INNOVATIONS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Working Papers

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Working Paper No. 1:The Languages of Innovation: listening to the higher education literature Working Paper No. 2: Innovation: questions of boundary

Working Paper No. 1:

Innovations in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

(a project in the ESRC Learning Society Programme, award reference L123251071)

The Languages of Innovation: listening to the higher education literature

Harold Silver

ISBN: 1-84102-021-4

Faculty of Arts and Education, University of Plymouth, Douglas Avenue, Exmouth EX8 2AT

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Copyright 1998 by Harold Silver

The languages of innovation: listening to the higher education literature

Harold Silver

Abstract

The literature of higher education has in recent decades been only spasmodically concerned with innovation, and even then with gaps and silences. This paper surveys the ways in which innovation and innovators have been discussed primarily since the 1960s, considering ways in which innovators, innovations, processes and resistances have been analysed. The paper explores some of the identified origins of the innovation interests in higher education, and outlines a typology of salient forms of innovation. These include the movement away from formal lecturing and attempts to establish emphases on individualised or independent learning. It looks at relevant initiatives that it was possible to develop at the level of the individual innovator, and those that meshed in with institutional policy and the responses of institutions to external pressures, funding and opportunities. The most notable of these external influences was the Enterprise in Higher Education programme. The literature examined therefore ranges from the reasons for academic staff innovating to institutional policy. The paper looks at the range of factors suggested as encouraging or inhibiting innovation. The recent literature on innovation in higher education, rather than in education more widely, as well as in industry, commerce and the economy, is relatively sparse. Much of what has been produced is concerned either with description of or proposed strategies for initiatives or with discussion of the adaptation of new technologies to the needs of an expanded and more diverse higher education system under severe economic constraints. This analysis of the literature suggests some of the basic questions that need to be considered in order to elevate the discussion of innovation from simple models to an understanding of its position in higher education, the levels at which it takes place, its motivations and contexts.

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I People Innovating

Some origins

In 1976 two American political scientists wrote that 'innovation has emerged over the last decade as possibly the most fashionable of social science areas'. Unfortunately, the theoretical value of the research that had been done was 'problematic', and the findings were varied and 'unstable' (Downs and Mohr, 1976, p. 700). From the 1960s, indeed, a considerable international literature of innovation emerged, including classic texts in a number of disciplines. Of particular importance was the literature addressing the contexts and nature of innovation in management, organisation and industrial competitiveness. Burns and Stalker's The Management of Innovation began its influential career in 1961. A crescendo of American work on innovation in industrial organisations and the professions developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Such landmarks as Peter Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the United States and Charles Handy's The Age of Unreason appeared in the 1980s, as did international interest in the innovatory features of workplace organisation in Volvo or General Motors, Japanese quality circles, and the literature of the 'quality of work life'. Although some of this may have been fashionable, and some of the findings 'unstable', there were serious underlying pressures ­ economic, technological and social - towards making and analysing change. Higher education was not to escape the concerns, uncertainties and often crises that the pressures reflected.

The Hale Committee report on University Teaching Methods in 1964 underlined that the need for research on university teaching in Britain, including 'the application of the new methods of communication made available by modern technology' and as a result of increased student numbers, had been apparent for some time. What was needed, however, was not more surveys of the kind the Committee had undertaken, but 'operational research The need is now for experiment' (University Grants Committee, 1964, p. 111). Such a call for innovation in higher education was not identical in origin or shape with calls in industry or politics, but it reflected similar concerns. The Committee talked about the American 'national temperament ever friendly to innovations stirred to a mood of self-criticism in educational matters by Russian scientific achievements, and the pressure of demand for higher education has also acted as a stimulus towards experiment'. Despite national differences British universities faced essentially the same problem ­ that of 'dealing with a demand for higher education which has increased, and will continue to increase, more rapidly than the resources likely to be available to meet it with traditional methods' (ibid., pp. 109-10). The problem of making effective use of resources to meet significant challenges was, and would remain, an important context for innovation in higher education as in industry and commerce.

Some aspects of innovation in higher education were also to derive momentum from developments in the secondary schools. Factors in some kinds of innovation include the inducement offered by technology available on the market, as has been the case with some developments at school level in the second half of the twentieth century. This has been true of the long history of attempts to harness the resources available for 'audio-visual aids' or 'educational technology'. The story from the 1950s of, for example, American 'programmed instruction' and British 'programmed learning' or the language laboratory and the computer, begins in research and products, and continues with the penetration of the schools and higher education, in the latter case either directly or following experience in the schools. Innovation and change had a longer, firmer history at school level in the post-war decades than did higher education, either because the school system saw greater need and opportunity, or because it was more amenable to pressure and less resistant than higher education to change. The proliferation of journals, yearbooks and other literature addressing 'ava' or 'ed tech' in the 1950s-80s was concerned principally with developments in the schools. A momentum of discussion about the nature and purpose of innovation in schools had been established and it was sustained, notably in North America and Britain, in association with various interpretations of school effectiveness and improvement (Fullan, 1992; Silver, 1994; National Commission on Education, 1993, ch. 5).

At higher education level the early thrust was mainly in teacher education, though some non-technological developments in the UK and internationally gathered pace from the 1960s ­ including attempts to develop alternatives to the traditional lecture, and to respond to research on student learning. In the decades following the Hale committee's emphasis on operational research and experiment, in some corners of British higher education innovators saw some virtue in the schools' experience, the research, the need or the opportunity to explore ways of undermining centuries-old teaching routines. Increasingly the 'innovators' also became multiple constituencies, individuals and groups, initiating or responding to initiatives. The promotion and language of innovation were adopted in different circumstances at different levels of activity and policy.

The genesis, nature and purposes of innovation as it came to pervade higher education in the 1990s are the main concern of this paper. It examines how innovation was perceived, how innovations were undertaken and in response to what motivations and pressures. From the literature of innovation it is intended to extricate some of the 'languages' in which the theory, context and practice became embedded, and to consider some of the implications for the study of teaching and learning.

 

Innovation

In higher education, as in other institutions and organisations, innovation has been discussed in the literature at all levels, from individual initiative to institutional (or whole system) policy. It has been discussed explicitly as top-down and bottom-up activity, and it could be interpreted as in-out and out-in, reflecting the measure of individual exploration and its dissemination, and the innovation that results from external pressures ­ including financial, market and technological pressures and changes. We shall return to a discussion of possible typologies that emerge from the literature, but at this point it is important to establish one reservation regarding higher education.

A typology of innovations in higher education could consist of: (a) organisation and management, (b) curriculum and (c) teaching and learning. It is with the third of these that we are here concerned, but it is important to underline that innovations in this area are not entirely distinct from those in the other two. Computing entered higher education in large measure as an aid to the first and established itself indispensably in a situation of increasing scale, complexity and accountability as a basis for management information systems. Teaching and learning have been influenced by structural changes, including the creation of committee structures and the appointment of personnel to manage staff development and the funding of innovation. Curriculum change has taken place in new structures and influenced the ways teachers teach and students learn. The moves to modular structures and semesters (themselves largely responses to increased student numbers and financial constraints) and the introduction of credit accumulation and transfer, have been the most prominent such influences, directly challenging some aspects of teaching and assessment. Curriculum change has, however, been a response to a variety of factors, including understandings of the boundaries and packaging of knowledge, and it has most frequently been a product of working parties, departments, faculties and institutional committees. It is an assumption in much of the relevant literature and here that changing curricula is easier to conceive and implement than changing the culture of teaching and learning, the latter being less amenable to committee or communal decision-making.

Where teaching and learning on the one hand, and curriculum on the other hand, overlap most seriously is in such areas as inter-disciplinary initiatives, assessment procedures and student access. The first of these is a curriculum development that may require team teaching or other changes in discipline-based procedures. The second is a curriculum concern which also has implications for the learning interaction between teacher and student. The third is an issue of institutional policy and management, student support, curriculum structures and choices, and possible adaptations of teaching aims and approaches. Similar considerations would apply, for example, to work based learning and adapting course content to develop core skills and competencies. We are concerned with such overlapping areas only where they have clear messages regarding innovation in teaching and learning.

We cannot here address issues relating to the variety of definitions of 'innovation', and the value judgments inherent in the usage. The most common assumption is that innovation is a deliberate process (or product), directed towards (but not necessarily achieving) improvement, which may involve originality or adaptation. We shall return to some of these considerations, including innovation as generated by individuals and by systems, as distinct from 'change', and as a response to different situations. The next step here is to consider what the literature largely accepts as innovations, as planned changes which either seek to replace conventional or traditional teaching and learning processes, or which involve entirely new processes which respond to contextual factors rather than to intrinsic factors within teaching and learning.

 

Beyond lectures

The 1992 MacFarlane report on Teaching and Learning in an Expanding Higher Education System outlined 'conventional teaching' procedures based on lectures and proposed that 'there needs to be a re-examination of both the purposes and the techniques involvedand more extensive use made of new methods which support the additional transferable skills now being required' (Committee of Scottish University Principals, 1992, p. 7). For several decades different attempts at innovation had been based on critiques of the conventional lecture. Pressures for the replacement of the lecture by seminars and tutorials were a feature of the 1950s and 1960s, and the Hale committee reported in 1964 that both students and the University Grants Committee had been highly critical of the lecture. The latter had described it as 'out-dated' and a 'one-way process', establishing no contact between lecturer and student, and incapable of 'stimulating academic discussion of any value' (University Grants Committee, 1964, p. 45).

