Innovating in higher education: teaching, learning and institutional culture.

Innovating in higher education: Teaching, learning and institutional culture Andrew Hannan and Harold Silver Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, 2000.

Hannan and Silver have written a very informative and perceptive account of innovation in teaching and learning within the changing context of British higher education in the 1990s. It has great relevance for Australian academic administrators and teachers concerned with the management of innovation and the quality of teaching and learning in our universities, at a time when the Commonwealth Government has signalled a renewed emphasis on learning and teaching outcomes with a Learning and Teaching Performance Fund to deliver $188 million on a competitive basis in 2006-2007.

Hannan and Silver pose the following questions:

* Why innovate? Why do higher education institutions and individuals within them decide to introduce new methods of teaching and learning?

* What inhibits innovation? What are the constraints, the competing pressures and demands, the limits to initiative?

* What promotes innovation? What are the sources of support, and what sorts of institutional cultures enable change?

The project was the recipient of a United Kingdom (UK) Economic & Social Research Council Learning Society Programme Award and funding from UK government bodies. It was a two-year study (1997-1999) of innovation in undergraduate teaching and learning. The first phase focused on innovators and innovations with 221 interviews at 15 old and new universities. The second phase was concerned with institutional contexts for innovation and involved case studies of the impacts of the institutional structures, processes and culture in three English and one Scottish university from the original fifteen with the addition of the Open University. There were one hundred and sixteen interviews and six focus groups in the second phase. Detailed information about the project and subsequent developments can be found at http://www.fae.plym.ac.uk/itlhe/summ.html

Hannan and Silver introduce their study with a discussion of the meaning and history of innovation in British higher education. They argue that innovation has generally been taken to mean 'a deliberate process of introducing change, directed towards (but not necessarily achieving) improvements or solving or alleviating some perceived problem.' Innovation is relative in that one university's innovation may be established practice elsewhere. When focused on teaching and learning, the question arises as to whose innovation and for what purpose. This question is particularly relevant as the emphasis has shifted away from the teacher and onto the learning process and outcomes for the learner. Hannan and Silver concede that a singular absence from their study is the voice of the student.

The most interesting aspect of Hannan and Silver's analysis of individual innovators in 15 UK institutions was the complex trade-off involved in decisions to engage in innovation. They emphasise the critical importance of a commitment to the improvement of student learning. Innovators were also responding to the increased size and diversity of the student intake and the demands of external agencies, particularly employers and teaching quality assessment procedures. Financial incentives were seen as a facilitating factor rather than an important motivator whereas most innovators saw teaching innovation as unlikely to lead to promotion. Innovation could seriously increase workloads, make innovators unpopular with colleagues and jeopardise careers if the innovation departed from traditional subject structures, embodied threatening values or involved extensive engagement with students of limited ability. Innovators were generally a small minority of staff and if innovation was to spread to the majority of staff institutional support, facilities and rewards were very important.

Hannan and Silver's analysis of the interplay of national policies, institutional type, mission, structure, organisational culture and leadership in facilitating or hindering teaching and learning innovation is the most valuable part of the book. They use case studies of five UK universities in the second phase of the project to illustrate these themes. The critical importance of national funding, policies and initiatives is delineated in a discussion of the impact of the Enterprise for Higher Education funding on individual universities, the pressures generated on individual staff, departments and universities by the Research Assessment Exercise, and the effect of the competitive nature of research funding as opposed to the formulaic approach to the funding of teaching and learning. Teaching excellence awards and dedicated funding for the improvement of teaching quality are unlikely to have a major impact on the calculations of departments and individuals at the academic coalface with regards to the relative merits of prioritising research or teaching innovation, when departmental survival or individual promotion may be at stake.

Hannan and Silver's study has great relevance for Australian universities concerned with teaching and learning innovation. It highlights the need for external pressure and government funding initiatives to create an environment favourable to innovation. The government may have hoped that HECS fees would make students more demanding consumers, but the reality is that, once enrolled, students are largely captives of their university and unable to exert strong pressure on the quality of teaching and learning. There is a need for strong leadership at all levels of the university, reinforced by a framework of teaching and learning policies, strategies and supporting mechanisms. Both educational development opportunities and incentives are important for mainstream acceptance of innovation. Pressures to attract competitive research funding as a critical factor in the survival of academic administrative units and the promotion of individuals militate against an easy acceptance of the increased priority which the Australian government wishes to attach to teaching quality and innovation. If increasing numbers of universities become predominantly teaching only institutions in a post-Crossroads environment, they may concentrate on excellence in learning as a means of attracting students.

Jim Cleary 

University of Newcastle