Golden eggs of education uncovered

Good education environments are characterised by trust, passionate teaching staff who know what they want and students who feel that they are acknowledged. However, their good ideas and experiences do not automatically spread. Academic managers at higher levels are often not even aware of these ‘golden eggs’, but do know about the places where problems exist. This is clear from a new report. LUM has met the authors and visited one of the good academic microcultures – the Division of Packaging Logistics at LTH.

Academia is used to criticism and finding fault. Education consultants Torgny Roxå and Katarina Mårtensson did the opposite. They sought out good education environments and identified what was good about them.

“If you want to get the University going, you also have to highlight best practice. It’s a bit like in football: a good coach reminds the players of their strengths so that they have the motivation to work on their weaknesses”, says Torgny Roxå, who works at LTH’s educational development unit, Genombrottet.

He and his colleague Katarina Mårtensson, CED, have studied five education environments at three faculties – LTH, Medicine, and Humanities and Theology. They have ed some 50 lecturers, students, deans and heads of department.

The study, which forms part of the University’s education enhancement project, EQ11, shows that good education environments have a lot in common, despite differences in resources, subject and education cycle. The good cultures have often developed over a long period of time in fairly stable conditions. The culture is imbued in the walls and this has enabled trust to grow between colleagues and between teaching staff and students.

“Trust is an important characteristic and is necessary for internal dialogue and development. If we trust one another then we can speak freely and dare to contradict one another.”

Trust is grounded in a shared vision, and often passion, for the aim of the education. Everyone should also believe that they can have an impact.
“Lecturers should say things like ‘we are going to change Swedish industry!’ or ‘we are going to transform society!’.”

Many different teaching methods are used in the teaching environments studied. What they have in common is that teaching is taken very seriously and joint responsibility is taken for quality.

“If a colleague gets poor course evaluations, the entire group often gets involved to help. We support and coach one another, share tips and notes or in other ways help our colleagues to perform better”, says Katarina Mårtensson.

Management is sometimes the responsibility of one person, and is sometimes shared by a number of individuals. Regardless of which model is used, the good environments have active managers who deal with problems as soon as they arise.

The environments build their culture based on their history. This could mean a person or an event that was important to their story. A strong conviction that one’s work is important is also demonstrated in the fact that the environments are active in and open to external interaction and collaboration. They know exactly what is happening in their field and keep up-to-date with the latest findings. They also make very conscious choices. In university-wide projects, evaluations, etc. they take the opportunity to get fully involved in interesting aspects from the point of view of their values and culture, but do not let themselves get overwhelmed by things that they see as less relevant.

Students feel involved and acknowledged in these environments. Some say that they had intended to move on and study other subjects, but received such a good reception and were so inspired that they stayed. They are given challenges to tackle, receive a lot of support and find that their views are listened to.

“Some students told us how difficult it was to choose a topic and supervisor for their degree projects, ‘because there was a smorgasbord of good options’.”

“This is just smugness and idyllicism” is a comment that Katarina Mårtensson and Torgny Roxå have received about their report.

“Of course, but the whole point is to emphasise the good aspects, and this is also an important duty of management”, say the authors of the report.
However, of 11 managers ed – deans, vice-deans, heads of department, deputy heads of department and chairs of programme boards – only two were aware of the good education environments within their own operations! A shared definition of ‘good’ is clearly lacking.

“The academic leaders do not have any insight into the ‘classroom’ – they need to go out and spend time in these environments”, says Katarina Mårtensson.

They now want to move on to study environments that have experienced problems but worked to rectify them.

Footnote: The report Understanding strong academic microcultures – An exploratory study is available for download or can be ordered from the authors.

Tips for

Deans and heads of department

• Try to get to know the groups at grassroots level in your faculty/department
• Try to see patterns outside the formal contexts
• Create meeting places where people can talk ‘for real’ about teaching and management (e.g. departmental morning or afternoon coffee breaks)
• Emphasise strengths, give praise, have patience!
• Do not force the same model on everyone
• Dare to recruit those who contribute to the atmosphere in the workplace and not always those with most publications

Teaching staff

• Identify a number of good colleagues on whom you can rely and with whom you can discuss teaching.
• If you don’t have these in your team, find people to talk to outside the group.

Citat:

“All good leadership is about relating to individuals and listening. We have no tradition of this in academia. We have poor knowledge of the system, the academic body and all its various cultures.”
- Torgny Roxå

Photo caption: Education consults Katarina Mårtensson and Torgny Roxå. Photo: Britta Collberg

- Britta Collberg