Bergen QR

Change, leadership and learning in universities

• Context and conditions of the reform process

• Leadership, management and trust

• Learning and change

Background – SANTED programmeaiming at strengthening participation in higher education

Main components:

• Upward Bound program at UDW now: UKZN

• Equitable Access program at UWC

• Formative research comparing Upward Bound, Equitable Access and the Quality Reform project at the UoB

Main focus

• Change

• Leadership

• Learning

Theory – conceptual lenses

• Instrumental processes

• Socio-political processes

• Symbolic processes

Data1. Policy documents, records and minutes at the level of national and

institutional policy.

2. Semi-structured interviews (N=49): top university management and central administration, faculty leadership, faculty, administrators and students from three faculties (humanities, sciences and social science) in addition to leadership and faculty from the faculty of psychology and one faculty member from medicine. The faculty represent ten different disciplines; history, English language, social anthropology, economy, sociology, biology, mathematics, physics, psychology and medicine. The picture we are going to provide of the QR process therefore, is not a complete one, nor is it a representative one, but it is a many facetted one.

3. Secondary material: available statistics, research literature and newspaper articles.

 

Knowledge, understanding, attitudes

•Knowledge about QR: Goals, Content and Concerns

•Understanding of context: Time for change, external forces, systemic flaws

•Attitudes towards QR: Positive attitudes, powerlessness and ”academic silence”

Leadership, management and trust

•Leadership and management qualities: heroic diversity: instrumental, social and symbolic

•Criteria for success: production

•Criticism of the reform: information, many changes, incentives

Learning and change

•Academic freedom, leadership and learning individual freedom versus collective changes and learning processes

• Individual characteristics or organizational arrangements? two versions of leadership a cultural change or individual qualities