Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Glasgow School of Art
Democracy or Intervention? Adapting Orientations to Development
How may differing institutional characteristics which encourage or inhibit the adaptation of academic practice be influenced to encourage the development of new practice?
1. A literature review of fields including organisational culture, educational development, and communities of practice.
2. Generation and analysis of qualitative data from: a special interest group engaged in action research; individual interviews, formal course directors’ meetings.
3. Development and analysis of case studies.
A dichotomous model of interventionist versus democratic educational development orientations can help educational developers gauge the nature of their relationship with a ‘client’ community at a given moment, and within a given context.
Educational developers will exert more influence over the innovation process by adapting their mode of developmental engagement, according to the institutional culture with which they are engaging, and the stage of the innovation they are helping to encourage. Thus at a certain stage ‘strategic’ or ‘opportunist’ interventions may be needed, while at another stage more democratic approaches will work best.
Where institutional cultures resist innovation, at least two conditions for exerting influence effectively are necessary.
First, it may be important to identify susceptible ‘carriers’ who are trusted members of the relevant academic community. Whereas the educational developer may specifically be seen as an outsider whose innovations are threatening, ‘carriers’ (who have already been persuaded of the merits of an innovation) can more easily take that message back into their community and encourage its favourable reception.
Second, a preparedness on the developer’s part to adopt the preferred orientation of the client or target community may be necessary. As a consequence, there is a potential for subsequent movement towards more democratic, trust-based processes of educational development within that same community.