The urge to replace lecturing as the sole or predominant teaching method underpinned many, though by no means all, of the innovations with which we are concerned across these decades. These included initiatives associated with Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE), many of which considered 'the first obvious candidate for change has to be the 50 minute stand up lecture. Traditionally it lies at the heart of the "chalk and talk" approach to university teaching and has been held up by many as the villain of the piece' (Sneddon and Kremer, 1994, p. 4). Curriculum changes, including those internationally in health-related areas particularly, often meant a considerable shift in balance between lecturing and other approaches. One such change to a 'truly inter-disciplinary' curriculum at Queen Mary and Westfield College of the University of London, 'reduced didactic content, and emphasizes independent learningLectures have been retained as the core method for transmitting information, but their numbers and content have been pruned considerably'. Small-group tutorial and other methods were being used 'to enhance a deep and independent approach to students' learning' (Carroll, 1997, p. 283).

This kind of replacement or curtailment of lecturing was often reported where changes were institution-wide or, as in one Australian example, where an 'unconventional kind of course' was being introduced in a conventional university (Barnett and Brown, 1981, p. 13). As student numbers increased substantially in the 1980s and 1990s some innovations were directed at enabling large classes to function in new ways. One example in environmental sciences was based on interaction through handouts, the operation of seminar groups whose membership was self-selected by students, and student compilation of a self-determined dossier for assessment. The staff concerned did not accept the necessity of continuing to teach ineffectively in large classes, and therefore explored the creative use of 'person-centred' approaches, especially active involvement in group work (Barkham and Elender, 1995). An example from law was directed at modifying the traditional case method 'in which the lecturer talks and the students take notes'. It was still, in 1987, 'common to find law lecturers addressing, or even dictating notes to, students with a minimum of interaction' (Tribe and Tribe, 1987, pp. 299-300).

Scattered experiments with small-group teaching or 'free group discussion' were being reported from the 1950s, particularly in medicine and biology (Johnson, 1952; Barnett, 1958). The main progenitor of these experiments in higher education, Jane Abercrombie (earlier writing as M.L. Johnson), worked with small groups for example in medicine and architecture, reporting her work in The Lancet, the Health Education Journal, New Biology and other journals in the medical, health-related and science fields. In her influential The Anatomy of Judgment in 1960 she concluded that it was work with individual students in small groups that released them from 'the security of thinking in well-defined given channels' and enabled them to find 'a new kind of stability based on the recognition and acceptance of ambiguity, uncertainty and open choice' (Abercrombie, 1964, p. 141). The search for small-group solutions to teaching problems continued, to be intensified by the pressures of the 1990s. Group strategies were the subject of much scrutiny and controversy, focusing on the difficulty of securing student involvement and preventing staff dominance, as well as on staff reluctance to abandon the familiar lecture approach (Committee of Scottish University Principals, p. 9; Sneddon and Kremer, pp. 159-66, 172-3). A directory of projects being undertaken under EHE nationally included in its classification 'Student groupwork', which contained 112 entries (EHE Unit, University of Portsmouth, 1994, vol. 2, p. 719).

 

Towards the student

Small group teaching, peer group learning, group projects and group assessment form one corner of the area of innovation. With inputs from a variety of directions, of which group teaching and learning is only one, an 'innovation movement' has developed which focuses on 'student-centred' or 'independent' learning. The vocabularies in use are varied and often have emphases distinguishable only with difficulty, 'student-centred' being the least useful here given its all-embracing character. 'Student autonomy' has arguably always been a feature or an aim of much university education ­ for example, Oxford and Cambridge's supervision system. Vocabularies much in use in the 1980s and 1990s have been those of 'independent' and 'individualised' study.

The recent interest in 'independence' in the student's learning process has some roots in the programmed learning movement of the 1950s, and for higher education notably in the Keller Plan of the following decade. The Keller Plan for a 'personalized system of instruction' was developed in the United States as an attempt to free students' experience from constraints imposed by the lecture situation and to enable them to progress on the basis of 'mastery'. Students were to be told:

This is a course through which you may move, from start to finish, at your own pace. You will not be held back by other students or forced to go ahead before you are ready How fast you go is up to you. (Keller and Sherman, 1974, p. 15)

The plan was adopted primarily in science and engineering education, and by the time the Nuffield Group for Research and Innovation in Higher Education conducted its work in the mid-1970s the plan was in use in some university courses in Britain. A paper on the plan and its operation at the University of Surrey, for example, was prepared for the Nuffield Group (Boud and Bridge, 1974).

This was the best known scheme for 'individualised' learning, based on a curriculum which students mastered at their own pace. It was one example in what the Nuffield Group put together under the title 'Towards Independence in Learning' (Nuffield Group, 1975). Independence, as embodied in the creation in the early 1970s of Schools of Independent Study at North East London Polytechnic and the University of Lancaster, was concerned not only with self-pacing, but also with measures of student autonomy in designing their courses of study. The Lancaster development aimed at giving students in the programme during the second half of their degree 'a great deal of freedom, flexibility and independence from existing courses'. Planning their own schemes of study, students had the opportunity 'to orient their learning to achieve their own goals' (University of Lancaster, 1975/6, p. 1). Independent study at NELP was concerned with students defining their own stage of development, aims to be achieved, and (within 'the minimum structure required to ensure comparability of standard') the design and control of their programme of study (Stephenson, 1980, pp. 68-9).

In the 1980s and 1990s a literature of independent study or learning developed internationally, including as the focus of David Boud's Developing Student Autonomy in Learning (Boud, 1981 and 1988) and in a section on 'independent studying' in the MacFarlane report (Committee of Scottish University Principals, pp. 8-9). The contributors to the Boud collection were concerned with such issues as reducing teacher control, developing independent learning in a traditional institution and negotiated learning contracts.

Negotiated or independent study contracts became a feature of various kinds of programme. At NELP (and then as the University of East London), for example, there was under EHE auspices an effort to develop 'learning contracts' across the institution, with students using them 'for many aspects of their learning but particularly for placement, work experience, project work or any form of experiential learning which might involve negotiation with employer partners'. Features of the contract included an identification of students' strengths and weaknesses in skills, knowledge and experience, the aims and objectives of the proposed study, the content, context and operation of the study, and the outcomes of the study to be submitted for assessment (Laycock, 1993, pp. 25-6). An independent study approach to a history course at Manchester Polytechnic involved a weekly placement and contracts were negotiated between client, student and tutor, spelling out 'the scope of the project and the manner in which it will be assessed' (Nicholls, 1992, pp. 71-2). The learning contracts or agreements adopted were frequently 'prepared by the learner, usually with support from mentor or facilitator' and stipulating what is to be learned, the time scale and how the learning will be validated' (Hammond and Collins, 1991, p. 131). Most such developments were on undergraduate courses, but they began to be used on masters courses also ­ for example in mathematics on an Engineering Information Technology programme at Sheffield Hallam University (Armstrong, 1994).

Peer tutoring in various forms was particularly a way of supporting first-year student learning. This might mean the allocation of peer tutors recruited from the second and third years to lead tutorial groups with first-year students on a regular basis (Mallatratt, 1995) and receiving academic credit or payment in return. Tutors in this case received generally substantial training. One version of this, imported from the United States and pioneered at Kingston University was 'supplemental instruction'. This was based on a more social-interactive model of student support, enabling students wishing to do so to consult a more senior student (or 'SI leader') outside the curriculum ­ after a lab session or in an informal evening meeting (Wallace, 1993; Oliver, 1995)).

The issue of assessment was prominent in many of these developments, some of which emphasised a combination of different strategies, and some of which looked for a more direct role of students themselves in the process. This might mean student selection of their own portfolio of work to be assessed, or some form of student self-assessment or peer assessment. Self-assessment most frequently became one component of the process, sometimes in conjunction with peer assessment. An example from the School of Biology and Biochemistry at Queen's University Belfast involved two approaches to the introduction of peer and self-assessment in large classes:

The first encompasses collaborative peer, self and tutor assessment procedures as applied to a first year undergraduate biochemistry practical project. The second involves group assessment as applied to a specially designed cross-curricular practical team project for first year undergraduate students in the biological sciences

The development was a reaction against the traditional method of assessment which 'generates the wrong sort of motivation in students', and was intended to make assessment 'an integral part of the learning process' (Stefani, in Sneddon and Kremer, 1994, p. 39). In this case, as elsewhere, a new approach to learning meant revising views about assessment. An innovative approach to engineering education at the University of Birmingham (the Product and Manufacturing System design project, PAMS) emphasised that 'of all the aspects of this project which have required rethinking and modification, the most important has been assessment. This rethinking has led to the adoption of peer assessment as an important element in the assessment process' (Jarvis and Quick, p. 178). Advocating the use of an analytical self-assessment schedule Boud reflected on the trend with which it was associated:

Most assessment techniques have been developed for courses in which teachers, or an external accrediting body, determine the goals, the curriculum and the ways in which students are tested. Increasingly it is being recognised that for many purposes it is educationally more appropriate for students to be actively involved in setting goals and assessing themselves There is a need for the range of strategies in this area to be extended to match the innovations which are occurring (Boud, 1992, p. 185).

Self-assessment has been taken to mean student involvement in assessing outcomes or products, as well as 'setting goals and assessing themselves'. In the latter form self-assessment can be seen as the first step in learning agreements or contracts, defining learning outcomes and giving students control over their own learning (Hammond and Collins, 1991, ch. 5).

This element of substantial student 'control' over, or 'direction' or 'management' of their own curriculum, targets and learning strategies, has been central to much innovation that has moved emphasis away from lectures. The assumption in such innovations is that such concepts as 'the course' and 'course delivery' need to be modified to enable students, with suitable consultation and support, to make choices beyond simply selecting available units. The assumption is that some measure of individual learning design is necessary. The management of student learning, of independent or autonomous learning, of flexible learning, has become the focus of an extensive literature in the 1990s (Jordan and Yeomans, 1991; Hall and Saunders, 1996; Tait and Knight, 1996). The student's responsibility for such management has been central to much of the discussion, practice and proposals.

