Developing Learning Environments: Creativity, Motivation and Collaboration in Higher Education

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Developing Learning EnvironmentsCreativity,
Motivation and Collaboration in Higher Education

• Ora Kwo, Tim Moore John Jones (eds)
• Hong Kong University Press 2004

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• Prologue
• A Focus on Learning as Universities Change . . .

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Outline of this Presentation

• Critical Challenges for University Renewal
• Resolving Tension between Research Teaching
• Paradigm Shift
• Challenges Ahead
• Strategic Moves A Re-focus on Learning
• Conclusion Learning and Leadership

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Critical Challenges forUniversity Renewal

• Accountability within Resource Constraints
• Adaptability and Choice
• From Elite to Mass Higher Education
• Integration with Society
• Teaching Professionalism

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Accountability within Resource Constraints

• Universities have to justify their existence in
  terms of cost-effectiveness.
• Issues of accountability and resource competition
  intensify the pressure for universities to
  demonstrate that they deserve ongoing funding.

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Adaptability and Choice

• Proliferation of higher education institutions.
• Multiplication of programmes of distance
  learning.
• Students are given more choices.

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From Elite to Mass Higher Education

• Tendency for distinction between research and
  teaching universities.
• Research and teaching as conflicting roles of
  faculties is a misleading conception (Hughes and
  Tight, 1995)
• Academics effectiveness and performance can be
  much improved if scholarship and teaching can
  harmonize with each other (Schuller, 1997).

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Integration with society

• Universities attend to the needs of society for
  application of knowledge.
• The cultural change is converging towards
  collaboration and integration.

society
universities
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Teaching Professionalism

• To empower the learner with independent learning
  skills for continual learning beyond university
  graduation.
• To recognize that such experimentation is
  contextualized in the tradition of elitist higher
  education.

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II. Resolving Tension between Research
Teaching

• With public accountability, many academics
• have had to undergo a transition from academic
  autonomy to a new unknown phase.
• are constantly adapting to new pressures.

research
teaching
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• Academics have had to
• become better at impression management.
• address multiple audiences which have
  expectations that are not always easily
  compatible.
• Tension arising from questionable or
  incommensurable criteria can make it hard for
  academics to deliver the intended products.

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• The central concern can be located in the
  academics performance discourse on research
  and teaching.

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• The category distinction between teaching and
  research may owe more to the demands for
  accountability than to logical or pedagogical
  differences between academic roles.
• (Rowland, 1996,
  p.13)

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• The most effective teaching is supportive of
  research. Narrow approaches to assessing teaching
  refuse to acknowledge either of these hypotheses.
• (Rowland, 1996,
  p.16)

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• The instrumentation for assessment is subject to
  examination.
• While tangible rewards are external to the
  individual, the decision to pursue these rewards
  must come from within.
• Any policy development should target the values,
  needs and orientations of academics, if positive
  intrinsic motivation is to be prompted.

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• Improvement of key performance indicators can be
  an approach at policy level to stimulate
  intrinsic motivation, and impact on enhancement
  of the nexus between research and teaching.
• A strive for broad performance indicators would
  need to go in parallel with active participation
  from those involved in renewal of organizational
  culture for shaping up motivating learning
  environments.

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III. Paradigm Shift

• The choice for academics can come between
  continual isolated struggles and creation of a
  learning environment to generate an agenda of
  research.
• This critical choice requires going beyond the
  administrative re-structuring to reach the roots
  in a life of learning together.

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IV. Challenges Ahead

• Sutherland (2002) In 1981 only 2.2 of the
  population in the 17-20 age group could enter
  local universities but in 2001 the proportion
  had reached nearly 18.
• An investment for a highly educated and capable
  workforce target of 60 post-secondary
  participation by 2010.

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• Recommendation 7 and 11 of the Sutherland
  report (2002) emphasis on joint work between UGC
  as a funding agency and higher education as
  recipients of funds for promoting excellence in
  both teaching and research.

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V. Strategic Moves A Re-focus on Learning

• Professionalism amongst teachers in higher
  education?
• Self-challenge on cultivation of exemplary
  practice in promoting learning
• Development of a learning network

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Cultivation of Exemplary Practice in Promoting
Learning

• Academics are recruited for their expertise in
  one way or another, which demonstrates their
  learning capacity.
• Yet, from a tradition of isolated work where the
  reward structure has encouraged personal
  excellence, academics have lived in a culture of
  constantly proving themselves individually.

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• Teamwork seems to be one dimension of learning
  called upon by the reform movement, but yet to be
  actualized against the habitual mode of
  individual accountability.
• A further challenge concerns a process of
  learning that requires risk-taking, especially
  when alternative approaches may not readily lead
  to expected outcomes.

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• Academics from different disciplines can generate
  a language of pedagogy across the campus and for
  shared concerns to be open to public dialogue.
• Instead of being a showcase for excellence in
  instruction, exemplary practice may eventually
  come in the form of clear articulation of the
  processes of struggles for improving the quality
  of teaching and learning.

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• With a substantive learning environment, the
  narrow focus on assessment can be transcended to
  stretch for the best practice.

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Development of a learning network

• Through the sharing of problems and addressing
  them together, academics can cross disciplinary
  boundaries and discover new paths of handling
  resources in promoting quality of teaching and
  learning.

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• Associates of such a learning network can
  converge with loyalty to students, but not any
  set of external criteria, in a form of harmony
  between professional and academic roles where
  research and teaching meet in a seamless manner.
• A new beginning can be developed gradually from a
  group of enthusiastic and well-informed change
  agents.

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• Learning and development can come from
  involvement of a broader community through
• innovative teachers and researchers from
  different faculties as consultants to develop
  curriculum and teaching facilities, and
• collaboration amongst institutions interested in
  such contributions to higher education.

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VI. Conclusion Learning and Leadership

• This paper argues for resolving tension between
  research and teaching.
• Through active participation in shaping
  assessment criteria in policy matters, academics
  can remain assertive and active with a sense of
  control in professional practice.
• With a focus on learning, academics can transcend
  the system, and integrate teaching and research
  in scholarly discourse and practice.

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Community Leadership

• When we talk about leadership, we have a
  tendency to contrast communities, which are
  supposed to be leaderless, with institutions,
  which need leaders. But it is possible to argue
  the opposite. Institutions can survive for a
  while without a leader simply by following
  bureaucratic rules. But community is a dynamic
  state of affairs that demands leadership at every
  turn This kind of leadership can be defined with
  some precision it involves offering people
  excuses and permissions to do things that they
  want to do but cannot initiate themselves.
• Palmer
  (1998, p.156)

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Practical Implications?

• Academics can make transparent the dynamics of
  learning in private practice of struggles, and
  build learning environments.

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Modeling Effect ofCommunity Leadership

• The modeling effect can be powerful in nurturing
  leaders for learning communities amongst both
  teachers and students.

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Reflections on impact of accountability systems
in HKU

• Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
• Teaching and Learning Quality Progress Review
  (TLQPR)
• Student Assessment of Teaching (SET)
• Performance Review Development (PRD) Academic
  Portfolio of Achievement (APA)

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Aspirations / Vision for HKU?

• an institution of higher learning
• through outstanding teaching
• and world-class research
• so as to produce well-rounded graduates
• with lifelong abilities
• to provide leadership
• within the societies they serve

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Learning Leadership
Leadership can take the form of mediation
between pressures to thrive in professionalism.
Continual Learning
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Learning Leadership

• Empowerment from learning
• Authentic leadership
• Q. Dimensions of learning?
• Q. Drive for learning?
• Q. Rewards for learnig?