Accomplishing Change in Teaching and Learning Regimes: Higher Education and the Practice Sensibility

This book offers a new perspective on the professional world of higher education. Using social practice theory, it presents a practice sensibility rooted in concepts which illuminate teaching and learning contexts. The book takes the reader through the social processes occurring within higher education institutions which shape contexts and influence the direction of change. For leaders and managers, educational developers, change agents, and academics, this sensibility will help to identify the successful paths to changes for enhancement and the patterns of policy implementation likely to occur as teaching and learning is enhanced. For researchers of higher education, the practice sensibility offers new possibilities for meaningful research into teaching and learning issues. Teaching and learning regimes are a key focus of the book. As a family of practices performed by a workgroup in higher education over extended periods, they comprise a number of 'moments'; characteristics derived from structural foundations which shape the workgroup's practices and frameworks of meaning. These moments condition how teaching and learning is fundamentally understood, what its aims are thought to be, what is considered 'normal' practice, how individuals see themselves and others, and how power operates within the workgroup. The material context is significant in this, as are the backstories, personal histories, and institutional sagas. This book develops a completely new approach to Trowler's concept of teaching and learning regimes. Using both his research and that of others in the field, it presents a more nuanced, fully-developed, and sophisticated version of the concept which has great traction for empirical research, the management of change, and the enhancement of the student experience and learning outcomes.

About the Author

Paul Trowler is Professor of Higher Education at Lancaster University, UK. He has published widely on academic 'tribes' and their disciplinary territories; higher education policy-making and environmental change; cultures in universities; enhancing student engagement; and planning and managing change in universities. He has had a consistent research interest in the implementation of planned change particularly related to the enhancement of the curriculum, teaching, learning, and assessment. His research and development work is always undertaken with an eye to making a difference for the better. He also engages in research, evaluation, and development work with universities and higher education funding and policy bodies across the world, most recently in South Africa, Mexico, Sweden, Chile, Italy, Norway, Australia, and Ireland.