 

Better ways

Some subject areas have pioneered other attempts to turn away from what they see as the ineffective lecture system. This has been particularly true of the role of medical and health-related education in problem-based learning (PBL) from modest beginnings in the 1950s and 1960s. Reviewing two decades of literature from the early 1970s, two American medical educators described PBL as 'one of the first truly comprehensive innovations in medical curricula' for over 25 years:

Thereseems to be a collective belief on the part of faculty and educators that there has to be a better way to train physicians than to make medical students sit through endless hours of lectures and then test their ability to recall bits of trivia on a multiple-choice test.

In this field PBL was characterised by 'the use of patient problems as a context for students to learn problem-solving skills and acquire knowledge about the basic and clinical sciences' (Albanese and Mitchell, 1993, pp. 52-3). The strategies involved were of interest primarily to areas of professional preparation, with their capacity to use 'real world' problems as starting points for student study and solution, and as a means of producing more competent professionals in such fields as law and architecture. At Imperial College, London, for example, PBL was the basis for the conversion of a mechanical engineering course in vibration analysis, developed within an existing programme. PBL was described in this case, unlike the position in some medical schools, as being introduced 'without major disruption to other areas' (Cawley, 1989, pp. 83-4; Cawley, 1991, p. 177). An analysis of The Challenge of Problem Based Learning begins by emphasising that it is 'the most significant innovation in education for professions for many years' (Boud and Feletti, 1991, p. 13). The potential of the approach for changing both the curriculum and the teaching/learning encounter between teacher and student attracted wider interest from the 1980s.

The rationale for PBL inevitably derives from its origins. It is not difficult to see how

explanations of its use in medical and scientific contexts have been adaptable to some other areas. The use of PBL in medicine and nursing, for example, is described as supported 'by reference to its apparent success at encouraging students to learn in depth, to develop skills required for life-long learning and in dealing with complex real-life problems' (Jervis and Jervis, 1997, p. 25). It is described elsewhere as being centred 'around key problems in professional practice', but also as 'a way of constructing and teaching courses using problems as the stimulus and focus for student activity' (Boud and Feletti, 1991, p. 14). The experience of one of the main pioneers in the medical field, McMaster University in Ontario, Canada from the late 1960s, led to extensive theorising (not always readily accepted) about its rationale and validity:

The general rationale is quite simple. It is assumed that the task of medical doctors is ultimately to identify, analyse and manage (or 'solve' in some instances) the medical problems of their patients, and to do so effectively, efficiently and with compassion... why not use problem situations as the basis for designing a medical curriculum? (Neufeld and Chong, 1984, p. 250).

The approach was not, of course, entirely concerned with the curriculum narrowly conceived. What was taught was directly related to how it could be taught, and at McMaster as at other institutions the use of small tutorial groups was central to the operation of PBL. Another example from Canada, in the 1980s, is that of Sherbrooke, in Quebec. The Faculty of Medicine completely restructured its curriculum on the basis of PBL, and the implications for teaching and learning were direct:

The role of teachers has shifted from delivery of content in teaching to tutoring, where in the Sherbrooke small groups on student acts as a group leader. To influence student learning, tutors must now master other tutorial/educator competencies. This new role has proven both exciting and disappointing. Tutors are excited when they see how effective the self-learning process in small groups of motivated students seems to be It remains, nevertheless, somewhat disappointing (mostly for the basic science teachers) since tutors no longer have the opportunity to expose their special knowledge or expertise to the rest of the class. (Des Marchais et al., 1992, p. 198).

Developments in British medical education, particularly since the General Medical Council made recommendations for reform in 1991, have led to debate about the appropriate mix of teaching strategies in the basic sciences. One outcome of PBL discerned in training for the health professions has been its impact on students:

The PBL process cannot just be viewed as a method of delivering curriculum, a major factor in the success of this process is that students learn the group dynamics of working together (Hughes and Lucas, 1997, p. 87).

Although PBL has not been widely adopted outside the professional fields, it is clear that some of its features are present in other curriculum and teaching reforms. Without an overall PBL structure, curriculum reforms are nevertheless often based on problem-oriented approaches. Group learning in various structures contains some of these elements. The tasks set out for independent learning and in learning contracts reflect something of this rationale. 'Active learning' may be based, though in a more limited way, on the kind of 'case' with which PBL is concerned. At Queen's University, Belfast, for example, the development of communication skills in an engineering course was tackled through week-long 'active learning assignments'. Coming as early possible in the students' course 'they may be considered to provide shock treatment to make them realise, if they have not done so before that engineering is not just a continuation of the science and mathematics that they have been concentrating on at school'. The shock treatment was based on students being presented with disaster situations to explore and on which to report (Jennings and Ferguson, 1995, p. 308). The discrete concepts can come together in various ways. A new learning package in hospitality management at Leeds Metropolitan University, for instance, was described as changing 'the balance of delivery from predominantly lecture and tutorial modes to activity-based learning, independent learning and small-group tutorials' (Harris and Stoney, 1996, p. 11).

Underpinning many of these approaches, in some cases explicitly, in others indirectly, are theories of learning, the implementation of which has come increasingly into conflict with the pressures of larger numbers and the curtailment or redistribution of resources. Some larger scale innovations are more appropriately seen as driven by policies reflecting increased attention to the management of change.

 

The larger scale

The adoption of innovative policies at institutional level may derive, for example, from structural changes (for example modularisation) within the institution or across all or parts of the higher education system, or from financial constraints. Although primarily curriculum-oriented, the outcomes for teaching and learning may be of two kinds ­ institutional moves to encourage or generate change through staff development or other means, and the need or opportunity seen by individuals or course teams to change the teaching/learning situation. The former would explain, for example, why an institution decides to move towards open or resource based learning, and the latter would explain subject- or course-specific developments. Such a specific innovation can be seen also as occurring at a junction of institutional and individual motivations. The Open Learning Foundation (in its regular Opus) reports on institution-wide initiatives and the use of open learning materials, but also on initiatives in specific courses. Its Open Learning Case Studies include reports on the use of open learning materials on law in social work, an open learning project in a business school, and the introduction of self-managed study in mathematics using booklets, videos, worksheets and tutorials (Open Learning Foundation, 1996).

One description of open learning covers its 'two main thrusts: enhanced student access; and the development of student autonomy'. It is intended to widen student choice regarding the time and place of study, content, pace, method, media and assessment, all enabling students to work more independently (Lewis, 1995, p. 32). Open learning clearly overlaps with other examples in any typology of innovation. One distinctive feature of open learning is its combination of access to the curriculum and self-directed learning on the basis of materials and facilities. It is in the detail that the elements of innovation may lie, as is the case with distance learning. The creation of the Open University in the 1960s was a major innovation both for its students and for the system of higher education, and it has widened and developed its approach to teaching and learning since its beginnings. A majority of other British institutions of higher education have in the 1990s in particular established some undergraduate and postgraduate distance learning programmes. We cannot review the detailed literature on Open University procedures and developments, few of which would be relevant to the focus we have here, and there is as yet no accessible literature on distance learning developments by other British higher education institutions. Open University developments fall within our consideration of the institutional 'larger scale' as well as in the detail of its courses. The possible presence of distance education innovation in other institutions is both a detail of their activities, and part of wider national developments towards virtual and other technologically based learning opportunities.

At an institutional level we have also seen in the case of medical education that whole medical schools or faculties can choose an innovative approach to the reform of the curriculum and teaching and learning. Increasingly from the 1980s innovation and change have been produced in response to major national initiatives and inducements. This has been true, for example, of the development of industrial partnerships, programmes to develop personal transferable skills and core or key skills, and work-based experience. On all of these there is a considerable literature which it is not possible to review here. The important common element is that they are initiated or supported by national policy or funding, and are intended to affect the whole or significant sections of institutions and their operations. In all cases students are placed in new learning situations or challenged with new objectives, and teaching roles may be adapted considerably.

The Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE) programme, emanating from government policy through the Manpower Services Commission in 1987, was significant in stimulating these and other kinds of developments. Although many of these were focused on the curriculum and the employment market, the shifting focus of EHE prompted reflection within and across institutions about teaching styles and effectiveness, and ways of learning. This is an example of a national programme, channelled through institutions and cascading financial support down to individual initiatives that often involved the production or adaptation of innovations. One prediction that 'such strategic placing of small funds would unlock pent-up enthusiasm in a significant proportion of academic staff has been fully confirmed' (Elton, 1994, p. 12). In relation particularly to the emphasis on skills and competencies within discipline areas and courses, EHE in many instances enabled revised or new approaches to teaching and the teaching-learning relationship to be developed (Assiter, 1995; Sneddon and Kremer, 1994).

Within the larger scale, in response to policy, pressure and financial inducement and support, initiatives have been possible, and these initiatives would frequently merit the label of innovation. The same is true of other national schemes, including the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning of the late 1990s, and other policy-driven mechanisms for funding technology- or computer-related education. Funds for such development programmes have come from various directions, including from European agency sources. They are important in this discussion only as overarching policies under which innovation may be encouraged or enabled.

It is also not possible here to review a rapidly increasing literature on the roles of communication and information technologies in teaching and learning innovation. The strategic uses of computer assisted learning, telematics, computer conferencing or multi-media approaches to technology-based or technology-supported learning have become major components of changes in the teaching-learning encounter of staff and student. The frameworks within which these developments are discussed relate to many of the categories of innovation we have discussed, but also to such areas as that defined as 'flexible learning' (Bell et al., 1997). Under such auspices as the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme and institutionally provided investment and planning, the basis has often been laid for innovations in materials production, teacher roles and teaching procedures, and adaptable and self-renewing learning relationships.

