Changing practice in HE: National policies, enhancement cultures and personal impetus

Drawing on recent evaluative research on the change process in Higher Education, the presentation will examine the way in which change processes unfold sector wide and within institutions. The idea of levels can be understood as an implementation staircase. Deliberate attempts to influence practice have at their core, an informal ‘theory of change’ in which the strategies embody an idea of how change might be brought about. At sector wide level, case examples of attempts by government to influence teaching and learning practices will be analysed along with their underlying theories of change. At the level of institutions and individuals, recent research has suggested that change processes are shaped by personal theories of change and the change or enhancement identities assumed by those engaged in a change process. Drawing on the way in which the environment ‘conditions’ change processes, I will argue that there are types of cultural environments and the practices they embody which are more able to support ‘deep change’ cultures sponsored or engineered by those engaged in teaching itself