Implementing an Institution-wide Learning and Teaching Strategy: Lessons in managing change

Abstract

The article considers an organisational initiative to develop and implement a 'learning and teaching strategy'. It sets out the background to developments in this area in UK higher education, and locates the interest in learning and teaching strategies in the context of the focus on 'quality' which emerged in the 1990s, pressure from funding councils following the Dearing review in 1997, and the emphasis placed on quality enhancement by the UK Institute for Learning and Teaching. The insitutional case study enables exploration of how strategy and policy are responded to by academic managers, front-line academic staff and students. A range of factors which may undermine successful policy implementation is identified. The article draws on results from an ongoing longitudinal study of aspects of policy reception and policy implementation at a higher education college, NewColl, now in its second phase. An assessment is also made of how tensions in the policy process may be managed and a number of lessons are drawn for management practice which have wider applicability across higher education, particularly for those involved in the management of change in the area of learning and teaching.