Building a Learning University
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September 2009, Volume 12, Number 9
Creating a Community of Purpose With Educators and Stakeholder Groups
By Tony Gurr
The type of university needed for the new age of higher education will have to engage in a continuous process of self-review and refocusing over its lifetime. This will require systematic and purposeful processes of strategic planning that draw on the active participation of a broad range of stakeholders who, in their work together, align the institution’s policies, processes, and practices to make them more responsive to the changing needs of students.
Before this, however, the university needs to commit to a core purpose centred on student learning and what this means to how it does business. How do we get to this purpose? Surely, developing an innovative mission statement, hiring the best practitioners money can buy, and mimicking best practices should do the job for us.
Sadly, it does not.
The World Bank (2007) reminds us that, “…it is often easier to design new institutions than to reform existing ones…” (p.37) and while we hope that the call for a new vision for higher education will be taken onto the wider international stage in the very near future, we are reminded of Schleicher’s remarks:
The world is indifferent to tradition and past reputations, unforgiving of frailty and ignorant of custom or practice. Success will go to those individuals and countries which are swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change. ( Schleicher, 2006, p.16)
The starting point for this work should not be the creation of well-worded vision and mission statements, but rather a process of envisioning and reconceptualising possibilities that represent the core priorities and underlying assumptions of those who live and work within the institution. The alignment of the institution’s purpose with the values and underlying assumptions of stakeholders, and a sharper, more explicit understanding of what these are, will inform the future of the university.
As a contribution toward this future, we have conducted a longitudinal study and analysis of best practices across learning colleges in the U.S. and other leading student-centred institutions. We wanted to create a conceptual framework of values, beliefs, and underlying assumptions that characterise the best practices from those institutions that have changed the rules of the game to realign their institutions around the core purpose of student learning.
We have also conducted a survey of the main concerns and international trends in best practice in higher education thinking similar to the work of Paolo Santiago, Karine Tremblay, Ester Basri, and Elena Arnal (2008a; 2008b; and 2008c).
Our research suggests that it is possible to create a conceptual framework of best practices in values, beliefs, and underlying assumptions. This is presented in Fig. 1 below:
Fig. 1 – Conceptual Values, Beliefs & Underlying Assumptions Framework
The framework we have outlined above is perhaps too abstract as a whole to be very helpful to educators and their stakeholders. We recommend that it be broken down into more digestible component parts, and that these be thought about (and dismissed, if necessary), elaborated upon, and then applied to local conditions and circumstances.
The first of these components, PURPOSE, is highlighted in Fig. 2:
We value and are committed to:
Fig. 2 - Purpose
Our suggestion is that such components be presented to educators and their stakeholders as part of a collaborative learning experience and discussion.
An example is provided in Fig. 3:
We value and are committed to:
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respecting the principles of the Atatürkist tradition in modern Turkey, the ideas of freedom and participative democracy, and the moral imperative of civic responsibility |
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believing that it is not organisational structure, but rather ‘ideas’ that drive effective institutions, and it is these ideas that determine the success of students in education |
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building and evolving an institution where all students, staff and stakeholders learn and what students learn enables them to be successful citizens and workers in a morally based knowledge society |
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aligning the institution’s purpose with student and stakeholder needs and striving to maintain a ‘living’ mission and a ‘lived’ educational philosophy |
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maintaining an unshakeable focus on student learning and establishing clear roadmaps for student success |
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creating a caring, inclusive and safe environment that inspires all people to achieve their goals, share their success and encourage others to be everything they can be |
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Fig. 3
SA – Strongly Agree
A – Agree
U – Uncertain
D – Disagree
SD – Strongly Disagree
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What other beliefs, values and underlying assumptions are important to you?
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Fig. 3 – Suggested survey format for use with stakeholder groups
We have further elaborated the remaining 12 themes of our conceptual framework as:
As educators and their stakeholders review these components, they may notice our use of language in articulating the values, beliefs, and assumptions. We have selected a range of verbs and many of these relate to how we have come to see the world of learning, e.g., understanding, recognising, and realising.
Other verbs suggest strategic opportunities to develop and deploy specific action plans and strategic objectives. This was done intentionally and highlights another possible application of the framework: aligning purpose to underlying assumptions and future organisational decision-making.
When educators and their stakeholders review these last three components of the values, beliefs, and assumptions framework, we have also found it to be particularly effective to focus discussion around the critical questions developed by faculty at Alverno College ( Mentkowski & Associates, 2000).
The questions developed at Alverno (see fig. 4) naturally took students as the starting point of their investigation of how to create “learning that lasts”. They built on the commitment of their faculty to “understand the student as learner and as an individual” ( Mentkowski & Associates, 2000. p. 13).
The questions they then developed allowed them to systematically understand learning in terms of its processes and outcomes.
Fig. 4 – Alverno’s Critical Questions (from Mentkowski, M and Associates, 2000).
These last two elements clearly focus on the underlying assumptions educators and their stakeholders have about the nature of success, how it is defined by the organisation, and how it wants to measure its own success.
Pope (2006) has highlighted the importance of these elements and is also highly critical of the myths that have been actively promoted by Ivy League schools. He maintains that these myths have been created to fill the void in “product research in higher education” and the public’s demand for rankings, which he describes as “inherently phoney” and a disservice to society.