These are different contexts for and explanations of innovation. They had already emerged as new perspectives within which to view innovation by the beginning of the 1980s, as financial pressures were being critically felt by higher education. A conference report on Innovation through Recession appeared in 1983, including consideration of the impact of educational technology (Squires, 1983). This 'larger-scale' context of innovation increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s involved a tension between the will to change for educational reasons and mounting pressures to do so for economic ones. Discussing 'academic inertia', which was being forced to change, Diana Laurillard wrote that:

the pressures being brought to bear have nothing to do with traditions and values. Instead, the pressure is for financial input to go down, and some measurable output to go up There is an appetite for reform from within higher education in many countries now, but it moves slowly as we all scurry about in response to the increasing external pressures which exercise their own peculiar forms of change. (Laurillard, 1993, p. 4)

Innovation within the larger scale was not all 'scurrying about', but the pattern of innovation and innovators was influenced considerably by these changes across this period.

 

II Implications

Reasons

The reasons for innovating are as diverse as the types of innovation and their origins. The whole range of innovators and innovations may be responses to a system under pressure or in crisis, individual or unit (course, department) search for improvement or answers to perceived problems, or some combination of the two. Much of the literature describing and analysing specific innovations attempts to portray the reasons for undertaking them.

At the level of individual initiative the reasons given are sometimes very clear. 'Giving the same lectures year after year', explains Jan Lovie-Kitchin, an Australian teacher of optometry, 'was boring'. His decision to use a problem-based approach 'was not initially based on fine educational motives, but because I wanted a change' (Boud and Feletti, 1991, p. 194). At Imperial College, London, Peter Cawley was concerned that 'there was too much emphasis on technical theory and too little stress on the application of the material to real engineering problems I therefore decided to convert the course to a problem-based format' (ibid., p. 177). A study of higher education and preparation for work in the late 1980s included an exploration of the reasons for curriculum change, and often by implication change in the teaching and learning culture. In history, electrical engineering and economics, changes were described by staff as emanating mainly from the 'disciplinary group', 'subject area' or 'directions in the discipline' (Boys et al., 1988, pp. 35, 85, 105). A summary of all the areas studied suggested that changes resulted from the negotiation of subject boundaries, course-led development, the efficient curriculum, student needs and demands, the place of skills teaching, and vocational shift (ibid., pp. 198-205). Although in 1988 this research did not reveal any significant curriculum change resulting from financial pressures, it does not mean that associated teaching and learning changes were not taking place under such pressures. Nor does it mean that modularisation of the curriculum did not produce widespread pressure for change in modes of teaching.

Research in one institution suggested that 'independent learning' was seen by many staff as a product of management concern to cut costs (Jordan and Yeomans, 1991, p. 301). The importance of economics, accompanied by increased student numbers and the load on academic staff, as a driving force of change, has been too widely identified as a progenitor of change to need discussion here. One example will suffice. A report on the Enterprise in Higher Education programme from the late 1980s at Queen's University, Belfast, was placed in such a context:

The first pressure on universities was financial. They were being required to become more efficient through teaching larger numbers of students while at the same time driving down their unit costsThe second pressure on universities came from employers who, during the 1980s, became increasingly vocal in their demands for effective graduates(Sneddon and Kremer, 1994, p.2).

Such pressures do not necessarily result in innovations in teaching and learning, or in institutional policy changes which promote such innovations, but there are cumulative effects. The pressures to adopt open learning and other more flexible strategies have been described as driven by pressures which include increased student numbers, greater student diversity, student and employer demands for transferable skills with vocational currency, and the achievement of all of these within a declining unit of resource (Lewis, 1995, p. 32; Lewis, 1997, p. 3). An important, comprehensive statement of the factors perceived as affecting teaching and learning in the mid-1990s came from the Council for Industry and Higher Education:

In future more students must learn with (relatively) fewer staff, more efficiently and to higher standards. The students will be more widely dispersed and will begin their studies from a wider spread of starting-points. Yet the universities have already increased productivity to a level believed to be near the limits of present education processes. The scale of expanded activity is already putting strains on academics as they struggle increasingly to accommodate growing numbers by methods some of which are still recognisably medieval.

As in industry 'steep changes in productivity' had led staff to analyse the implications. The concern was 'to relieve lecturers of (for example) the burden of simply transmitting information, to investigate how students can manage their own learning, to build in the UK's experience of "distance learning", to experiment with carefully structured learning materials, and to improve efficiency by professional diagnosis of individuals' needs, prior knowledge, experience and aspirations'. The implication was clear:

Such experiments promise big increases in productivity and better learning at the same time. Above all they free lecturers for their proper and distinctively human activity of encouraging, advising, checking, criticising, praising and assessing progress of their studentsRadical re-thinking of method will change the nature of the academic job

This re-thinking would also relate to the sector's need to invest intelligently and heavily in electronic and software techniques (CIHE, 1995, pp. 15-16).

In considering the range of incentives for innovation it is important to emphasise the powerful structural and curricular incentives for change in teaching and learning ­ incentives which are often coincident with other causes. The former include primarily the rapid move towards modular and semester structures in the majority of universities. The latter include some that we have already discussed, but it is worth underlining how the momentum of change has occurred in some areas. The medical and other professional adoption of problem-based learning is an important example. From the 1960s, as we have seen, change in medical education in North America was the product of dissatisfaction with the existing curriculum as a suitable basis for preparing doctors: 'the undergraduate medical curriculum tends to develop a chronic disorder labelled "curriculopathy" Two events led to a prescription for educational change: the diagnosis of "curriculopathy" and the need for better correlation of teaching with societal pressures'. The chronic disorder sprang from the rapid growth of scientific knowledge, and the commitment of teachers to their own 'microscientific worlds (Des Marchais et al., 1992, pp. 190-1). Something similar was true for other professions (Boud and Feletti, 1991, p. 17).

In Britain the General Medical Council recognised that 'a significant proportion of traditional medical education is overloaded with factual material which is frequently taught out of context and in large didactic lectures. This has led to an educational culture of rote and surface learning which is supported by an assessment system that largely focuses on factual recall (Exley and Dennick, 1996, pp. 5-6). A similar account described pressure for change in medical education as coming from problems with factual overload and didacticism, the new emphasis on professional and personal skills development, changes in the practice of medicine, and influences from higher education (the last including national initiatives such as EHE and the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme) (Towle, 1994, pp. vi, 4-5). An analysis of problem-based education in medicine in Britain and the United States in the early 1980s identified the particular reasons for adopting this particular change strategy:

The theoretical basis for a problem-based approach in medical education is derived from two general sources. There is a body of writing and research in the general educational literature which supports the concept. Additionally, in the last decade or so insights into the clinical reasoning process have been derived from a specific line of research. (Neufeld and Chong, 1984, pp. 250-1).

Factors which encourage innovation appear to be both 'internalist' (relating to the discipline and dissatisfaction with the curriculum or teaching methods) and 'externalist' (which derive from economic pressures and the employment market). The former would apply, for example, to the 'crisis' in English studies. This is described in one account that addresses 'rethinking learning methods in English studies' as deriving from students not reading enough and seeming 'unwilling to go beyond the literary works and critical texts explicitly listed for their courses'. It also derives from approaches that have distanced 'the centre of gravity of certain theories from the literary text' and that raise difficult questions of classroom interpretation (Miall, 1989, pp. 69, 73). Interest in group-based learning is described in broad terms as being driven by three major factors: 'a growing awareness, fuelled by criticisms from employers, that students need to be better equipped to work in teams'; pressures on resources encouraging academics 'to explore ways in which students work effectively in groups'; an increasing awareness that 'collaborative learning can raise the quality of the learning experience' (Thorley and Gregory, 1994, p. 15).

It is helpful to remember that the reasons adduced for innovation taking or not taking place are time-specific. In 1967 Eric Ashby was explaining that times had changed and there was now 'a grave shortage of teachers, especially in universities and colleges of technology In some places it assumes the dimensions of an intellectual famine. So it is not surprising that nations are beginning to pay attention to the technology of education and to ask where the application of scientific analysis to educational systems is likely to be rewarding' (Ashby, 1967, p. 361). A decade later the Nuffield Foundation Group for Research and Innovation in Higher Education emphasised how much innovation had taken place in the 1960s. Now, 'as everyone is aware, the climate has changed', and the Group was focusing on how to combat the effects of financial cutbacks in teaching and learning by eliminating 'waste in the small change of higher education' (Nuffield Foundation, 1976, in THES, p. 9).

Processes

The literature presents two kinds of approaches to prerequisites for innovation. The first suggests how teachers in higher education can approach the possibility of trying out new things. A discussion of Technical Aids to Teaching in Higher Education in the 1970s described the academic world as liking 'to be quite sure of its ground before accepting something new. The problem of transplanting new technical aids into the educational body resembles that of the much-publicized organ-transplantation in the medical world'. Teachers were prepared to try new things 'if they do not disturb the previous pattern of teaching, do not cost much money, are easy to handle, do a given job at least as well as whatever they replace, and are not likely to need a lot of maintenance and technical care' (Flood Page, 1976, pp. 32-3). A research project on improving the quality of student learning produced advice in the early 1990s for those wishing to introduce changes, including: find allies, identify the problem clearly, use research evidence, start small, change the assessment, involve students and others, cost plans carefully, document what you are doing, and change as you go along (Gibbs, 1992, ch. 15). These were, in their time, advisory strategies arising, in the former, out of the availability of resources for change, and in the latter, out of case studies of change.

