§  Study V à Explores how change agents conceptions of change and use of

change theory changes over time. à Two-centre study Lund & KI à Addresses how change agents use theory at time of intervention,

and explores how change initiatives unfold, how stable use of theory is over time

§  Method à Document analysis à  Interviews à Analysis to be decided


References:

§  Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. (2012). A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 49(7), 1194-1220. doi:Doi 10.1111/J.1467-6486.2012.01072.X

§  Ancona, D., T. Kochan, M. Scully, J. Van Maanen, & D. E. Westney. 2005. Managing for the Future: Organizational Behavior and Processes, 3rd ed. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College Publishing.

§  Barman, Linda, Charlotte Silén, and Klara Bolander Laksov. "Outcome based education enacted: teachers’ tensions in balancing between student learning and bureaucracy." Advances in Health Sciences Education 19.5 (2014): 629-643.

§  Caldwell, R. (2006). Agency and change : rethinking change agency in organizations. London ; New York: Routledge.

§  Hannah, S.T., Lester, P.B. (2009) A multilevel approach to building and leading learning organizations. The Leadership Quarterly 20.1 (2009): 34-48.

§  Fullan, M., & Scott, G. (2009). Turnaround leadership for higher education (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

§  McKeown-Moak, M.P. (2013) "The" New" Performance Funding in Higher Education." Educational Considerations 40.2: 3-12.

§  McGrath, C., Barman, L., Roxå, T., Stenfors-Hayes, T., Bolander-Laksov, K., Silén, C (2015): The ebb and flow of educational change Submitted


References continued

§  McGrath, C., & Barman, L., (2015) When good intentions aren’t good enough. Forthcoming

§  Meyer, C. B., & Stensaker, I. G. (2006). Developing capacity for change. Journal of Change Management, 6(2), 217-231. doi:10.1080/14697010600693731

§  Steinert, Yvonne, Laura Naismith, and Karen Mann. "Faculty development initiatives designed to promote leadership in medical education. A BEME systematic review: BEME Guide No. 19." Medical teacher 34.6 (2012): 483-503.

§  Stensaker, B. (2006). Governmental policy, organisational ideals and institutional adaptation in Norwegian higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 31(1), 43-56. doi:Doi 10.1080/03075070500392276

§  Trowler, P., Hopkinson, P., & Comerford Boyes, L. (2013). Institutional Change towards a Sustainability Agenda: How far can theory assist? Tertiary Education and Management, 19(3), 267-279. doi:10.1080/13583883.2013.798349
