Ways of working in uncertain times: a Teaching and Learning Framework development within a large-scale transformation programme on digital innovation in Higher Education

Within debates about teaching and learning in Higher Education, increasing attention has been placed on transformation programmes that aim to promote ‘innovation’ within universities, often positioned as ‘digital innovation’. These programmes, typically framed as a matter of ‘strategic importance’, tend to shift resource from ‘business as usual’ activity and arguably create challenging situations. These challenges pose problems for staff who need to adapt their practice as well as for the ‘change agents’ who are brought together in teams to lead on and operationalize change. This paper examines a ‘change team’s’ engagement in the development of a new Teaching and Learning Framework for a HE Institution (HEI). The study examines this development of the Framework as a temporal process involving ‘object construction’. The study followed a group of ‘change agents’ (n=13) over a period of four months using an ethnographic approach. Data from team meetings (n=8) and individual interviews (n=13) were analyzed to trace how the Framework was developed through a number of ‘object realisations’ as stepping points on the development journey. The analysis helps to situate our understandings of the impact of transformation programmes on professional practice and the tensions within processes of knowledge-making within interdisciplinary teams