A second literature addresses issues relating to prerequisites for innovation, including the context, planning and negotiation. A discussion of curriculum innovation underlines, as do other discussions of innovation, 'changes which are deliberately planned and adopted'. The initial phase entails 'obtaining a mandate', strategies are developed, and efforts to establish the legitimacy of the innovation are made. The author of this Australian account draws on Nuffield and other British literature of the 1970s to emphasise the delaying procedures, lobbying and other complexities that constitute a context for the launch of the innovation (Noble, 1983, pp. 198-9). The context for innovation is sometimes discussed in terms of financial inducements and the academic reward system (Thompson and Williams, 1985, p. 203), the latter especially with regard to prevailing attitudes amongst relevant academic constituencies. One study of curricular and pedagogic change reported reactions to a proposed innovation concerning independent learning. Responses were couched in the language of 'What's in it for us?'. Staff were unconvinced because it was not clear how it would 'push at and ease the situational constraints(and) assist in the solution of their problems; it remained essentially someone else's agenda for change' (Jordan and Yeomans, 1991, pp. 305-6). This kind of literature points strongly, therefore, not only towards planning, but also towards everything necessary to ensure understanding and commitment by students and staff (Jarvis and Quick, 1995, p. 184). It also underlines the long-term nature of the process, including that of negotiation and persuasion (Mathias and Rutherford, 1983). Innovation as 'a lengthy, complex and continuing process' and not 'an instantaneous event' is central to the literature of innovation policy and practice in industry and commerce (Dodgson and Bessant, 1996, pp. 38-44).

Resistance

The literature that discusses the conservatism of institutions, organisations or enterprises is extensive. Normative structures that encourage conservatism and resist change are a feature of the analysis of schools as well as whole sectors of the economy. In the United States 'change of any magnitude at all will touch norms deeply rooted in the school's culture' (Corbett et al., 1987, p. 56). A European Green Paper on Innovation in the economy and society begins by explaining:

According to the dictionary, the opposite of innovation is 'archaism and routine'. That is why innovation comes up against so many obstacles and encounters such fierce resistance. It is also why developing and sharing an innovation culture is becoming a decisive challenge for European societies. (Commission of the European Communities, 1995, p. 1).

The international literature of higher education abounds as much as that of industrial practice with discussion of underlying conservatism: 'change in our universities is slow and difficult because of our culture Whatever does not come from inside, what is not in our habits or traditions, is too often regarded with distrust or simply ignored' (De Woot, 1996, pp. 22-3).

More specifically, the literature addresses the structures and attitudes that underpin hostility to specific attempts at innovation. An Australian discussion of why problem-based learning evokes 'remarkably strong, even vehement, reactions', clusters a number of reasons which, in addition to those specific to PBL, include 'a disruption of habitual and comfortable patterns of work; and, more widely, a general fear of change' (Margetson, 1991, p. 42). The fear of change and intolerance of disruption may operate at the individual level, and may surround the innovator with such vehemence or with what a report of a British innovation calls 'amiable indifference' (Leftwich, 1987, p. 322). The discussion of structures suggests that innovations of any kind (but especially those that cross discipline boundaries) encounter their main difficulty at departmental level. An Australian account of an interdisciplinary innovation which failed lays particular emphasis on departments as 'a major constraint' or blocking agent (Noble, l983, p. 201). A joint UK-US paper on barriers to the acceptance of PBL in medical schools in the mid-1980s lists and discusses:

Reasons for resistance to the use of open learning materials may include lack of an institutional strategy, the distribution of resources, student or staff attitudes and concerns about the materials themselves (Lewis, 1997, pp. 9-12).

Departmental or other paranoia is not necessarily a routine, self-protecting device. Resistance to an innovation may be a function of academic concerns about standards, and opposition to group-based methods may be based on what is considered appropriate to 'high level' academic study at degree level (Thorley and Gregory, 1994, p. 27). Institutional and departmental culture and responses to specific innovations may be subject to change from other sources ­ including student numbers, funding changes or nationally adopted policies. 'Natural inertia' may be whittled away in specific contexts by such pressures and externally induced change. This would apply most obviously to the impact of information and communication technologies in the 1980s and 1990s, in combination with the influence of increased student numbers and other pressures on teaching staff. Discussions of the educational use of computers or video conferencing address many of these issues, as did the literature of the use of audio-visual aids and educational technology of many kinds in the 1960s or 1970s.

Innovators

We are not concerned here with attempts to analyse the 'innovative personality', which is the subject of a literature which includes education (Huberman, n.d., pp. 51-4). The limited efforts to address this topic in higher education have been primarily concerned not so much with innovators and change agents as with resisters to change (Seymour, 1988, pp. 14-18). In operational terms interest would focus on responsiveness to changing opportunities offered, for example, by funding arrangements through EHE, national support for computer- or other technology-based learning, and institutional inducements through innovation funds. There is as yet no literature in these areas that focuses on the innovators themselves. Nor is there a systematic literature on the persistence of innovators in higher education in the face of the disincentives represented by active hostility, structural limitations or 'benign indifference'. There is frequent, casual comment on the financial and career disincentives of engaging in innovation in teaching and learning rather than discipline-based research or other activities more recognised for academic rewards. A comprehensive statement of these contextual negatives for innovation, expressed in terms of schools but equally applicable to higher education, was produced by Barry MacDonald in 1971 when proposing a Safari research project at Centre for Applied Research at the University of East Anglia. The project aimed to study the fate of recent curriculum innovations. The rationale explained that innovation, for various reasons, could fail 'to anticipate patterns of reaction to a change stimulus and an inability to cope both conceptually and procedurally with novel situations'. Role change and role conflict were important to understanding and managing innovation. The crucial statement then followed:

Innovation is often described as a bandwagon. Its potentialities as a hearse have been neglected. Yet:

These are some of the punitive effects of innovation. The question thus posed is, 'What makes innovation functional for the individual, and what kind of rewards do or would compensate for such effects?'

MacDonald also points out that innovation has implications for the curriculum and organisation of the school as a whole, and will introduce 'a degree of dissonance into the institution' (MacDonald, 1974, pp. 6-8). Such issues as 'punitive effects', 'career risks', threats to or dissonance in the institution, remain alive in higher education, without a representative literature.

It is possible, as Des Marchais et al. point out in Canada, for institutional policy to result in the assembly of 'a core of dedicated and "legitimized" internal agents' to achieve a specific outcome (Des Marchais et al., 1992, p. 193). This moves the discussion not only into the field of 'innovation policy' and institutional frameworks, but also into the management of innovation and systems theory. The last of these was important to the educational technology movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and as applied to industrial studies was attractive to the McFarlane report on teaching and learning in 1992, given its relevance to maximising the performance of the organisation The procedure involves examining the goals of the organisation, identifying particular problems or issues which need resolving, analysing the nature of the problem conceptually, and then drawing on appropriate research evidence and professional experience to suggest improvements (Committee of Scottish University Principals, 1992, p. 18).

In an age of global competitiveness innovation has become a more explicit feature of policy in higher education as elsewhere. Peter Drucker talked in 1989 of dramatic change: 'we have again entered an era of innovation' (Drucker, 1989, p. 227). This has been widely expressed in higher education in policy terms. The Council for Industry and Higher Education, for example, talks of investment and experiment which 'promise big increases in productivity and better learning' (CIHE, 1995, p. 16). The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals states as an aim for higher education into the next century 'to promote advances in the methodology of teaching and learning':

Through proper investment in staffing and facilities ­ including the successful exploitation of new learning technologies ­ the sector will need to maximise the productivity and effectiveness of teaching in order to satisfy growing demands' (CVCP, 1995, p. 3).

In such a policy context innovation is institutionalised and disseminated, and its directions promoted, supported, influenced or controlled. Staff development strategies, in particular, are developed and their purposes clarified (Knight, 1994). The outcomes, however, are not clear-cut. One analysis suggests that 'trying to manage innovation has built-in contradictions. Management thrives on stability and predictability; innovation introduces uncertainty, it de-skills, and it produces relative instability' (Adelman and Alexander, 1982, p. 173). How far this may remain true for higher education in Drucker's 'era of innovation' is a matter for speculation. What happens in such a period to the reward system for innovation, for example, is not yet a feature of the public literature.

 

Innovators and innovations

Innovators are driven by a variety of motivations and opportunities and in different directions (as a result of funding through EHE or TLTP, policy, numbers). An 'innovator' may also be a group or team of individuals. An innovative unit may be a course or department. An innovation may stem from an institutional policy or response to the 'system', which itself may be a sector, a cross-institution disciplinary or professional organisation or a government department. International origins of an innovation may lie in collaborative or other cross-national activities, but also in the findings of research, precedents and models.

The literature does not always distinguish clearly amongst types or levels of innovators, and rarely attempts to link type of innovator with type of innovation. Discussion of the linkages is often implied or concealed in other kinds of discussion. There is discussion, for example, of how the 'conversation' of student and teacher, technology or materials, has been and may best be achieved (Laurillard, 1993, p. 104 and passim; Tribe and Tribe, 1987). There is discussion of 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' innovation (Squires, 1982, ch.18). The systems approach attempts either to locate participants in the process, or to demonstrate the effectiveness, for example, of species of technology within the organisation, but the two are only loosely, if at all, coupled. There is discussion of how an innovation, in what circumstances, may be successful within institutional cultures (Cawley, 1989; Leftwich, 1987).

Outside education there is a considerable literature addressing the basis on which the match of innovator and innovation is most likely to take place successfully, and the limits and difficulties are frequently discussed. King and Anderson, for example, in Innovation and Change in Organizations, discuss people, structure, climate and culture and environment as 'antecedent factors' of innovation, and discourage acceptance of a tendency to 'suggest that particular features will facilitate innovation in almost any organisation' (King and Anderson, 1995, ch. 5). Seymour and others place innovators and innovations within clusters of cultural and structural impediments (Seymour, 1988, pp. 5-14 and passim). Downs and Mohr illustrate the limits of theories applied to both simple and complex organisations (Downs and Mohr, 1976).