These damaging things are compiled by statisticians who can only measure input factors, many of which are totally irrelevant to education. They know nothing about what happens to young minds and souls in the four years of college. Some anonymous Canadian has said the American way of judging the quality of college by the grades and scores of the freshmen it selects is like judging the quality of a hospital by the health of the patients it admits. What happens during the stay is what counts. (Pope, 2006, p.8)
There is much truth in Pope’s view of how many traditional colleges measure their own success. In our view, the core measure of success should be the quality of student learning. This is not a simple undertaking, as is illustrated by the case study of Alverno.
This, for us, highlights the importance of not looking at the components of this framework as a to-do list or checklist that we can work through. The components should be seen as a set of integrated jigsaw pieces (see Fig. 5), and before we put all the pieces together, we might want to compare our assumptions across a range of components.
Fig. 5 – The Jigsaw Effect
Another suggestion is also for educators and their stakeholders to develop a set of key questions to guide the wider strategic planning process (see Fig. 6) – and use these as reference points as the various components are reviewed.
Fig. 6 – Core Focus Questions (Strategic Planning Process)
The importance of this last component cannot be overstated. Many organisations begin with great intensions and grand plans for changing the way they do business; very few take the time to consider their own assumptions about the nature of change and develop an organisational change perspective to inform action and strategic decision-making.
We are reminded of the words of Morgan and Roberts (2003):
Academic staff can be notoriously difficult creatures, particularly when others might seek to intervene in their teaching. How then do we go about something as threatening as the overhaul of an entire undergraduate curriculum within a Faculty? (p. 1)
Change and transformation in the university can be brought about only with the willing and active participation of all those involved in evolving a learning perspective. We recognise that cultural and institutional change takes time and can be slow, requiring patience and forbearance.
Making Progress
The central question we have posed is not whether we can produce a well-crafted mission, but rather how we can utilise our purpose and core values to minimise forms of incongruence within a new university or an institution wishing to transform itself. It is our belief that it is the moral dimensions of an organisation’s raison d'être that create the conditions for high levels of congruence or, to borrow the words of Kuh et al. (2005), facilitates the development of a “Living” mission and “Lived” educational philosophy.
In dealing with the conceptualisation and creation of a new educational institution, and one that wishes to do business differently, there can be no quick fixes in terms of strategic planning, resources, and staffing; we reject both the magic-bullet and nothing-can-be-done schools of thought on organisational culture and institutional transformation. We believe, however, that progress towards the creation of a learning university is possible and can be achieved through a combination of risk-taking, effective leadership, and investigation of the values, beliefs, and underlying assumptions of educators and their stakeholders.
The conceptual framework we have presented in this paper is the result of extensive investigations into institutions that have worked to do business differently in education. Our research and investigations show that these values, beliefs, and explicit underlying assumptions can and do work, if they are shared and agreed by all shareholders and integrated into the culture of the institution. We recognise that the areas addressed in this framework are complex and the values, beliefs, and underlying assumptions we have proposed are interrelated in many respects. They should be viewed as parts of a much bigger strategic planning jigsaw: each needs the other to complete the picture and there may be a piece or two missing.
Our framework can be used as a learning opportunity by those with a can-do mentality and a passion for putting learning at the heart of what they do. We hope the framework can help move educators and their stakeholders from current best practice in learning colleges to next practice in the learning university of the future.
REFERENCES
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Alverno College (n.d). Ability-based Curriculum. Retrieved on May 02, 2009, from http://www.alverno.edu/about_alverno/ability_curriculum.html |
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Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., Whitt, E. J. & Associates (2005). Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. |
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Mentkowski, M and Associates. (2000). Learning That Lasts: Integrating Learning, Development, and Performance in College and Beyond. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. |
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Morgan, C. K. and Roberts, D. (2003). Herding Cats? Obtaining Staff Support for Curriculum Change and Implementation. Retrieved on May 02, 2009, from http://www.osds.uwa.edu.au/__data/page/37666/Christopher_Morgan.pdf |
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Mourkogiannis, N (2006). Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. |
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Mullin, R. (2001). The Undergraduate Revolution: Change the System or Give Incrementalism Another 30 Years?" Change 33, no.5 (September/October 2001): 54-58 |
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O’Banion, T. (1997). A Learning College for the 21st Century. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press. |
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Pope, L (2006). Colleges That Change Lives. ( New York, Penguin) |
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Santiago , P., Tremblay, K., Basri, E., and Arnal, E. (2008a). Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society. Vol.1 – Special Features: Governance, Funding, Quality. OECD Publishing. |
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Santiago , P., Tremblay, K., Basri, E., and Arnal, E. (2008b). Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society. Vol. 2 - Special Features: Equity, Innovation, Labour Market, Internationalisation. OECD Publishing. |
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Santiago , P., Tremblay, K., Basri, E., and Arnal, E. (2008c). Tertiary Education for the Knowledge Society - OECD Thematic Review of Tertiary Education: Synthesis Report. Retrieved on April 24, 2009, from http://oecd-conference-teks.iscte.pt/downloads/OECD_vol3.pdf |
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Schleicher, A. (2006). The Economics of Knowledge: Why Education is Key to Europe’s Success. Lisbon Council Policy Brief, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2006). ISSN 2031-0943 |
