The Use of Metaphors With LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY ® For Harmony and Innovation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Change is seldom easy and finding novel approaches that will increase the effectiveness of the process, engage all partners throughout and lead to a difference in culture at the end, adds additional challenge. Creative solutions, using arts-based methods, was seen as a positive way to bring about a reorganisation in a large school in a university. This paper describes the process, drawing on the underpinning philosophy of 'oblique strategies' , that was undertaken to bring colleagues together innovatively and constructively to be part of the change process.
The topic "Soft Strategies for Improving the Universities" is intended to help increase the competence of the university to deal with change. This requires that the process of discussion and thinking in planning and decision meetings should be based on maximal trust. The purpose of the "soft" strategies presented and discussed in the workshop is to enable the participants and chairpersons of assemblies and meetings in the university to end more easily with mutually acceptable decisions. The techniques dealt with as facilitation, strategy planning, future search conference and problem-solving groups are centered on dialogue and consensus and build on visualisation.
On the Horizon, 2009
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore future consciousness, in particular the desire for adventure and change, in light of the literature and ideas around academic development in higher education teaching and learning, and with a particular focus on supporting staff in their engagement with technologies in new ways.Design/methodology/approachThe article builds on and extends recent work by the authors Barnes and Tynan; and Tynan, Lee and Barnes, as well as that of other researchers and theorists. A case study approach is adopted, in which the narratives or “stories” of academics at an Australian university relating to issues surrounding learning technologies are analysed. The themes that emerge from the preliminary analysis are synthesised to draw out barriers and potential solutions from the participants' perspectives, especially with regard to their self‐identified future professional development needs, and particularly in relation to their adoption and sustainable us...
Studies in Higher Education
Drawing on recent research involving over 6,000 academic staff from in Higher Education, this paper examines the impact of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) on their professional lives since its launch in 2016. Our findings raise fundamental concerns, conceptually and methodologically, about the fitness for purpose of the TEF as a policy and its failure to take into account the views and experiences of Higher Education teaching staff. With a reliance on proxy metrics that emphasise the economic value of Higher Education over the quality of teaching, we explore how the TEF lacks legitimacy and credibility as an instrument of measurement of teaching excellence across all levels of the workforce. We also argue that the TEF has failed to achieve its original aims of improving the quality of teaching and increasing student choice to date, which raises further questions about its effectiveness and the repercussions for future policy reform. (149)
Lego®, Serious Play: Thinking about Teaching and Learning
LEGO® Serious Play™ (LSP) is a methodology which has been developed primarily for use in business contexts, initially with Real-Time Identity for You, Real-Time Strategy for the Team and Real-Time Strategy for the Enterprise. However, many of the principles which underpin the methodology are supported within the educational research literature. The findings discussed here represent some of the efforts in reclaiming LSP for the educational domain. The current study introduces LSP as a method of getting at participants’ understanding of their own professional identities. It details the process of the development of workshops and reflects on the aspects of ‘What Works’ within and across a small number of educational contexts. Results from two distinct groups are discussed, pre-service Teachers and Employees in a Small / Medium Enterprise (SME)
Collaborating equals: Engaging faculties through teaching-led research
2009
Academic Language and Learning (ALL) academics often occupy an uncertain position within the academy. On the one hand, their expertise is actively sought after when students are in crises, on the other hand, they are sometimes falsely perceived as remedial skills teachers divorced from actual academic endeavour and content. In this paper we argue that a potential meeting point of ALL and other academics lies in recognition of each other’s roles as researchers as well as teachers. We argue that ALL academics engage in research on teaching issues (context), rather than disseminating the content of research to their learners. While the teaching-research relationship for many academics might move from theory to research to teaching, the ALL research route potentially moves from teaching to theory to research to praxis. This “action research” route has been documented as a legitimate strategy of enquiry in diverse fields and provides a common research focus for ALL and other academics. I...
Hampering teaching excellence? Academics making decisions in the face of contradictions
Studies in Higher Education, 2020
Universities might aspire to teaching excellence, but do they enable academic teachers to make good teaching decisions? Using a critical realist perspective, a qualitative interview study in England and Australia explored academics' experiences of teaching decisions and their responses to strategic, institutional and departmental teaching policy and planning. Complex and contradictory conditions that challenged academics experiences of teaching and prevented effective decision-making were found. The paper identifies aspects of university functioning that act to prevent the achievement of teaching excellence. It argues that excellence in teaching requires coherent and integrated approaches and commitment right across the institution. For this to happen, universities need to consider how stated strategic learning and teaching ambitions are communicated, implemented, supported and, importantly, how they are understood and enacted throughout all levels and areas of the organisation, including many that hitherto do not consider they have a role in learning and teaching. .
Beyond teaching: Enabling holistic academic practice
2020
Competition for academic staff time to allocate to professional development occurs across an increasingly wide range of aspects of their roles. From learning to addressing areas of compliance with organisational activity, contextual knowledge and new skills and behaviours to enact their varied roles, academic staff are pulled in a range of directions. What if those with an interest in the development of staff in universities all worked together and put the individual academic at the heart of their own development trajectory? At Oxford Brookes University we have developed an holistic model of academic development for all career stages that considers the development needs of individuals as educators, researchers and leaders – the Brookes Academic Development Framework. This model is informed by research on aspects of academic development, particularly the work of Akerlind (see Akerlind 2004, 2008). Each of the three aspects are benchmarked to institutional and/or national frameworks f...
Educational Review, 2019
The Global Education Reform Movement's (GERM) interest in the quality of teaching and teacher effectiveness has focused largely on schools and children's attainment to date, with higher education (HE) remaining an outlier. Yet the neoliberal agenda that has dominated HE policy globally over the last two decades closely reflects the focus and ideology of the GERM. A recent example of this is the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) in 2016 in the UK, which places explicit focus on the assessment of the quality of HE teaching, with human capital as a key driver. Drawing on the TEF as an ideological extension of the GERM, this paper challenges the policy's purported aims and underpinning ethos. It argues that the current metrics-based model embodied in the TEF serves as a reductive instrument of normalising judgement that seeks to exercise control over HE teachers' work. Contrary to policy claims that the TEF will act as a 'key lever in driving up standards' (BIS 2016), we maintain that its reliance on crude performance indicators as 'evidence' of excellence hinders creativity and pedagogic inquiry, ultimately dissuading the creation of new knowledge about learning and teaching. Contrary to what we perceive as the TEF's narrow conceptualisation of teaching excellence, this paper proposes an alternative vision that seeks to reimagine excellence by integrating the complex, context-specific and collaborative characteristics of HE teaching into an approach that has authentic and meaningful improvement at its core, along with an ethos of professional responsibility.
Tertiary Education Management Conference, Trends, Traditions, Technology:, Hobart., 2013
We argue that a critical reflective professional practice is a necessary skill for tertiary education managers working in the knowledge-intensive enterprises of the tertiary education sector today. This is because a critical reflective professional practice is a useful sensemaking frame with which to address complexities and contestations of our everyday work. Indeed, Baker and Kolb (1993) regard such ‘inside-out’ perspectives as being highly ‘effective in valuing diversity and plurality in organisations’ (p 26). A critical reflective practice offers a way to surface pressures and a way to examine our assumptions, as well as those of others and our organisation, about the way we do our work. In examining our professional practice and the conditions of our work it is possible to uncover limitations and possibilities, become less prone to complacency or rigidity in our thoughts and actions, and develop a greater awareness of different perspectives and possibilities through engagement with this practice. This is all the more necessary when we add accelerating rates of change, uncertainty, ambiguity and as well as highly politicised and contested spaces to the mix.