Issues such as those which focus on the possible 'punitive' effects of innovation, departmental 'paranoia', or a 'systems' approach to improving productivity and learning, require attention to a wider spectrum of, for example, organisational theory, theories of social behaviour, and technological and economic change than is possible here. Two examples indicate the extent of the territory. Berg and Ostergren, in an influential study of case studies of innovations and innovation processes in Swedish higher education, started their analysis from Kurt Lewin's systems approach. They drew particularly on his emphasis on the importance of parts of the system depending 'not on their inherent characteristics but from their positions in the system'. Their analysis of change drew on the idea of change as 'a disturbance of the so-called quasi-stationary equilibrium'. They abandoned what they call 'laundry lists' of persons and roles as unsuitable to their view of innovation as a political process, and used four concepts that they considered most relevant to a description of innovative activities: gain/loss, ownership, leadership and power. From these they arrived at a theory of innovation incorporating conclusions emerging from these wide-ranging concepts. How wide-ranging these are can be seen from some of their theoretical conclusions: 'The conditions for change are determined mainly by systems characteristics. The major characteristics of a system are membership composition, ideology, technology, organisational structure, and the nature of its relations with the environment'. They see innovation taking place within a highly defensive, ideological, conflictual and difficult environment (Berg and Ostergren, 1979; Lindquist, J. (1978).

Mathias and Rutherford describe and explain an innovative 'course evaluation scheme' at the University of Birmingham, under which academic staff, in pairs, evaluated each other's courses on a voluntary basis 'using a flexible combination of procedures and then presented the results of each evaluation study to the full group of staff involved'. The scheme operated for several years, was discontinued and then reinstated. The analysis of this process draws on the Berg and Ostergren model, and one by Lindquist in the United States which established a slightly different typology of factors essential for change in complex organisations: interpersonal and informational linkage, openness, leadership, ownership, and rewards (Lindquist, 1978). Combining features of the two models Mathias and Rutherford focus on power as the most important:

Of course the exercise of power in itself may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for bringing about intended change, since institutions have a way of adapting innovations through a 'hidden curriculum' so that they are accommodated (and neutralised?) within local value frameworks and practices. Nevertheless, the absence of power inevitably results in low status and only marginal change, as witnessed by the lack of significant impact of staff development initiatives within universities (Mathias and Rutherford, 1983).

The discussion of power, historically, politically and sociologically, does not end there. Neither do the other elements in these typologies. Valuable though they are, they do not directly explain why innovators innovate, and why particular types of innovation assume prominence in different situations at different times. Higher education has been less concerned than industry or technology, for example, with aspects of the sources, nature and purposes of innovation. Peter Drucker, drawing on his analysis of companies, emphasised in the mid-1980s the importance of seeing successful innovations as resulting in only some cases from 'a flash of genius', and more frequently from 'a conscious, purposeful search for innovation opportunities, which are found only in a few situations'. Innovation needs, in his analysis, to be simple and focused, requiring knowledge and often ingenuity. Although there is more to entrepreneurship than systematic innovation, the foundation of entrepreneurship 'as a practice and as a discipline ­ is the practice of systematic innovation' (Drucker, 1985, pp. 67, 72).

Although the literature of economic and industrial innovation is often controversial, concerned with uncertain aspects of economic cycles, invention and innovation, production and diffusion, and the concerns of profit and the marketplace, some of its insights have echoes in the modern realities of higher education.

III Some questions from the literature

The literature leaves open for consideration a variety of questions which, if discussed at all, have not been addressed in terms of higher education organisation and experience. The literature suggests that attention needs to be given to such questions as the diverse origins, trajectories and outcomes of innovation, and how innovations relate to different kinds and levels of policy making. Discussion remains necessary of the boundaries between 'innovation' and 'change', and between innovation in 'teaching and learning' and in 'the curriculum'. Similarly, there are issues relating to the transition, in the conditions of higher education, from ideas, interests and enthusiasm, via 'kick-starts' of various kinds, to successful and unsuccessful implementation. Analysis of the type 'invention - innovation (introduction) ­ dissemination (production and marketing)', or innovation as process and as product, which is traditional in some kinds of economic and technological analysis, does not readily transfer to higher education. The outcomes sought or expected of innovation in industry, commerce or technology, even when expressed in terms of 'social innovation', may not be applicable even in the more recent, commercially described contents and contours of higher education.

An exploration of innovators, innovations and the processes of innovation in higher education reaches into complex and rapidly changing realities. When and where is it the creative act of individuals or groups, or institutionalised attempts at systematic innovation? In what circumstances is innovation 'imitation', 'adoption' or 'adaptation'? Where, how and why does innovation originate, what are its biographies and histories? How does it enter and penetrate the teaching-and-learning conversations that constitute the pedagogical relationship? In what conditions does it survive and exercise influence, or remain isolated, discrete, destined to disappear with its progenitor? How is it supported or neglected, and how does it become, or fail to become, more widely adopted? Where does it fit into the competing pressures and opportunities of funding, research, status and reward? How have the processes of innovation and the aims of innovators responded to student constituencies that have radically changed in size, composition, mode of attendance and strategies of learning? Is it possible to map innovations that emerge from individual initiative and are concerned with improvements in student learning, on to those that are induced by changes in institutional scale and policy or nationally determined priorities? Are the motivations of innovators unmixed and straightforward, as has historically seldom been the case with reformers? These are just some of the rarely addressed or unaddressed questions that the literature suggests.

Several decades on from the Hale Committee's emphasis on the need for operational research and experiment in university teaching the need is now rather to understand how and why, in a vastly changed and frequently unpromising higher education environment, innovation takes place and in what forms. It is essential to be clear about the relevance of past experience of innovation to the adoption and use of the new technologies. It is important to know more accurately at what levels, under what pressures and incentives, when and how innovation survives. Underlying all of these is the need to explore consistently in what ways it relates to the effective accomplishment of the contested purposes of higher education ­ notably the education of students.

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Harold Silver is Visiting Professor of Higher Education at the University of Plymouth and Co-director of the project on Innovations in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, a project in the ESRC Learning Society programme.

Working Paper No. 2 :

'Innovation': questions of boundary

Harold Silver, Andrew Hannan & Susan English

December 1997

ISBN: 0 905227 99 9

Faculty of Arts and Education, University of Plymouth, Douglas Avenue, Exmouth EX8 2AT

Tel: 01395 255463 Fax: 01395 264196 E-mail: s.english@plymouth.ac.uk

http://www.fae.plym.ac.uk/itlhe.html

Copyright 1997 by Silver, Hannan & English

The 'Innovations in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education' project (award reference L123251071) forms part of the Learning Society Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council. In its first year the project was funded by the ESRC and the Higher Education Quality Council.

NB This paper is an early distillation of our thoughts, written less than four months after the launch of our project and before we had undertaken any analysis of our case study visits to institutions.

ABSTRACT The purpose of the discussion is to move from commonly held assumptions about innovation and the innovator to a wider view of the levels at which innovations occur, and the contexts in which they need to be interpreted. The analysis takes account of the impact of national programmes which favoured innovative change in the 1980s and 1990s, the influence of new technologies, and contextual changes which in general have influenced how innovation is perceived, and how innovators perceive themselves. These contexts and perceptions are viewed as 'boundaries' in which innovation is framed.

'Innovation' and 'change', often used interchangeably, became key vocabularies in educational practice and policy in the 1980s. They were used as headings in national reports, were fundamental to government department and agency initiatives in information technology and in teaching and learning. They appeared in institutional and other contexts as means of solving urgent problems, particularly those associated with expansion and financial pressures. They were the focus of increasing educational and economic literatures internationally, for example those emanating from the activities of European community organisations. This kind of discussion of the meanings of innovation centred particularly on strategies for successful industrial and commercial performance in an increasingly competitive marketplace. In education 'innovation' often seemed coterminous with 'new technology'. In addition to universities' own funding of developments directed towards enhanced learning, significant external funding was secured from initiatives of the Department for Education and Employment and its predecessors, and of the funding councils. An increasing proportion of these resources was directed towards computer assisted learning or other technological developments. The meanings or boundaries of innovation, however, have not sat comfortably with the self-perceptions of educators engaged in these recent developments. The 'boundaries' of innovation are defined by its locus and contexts, and by the interplay of the participants' interpretations.

Innovation in higher education has generally been taken to mean a planned process of introducing change, intended to bring about improvements or solve or alleviate some perceived problem. Such changes may be new to a person, course, department, institution or higher education as a whole. An innovation in one situation may be something established elsewhere, but the implication of these assumptions is that it is a departure from what has been done before. It is not always obvious whether an innovation is an act of creation or of adaptation (or imitation), and innovation may not in fact be 'new', any more than invention may be without precedent. The distinction between an invention (which may or may not be used) and an innovation (which may be its later exploitation) has been crucial to discussion by economists (Schumpeter, 1976, p. 132; Freeman, 1982; Stoneman, 1983, chs 2 and 3). There are social, situational factors involved in determining both invention and innovation. Some of the analysis of the trends suggested by these concepts and distinctions raises a number of difficult questions for a discussion of higher education. A new way forward in one place may already have been abandoned in another place for a more promising alternative. Not only is it difficult to determine what is 'new' or 'original' in a complex social process, but intention and practice are also surrounded by tangled interpretations and judgements.

Higher education teachers may often have been engaged in the 1980s or 1990s in development activities financed, for example, by an 'innovations fund' or the expressly innovative intentions of an institutional response to Enterprise in Higher Education funding. They may in some contexts have been classed as 'change agents', more rarely, however, as 'innovators'. A section of their application for promotion may have included 'innovation in teaching and learning' in one of the headings. Being aware of other developments or priorities in their institution, department or discipline, however, they have not readily described themselves with what may be the socially isolating title of 'innovator'.

