Freeing the chi of change: The Higher Education Academy and enhancing teaching and learning in higher education

Abstract

This article takes a look at some of the new policies enacted in the United Kingdom with the goal of improving the quality of higher education there and the way students study. Both the Higher Education Bill (2004) and the Higher Education Academy's efforts in this field are very new. Therefore, it is very appropriate to conduct a retrospective of past efforts. While other levels of study have dealt with these attempts head-on, the essay demonstrates that the meso level, which is crucial, has been neglected. On the other hand, many theories of change and development have provided the foundation for these interventions. The concept of the reflective practitioner is central to one dominant paradigm; this theory focusses on the micro (person) level of analysis. As agents of change, it views reflective practitioners. Another is associated with learning organisation theory, which takes a macro view and attributes change to changes in the norms, beliefs, and practices of an organisation. One more holds that the field itself is the most important unit of study for bringing about transformation, and it is founded on the idea of epistemological determinism. Other policies in higher education coexist with the ones already listed; they may not be directly related to improving instruction, but they still have a substantial impact on the field via a patchwork of unrelated tactics and implicit assumptions. Particularly pertinent here are policies concerning funding, research, and expanding involvement, all of which are being put into place within a more managerialist setting characterised by an increase in workload and a decrease in available resources. Consistency between the policies and the ideas that underpin them throughout the many levels of analysis is absent from all of this. The higher education programs implemented by different government and non-government organisations have often worked against one another due to their lack of cohesion. This leads us to our choice of an Eastern philosophical metaphor: the idea of blocked chi. At the departmental level, which is the meso level of analysis, there is also a lack of a strong theory of change and related policies. Our goal is to liberate the "chi of change" by proposing solutions to the second omission.