'Innovation in teaching and learning', now a regular feature of discussions of higher education, is also a difficult vocabulary. Although used as a single concept, this kind of innovation may not have similar implications for both. An innovation in the former may not result in improvements or change of any kind in the latter. There is no necessary relationship between the two. Factors affecting learning in any situation may be too complex for a connection to be established ­ or perhaps even in some cases to be intended. An innovation in students' learning procedures may be independent of any 'teaching' in its traditional sense. A change in what teachers do may have little or no effect on what or how students learn. Introducing new technology is not necessarily innovative for learning, if it simply means delivering lectures by video to larger groups of students. Putting lecture notes on the Internet may not be different from photocopying them (itself once seen as an innovation). Some uses of Computer Assisted Learning may actually make learning less student-centred. American 'instructional technology' was once seen as 'a step forward because the improvement of learning should be the main objective whereas much of its efforthas hitherto been concentrated on doing better what perhaps should not be done at all' (Mackenzie, 1970, p. 175).

Apart from issues of intention there are others relating, for instance, to the concept of planned or deliberate change, which often means the bureaucratically sanctioned (perhaps as part of a programme, institutional policy or initiative). This, in contemporary higher education, may often mean a focus on projects and programmes, bypassing the incidental and informal process of transformation that can move the whole process of teaching and learning from one paradigm to another. The notion of innovation may embrace gradual change as well as cataclysmic transformation, following Kuhn's distinction between 'normal science' and 'scientific paradigm shift' (Kuhn, 1970).

Innovation is conditioned by institutional or systemic structures, departmental or disciplinary cultures, individual history and priorities. Deliberate change at any level has policy, cultural and ideological contexts. Whose, then, is this 'planned process'? At the level of the individual teacher the process may be radical, incremental, creative, adaptive ­ a private or negotiated attempt to improve outcomes of the teacher-learner dialogue, or of the encounter mediated by technology. It may be in response to policy or financial pressures or opportunities. At the level of department, faculty or institution innovation is almost inevitably driven by policy, itself in response to externally or structurally imposed changes. Innovation at this level may be similar to the individual initiative, or may be designed to encourage it, but it is more likely to aim at more widespread and systematic change, responding, for example, to modularisation or the temptations of nationally available, targeted finance. The 'systematic' nature of this level of innovation brings the process closer to entrepreneurial features of industry and commerce, where it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation (Drucker, 1985, p. 31. Author's italics).

In this situation innovation may be a short-term strategy for maximising profit or overcoming an immediate or imminent crisis, or it may be a long-term market strategy. It may or may not be coherent or consensual, depending on the resolution of tension between a common interest and the unequal power and different understandings of the participants. Who drives the search and the analysis? Whose innovation, and for what purpose?

Several clarifications are essential at this point. First, innovation may aim to bring about improvement, but does not equate to improvement. Innovation involves intention, planning, effort, but may either fail to produce outcomes, or may produce dubious or 'wrong' outcomes. Second, 'improvement' is itself controversial, as much social theory and social history has suggested in recent decades. Improvement, in Foucault's wide-ranging analyses of institutions and processes, may be interpreted to mean a more effective form of control. The educational 'innovators' of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries may have wanted to secure improvements that some historians have interpreted as limited and repressive. For example, histories of 'innovation' and 'improvement' have sometimes omitted the monitorial education of the early nineteenth century from the narrative. Despite being the most far-reaching 'planned change' of the period, the monitorial system, by which a single teacher controlled the teaching of large numbers of children by other children, has not fitted historians' ideological conceptualisation of innovative improvement: it was not 'liberal' or 'progressive'. Third, 'whose innovation?' is a question directed at decisions about what teachers do, or at changing the conditions of learning, or possibly both. It is easier, at departmental or institutional levels of decision making, to change the structures, resources, opportunities, for student learning, than to change the culture of teaching. It is possible at these levels to consider access to resources, the availability of guidance and support, the logistics and sustainability of innovation. Technological, organisational and other changes can at these levels be the outcome of decision, arrived at by fiat or negotiation. Although curricular change may sometimes imply changes in both teaching and learning processes, it is immensely more difficult to achieve any basic change in attitudes towards teaching than in the organisation of the curriculum. Where changes in the ways teachers teach are implied, the change requires commitment and conviction, persuasion and recruitment. It is for this reason that the curriculum and its 'delivery' are easier to explore than the interaction of teacher and learner. Since the establishment of the Council for National Academic Awards and new sectors of higher education from the 1960s, and then monitoring procedures covering the whole of higher education in the 1990s, curriculum change has become increasingly enshrined in committee decision, policy document, validation record, module handbook, assessment detail. In spite of overlap between curriculum and teaching and learning, there remains an important boundary.

At institutional levels 'systematic' innovation encounters the difficulty of involving the teacher, but at the level of the individual innovator there is a different and often more prominent difficulty. To innovate in teaching and to focus on improving student learning is to attach a priority that has seldom attracted recognition and reward in recent higher education circumstances. This has remained largely true through the 1990s despite attempts to redress the balance between research and 'teaching excellence' as routes to promotion in many institutions, and more widely following the extensive emphasis on learning and teaching in the Dearing report on higher education (Dearing, 1997). Innovation by individuals has generally been low-key, sometimes ghettoised and often without access to adequate resources. It has been a dedicated pursuit of goals sometimes seen as eccentric or threatening to 'traditional' teachers, particularly in intensively research-oriented universities. The individual pursuit of innovation has often, however, also meshed with funding support provided by national or other agencies, such as Enterprise in Higher Education or the initiatives of the funding councils. Individual innovators often describe EHE, the national computing and other technology schemes, and other teaching and learning funded initiatives as bringing resources and legitimacy to developments long needed, considered and delayed. At this point individual and systematic (or systemic) pursuits may meet. Although economic discussions of innovation are rarely concerned with the lone innovator (other than the inventor, or the innovator strongly enmeshed in context) they do address a different form of 'mesh'.

Research on the nature of innovation at the national, industry-wide and company level has led to an emphasis not on the role of individual innovators (though often treating the firm as an individual in the market place) but rather on the 'multi-actor nature' of the process (Dodgson and Bessant, 1996, p. 20). The multi-actor profile of innovation within the company is mirrored by the competing pressures in the market place. Past analyses of industrial innovation based on 'technology push' or 'market pull' have more recently been replaced by a much more interactive version of the process (ibid., pp. 31-2), and a wider understanding of the relationships of inventor, entrepreneur, financier, producer, distributor and user - in the different contexts of large, medium and small enterprises. Any comparison of innovative pursuits and practices in higher education and industry needs to distinguish between policies, processes and intentions, where they diverge and intersect. In particular it has to see innovation in higher education as stemming in a more sustained and interactive way from ideas and the use of materials already introduced into the marketplace.

Identifying the nature and boundaries of innovation in higher education has been made more problematic by the rapid introduction and adoption of new information and communication technologies. These were initially seen as management and organisational tools, but increasingly they were used to replace or supplement face-to-face teaching, and to support student learning. In teaching and learning the introduction of new technology is not in itself an innovation, and may only become so if the context poses a need and if the intended outcome is aimed at changing roles and relationships (amongst tutor, student and material) that affect teaching and learning behaviours. There is a difference between technology that is some kind of equipment (hardware) and technology that involves different ways of using the computer (software). Broadly speaking the former cannot be an innovation, but this is not always clear. A medical innovation of this kind, for instance, might influence the way an operation is performed and in consequence the way in which the teaching of students takes place. This could be a simple enhancement of the procedure or a radical departure in the teaching relationship. Similarly, educationists may work with computer scientists or programmers to produce educational software ­ tools to support teaching and learning, and these may or may not result in significant shifts in student learning opportunities. Such a development may be a response to a policy, a 'movement', market forces or perception of a 'market niche'. A crucial aspect of both of these kinds of technological development is that it is possible for them simply to support the same 'kind' of learning, the same 'image' of the learner. Before we pursue further this paradox of novelty reinforcing the established, there are other aspects of technology it is important to underline.

The concern here is not with technological innovation as such, but with the social innovation that includes the absorption of the technology into teaching and learning processes. Technological innovation in industry has been interpreted as the central part of an incremental process that runs from invention or creation through to production or diffusion. Although there have been attacks on the 'objectivist' view of this form of technology, treating it as 'an object like seeds or equipment' (Clark and Staunton, 1989, pp. 51-2), discussion of technological innovation in industry has tended to bypass issues of its position in the contextual dimensions of knowledge. It was not unusual, notably following Schumpeter's influential work from the 1930s, for innovation to be discussed in the context of economic cycles, taking account of the factors affecting and being affected by disturbances in the pattern of production and consumption ­ including changes in monopoly control and company size. Economists have addressed the position of research and development and the location of innovation, especially dramatically changing technological innovation, in continuing and disrupted processes (Johnson, 1975; Kash, 1989; Stoneman, 1983). One version of the narrative of innovation as the first use or application of technology suggests:

The R&D is necessary to develop the technology so that it can be used. The invention may take place anywhere along the R&D spectrum but prior to the innovation. The innovation generally consists of:

The generation of an idea contains elements of market needs and possible technology. The problem solving includes setting specific goals and designing alternative solutions. Implementation consists of the manufacturing engineering, tooling and market start-up (Gerstenfeld, 1979, p. 3).

The important feature of the importation of new technologies into higher education in the late twentieth century is, as we have suggested, the challenges and opportunities it has provided to restructure the teaching-learning relationship, changing the role of the teacher and opening up different learning procedures to the student. The steps in the technological and industrial innovation are to some extent matched in the higher education situation, but the different context of a teaching-learning relationship profoundly alters the purposes and nature of the move towards change. The pattern of response to immediate and wider changes, inhibitions and barriers, competing pressures, and interpretation of the needs of the learner and the complexities of the 'learning dialogue' (or 'tri-' or 'multi-dialogue') distance this form of innovation from even the most complex analysis of technological and industrial innovation.

The long history of technical or technological intervention in this higher education relationship has until recently shown little fundamental change in the teaching and learning encounter that has its roots in the ancient Chinese, Arabic and medieval European spread of higher learning. Printing or the early twentieth century educational technologies such as various forms of visual presentation or programmed learning did not supersede the lecture and tutorial relationship. The difference between earlier twentieth-century educational innovations and the present and potential innovative impact of communication and information technologies at the end of the twentieth century lies not just in the nature of the technologies but also in the driving forces of change with major, immediate implications for higher education.

In higher education what is at stake is a complex interaction of motivations by individuals and institutional and national actors of various kinds. These relate to basic changes in student numbers, constituencies and backgrounds; rapidly changing impacts of national policies and economic strategies; newly fashioned relationships with the labour market; the effects of modularised and semesterised structures; technology supported learning; the difficulties of lecturing in changed conditions and the erosion of the tutorial system; and encouragements to reassess teaching purposes and effectiveness in relation to student needs. The impacts of these clusters of changes have been felt not only in the packaging of knowledge and the structures of institutions, but also in what it means in vastly changed circumstances to be a 'student' (Silver and Silver, 1997). Some of these processes may be similar to those in industry which, in the United States, Japan, Sweden and elsewhere, have been pioneered in the past quarter of a century in terms of employee motivation and experience, and 'the quality of work life' (e.g. Walton, 1974; Wirth, 1987). In relation to the industrial workplace this debate and experiment have been directed towards the reduction of alienation and the promotion of participation and satisfaction within more clearly defined productivity and reward outcomes.

Within this complex of changes and responses ­ including resistance and barriers to change ­ there is need to identify within higher education institutions the loci of debate and review, and the encouragement and support of attempts to innovate. These may lie within the policy and decision making process, in an educational or academic development unit, in aspects of professional development provision (Rutherford and Mathias, 1982; Knight, 1994), and in the use of development funds for innovation purposes. In the 1990s debate and change were unevenly but increasingly in response to external pressures, notably teaching quality assessment. Any of these forces could help to establish a framework within which teachers might think and remould what they do, and students might find themselves (not always comfortably and willingly) with new degrees of independence or control over their actions. The outcome of such a development may not always be new in a global sense, but something profoundly different may occur in terms of the interpretation of aims, adaptations to various contexts, and the nature of performance and interaction.

An important outcome of some of the national initiatives of the late 1980s and 1990s was also their influence on institutional relationships within which innovation was possible. Schemes such as the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme and the Fund for Development of Teaching and Learning encouraged new or enhanced collaboration within, and also amongst, institutions, in pursuit of various kinds and dimensions of supported change. Teaching and learning committees at institutional, faculty or department levels acquired new roles and authority in many institutions. New inter-departmental or inter-faculty relationships were fostered, often by an educational development unit or similar body, in the observation and discussion of teaching prior to an external visit or institutional review. Beginning essentially with the Enterprise in Higher Education programme at the end of the 1980s what was developing was a range of opportunities for new relationships within institutions, as a framework for development in teaching and learning (and for innovation networks and support). Regardless of the initial motivation for EHE, it rapidly became clear that it was seen by the 60 or so institutions involved, and by government departments themselves, as 'a government initiative providing additional funding for innovations in teaching and learning The initiative was designed to encourage innovation and innovation implies change' (Hawkins and Winter, 1997, pp. 6-7). EHE may or may not have been 'designed' to do this, but in practice it contributed in many institutions to changing the culture, and particularly the cross-institutional relationships, which could help to define how innovation was perceived. Subsequent TLTP, FDTL and other projects within institutions benefited from these interactive changes.

Our understanding of 'innovation' is therefore contextual at all stages of the trajectories it may follow. It does not apply simply to what, in a common sense interpretation, may be 'dreamed-up' changes or novelties. There are, of course, elements of creativity and originality likely to be involved. The path followed may often look something like the following sequence: commitment ­ difficulties ­ response ­ options ­ idea ­ plan ­ experiment or pilot ­ preparation ­ introduction ­ repetition ­ adoption. Two other 'steps' cannot be interpolated easily into any such sequence. One is 'defence' or 'justification', which may occur anywhere or more or less everywhere in the sequence. The other is the attempt to broaden the process, obtain allies, evangelise, promote at a higher level ­ and this again may occur anywhere in the sequence, and the intentions may relate to aspects of legitimacy, resources or the logic of the initial commitment.

Discussion of the variety of hazy boundaries surrounding innovation in higher education again raises the important but sometimes uncertain boundary between teaching and learning on the one hand and the curriculum on the other hand. There is an area of overlap between the two, which includes the development and use of materials (which in one sense may embody the curriculum but which also relates to the type of teaching-learning encounter), and forms of assessment (which are outcomes of both the curriculum and of the teaching and learning procedures). Teaching and learning are not concerned with the nature and packaging of knowledge, prescribed sequences or choices or pathways. They are concerned with active/passive or deep/surface learning, the role of teaching methods (tutorials, computer assisted learning, problem-based learning), the encounters of students with teachers, materials, books, packages, one another, support services, the wider community and its resources.

The way in which both the curriculum and pedagogy have been interpreted in education generally are of importance in this discussion, and in the latter case Bernstein's approach in the early 1970s points in a valuable direction. He introduced the concept of 'frame' to determine the structure of the message system, pedagogy. Frame refers to the form of the context in which knowledge is transmitted and received. Frame refers to the specific pedagogical relationship of teacher and taughtframe does not refer to the contents of the pedagogy. Frame refers to the strength of the boundary between what may be transmitted and what may not be transmitted, in the pedagogical relationship Frame refers us to the range of options available to teacher and taught in the control of what is transmitted and received in the context of the pedagogical relationship

Bernstein emphasises that 'frame refers to the degree of control teacher and pupil possess over the selection, organization, pacing and timing of the knowledge transmitted and received in the pedagogical relationship' (Bernstein, 1975, pp. 88-9). Teaching and learning are, of course, more than transmission and reception. In higher education they are interactive to different degrees in situations which are influenced by what happens outside the immediate interaction.

With regard to school experience Bernstein triggered an important debate, one which has been only rarely pursued in terms of higher education (but cf. Armstrong et al., 1997). In broad terms Bernstein explored the interface between teacher and taught, or between learners and the knowledge/skills they seek to acquire. Innovation in higher education also involves attempts to change 'the structure of the message system', to respond to the 'context in which knowledge is transmitted and received', and to amend the dimensions of control. The notion of boundary is central to Bernstein's school-related analysis, and to the interpretation of innovation in higher education.

The conditions of this transaction, however, are not only different in higher education, but also since the 1970s have undergone considerable changes in the nature and complexities of the pedagogical relationship. Pressures towards innovation in teaching and learning are not, of course, distinct from those that impel curriculum change, and in some cases curriculum change, as we have suggested, may directly affect the way teachers teach and students learn. Moves towards defining courses in terms of outcomes or towards skills-based or skills-related content are cases in point.

One study of influences that affect course development suggested that the sources of change were similar across the disciplines. In physics, for example, the influences were categorised as system-led, institution-led, resource-led, discipline-led, academically-led, educationally-led, profession-led and consumer-led (Boys et al., 1988, pp. 66-8). Generalised as they are, such conclusions about curriculum change can point to sources of change in teaching and learning. For example, as we have noted, innovation may be generated at different levels of an institution, ranging from the individual teacher to the innovation policy of the institution itself. Teaching and learning share with the curriculum the likelihood that these different types of influence may operate differently at different levels. Innovation in teaching and learning, while rooted in a concern for the success of students, may be part of a 'co-option strategy' linked to issues concerning student: staff ratios and resource considerations. The derivation and intended outcomes of the innovation may combine some of these influences and result in ambiguous outcomes. However complex these processes may be, inescapable features of innovation in teaching and learning include the presence in the innovation process of an intention to change some aspect of the 'frame' in response to some aspect of the context. Innovation inevitably also takes advantage of, for example, precedent, opportunity, new technology and context, harnesses resources and collaboration and may adopt or adapt existing initiatives ­ in order to disturb boundaries and create new social conditions of learning.

The diversity of approaches to teaching and learning that has resulted incrementally or innovatively from other sources of change and from response to them has in recent discourse sometimes been ascribed to the conditions of post-modernity. New, if modest, changes in teaching and learning have some twentieth-century ancestry, but the post-modern analysis sees the end-of-century changes as more fundamental. For example:

The increased importance accorded to the experiential aspect of education under post-modernismhas encouraged an increase in the practice of problem solving, open learning, and experiential learning in contemporary higher education The new forms of learning are thought to liberate individuals from rigid learning structures and allow them to learn through their own different, and diverse approaches to the acquisition of knowledge.

The resulting increase in students' mastery of their own learning is paralleled by disapproval from academics, as part of their 'resistance to the post-modern orientation in education'. Such resistance is accompanied by 'a questioning outlooktowards the forms of teaching and learning promoted by a post-modern orientation in higher education' (Menon, 1997, pp. 107-9). For our purposes here, however, the origins, conditions and orientation need not be circumscribed in this way. The intentions of innovators are influenced by scale as well as diversity, the numbers and heterogeneity of students as well as the pursuit of knowledges, a commitment to the value of learning as well as doubts about grand educational narratives. The issue for higher education, it has been suggested, is in fact one of 'changing from being a premodern to a modern institution' (Barnett, 1994, p. 3).

We have emphasised that innovation in teaching and learning involves the intention to introduce deliberate change in 'the structure of the message system', on the part of a change agent or change agents, at different levels of an institution. It may respond with different emphases to pressures within the situation and from the context. It may aim to refine the form in which the 'message' is transmitted, it may affect the effectiveness of the reception, or it may introduce a new form of transaction. Fundamental to the notion of innovation and the boundaries of its operation and interpretation is the fact that it is not concerned purely with what teachers do and the procedures available to students. It is a 'planned process' which has to be interpreted in policy-related, structural and cultural terms as well as in its immediate, operational configuration.

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