Teaching And Learning Regimes: Implicit Theories and
Recurrent Practices in the Enhancement of Teaching and
Learning Through Educational Development Programmes
Paul Trowler & Ali Cooper
Lancaster University
ABSTRACT This paper uses the concept of teaching and learning regimes (TLRs) to help
explore a set of questions about why some academic staff in universities thrive on and benefit
from accredited programmes designed to improve HE learning and teaching practices
(“educational development programmes”) whilst others experience periods of resistance or
some drop out altogether. “TLR” is a shorthand term for a constellation of rules,
assumptions, practices and relationships related to teaching and learning issues in higher
education. These include aspects of the following salient to teaching and learning, each of
which we elaborate and illustrate in the paper: identities in interaction; power relations;
codes of signification; tacit assumptions; rules of appropriateness; recurrent practices;
discursive repertoires; implicit theories of learning and of teaching. The argument presented
here is that academic staff on educational development programmes (“participants”) bring
to programmes sets of assumptions and practices rooted in TLRs. Educational development
programmes themselves instantiate TLRs which may be more, or less, compatible with those
of individual participants. Where there are incongruities between the two they need not be
fatal if participants are able to, or are encouraged to, surface and reflect on previously tacit
assumptions embedded in their TLRs. Similarly, there may not be a problem if participants
are able to exercise discretion over the application of aspects of different regimes; applying
them in different contexts as appropriate. Evidence from participants’ writing, participant
observation, secondary sources and data from eight interviews inform the paper and form the
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basis for illustrative vignettes.
It intrigues me why it is that some participants in our … course are mad about it, and
respond with great enthusiasm to everything it offers, whereas others are lukewarm
and need convincing, and yet others simply don’t want to know, and appear deaf to
every entreaty … This is, of course, a challenge to the teachers/trainers/facilitators.
It also creates problems in making sense of participant feedback. Can a course be
both wonderful and crapulous at the same time?
(Personal communication from a university educational developer, 2001)
Introduction
This paper uses the concept of teaching and learning regimes (TLRs) to help explore a set of
questions about programmes designed to improve the teaching and learning practices of
academic staff in universities (“educational development programmes”). “TLR” is a
shorthand term for a constellation of rules, assumptions, practices and relationships related to
teaching and learning issues in higher education. These elements may be aligned with each
other in a more or less coherent way and, while they are expressed in individual behaviour
and assumptions, are primarily socially constructed and located and so are relatively
enduring.
Departments and sub-groups within them are the primary locations for the growth and
transmission of TLRs because it is here that academics engage together on tasks over the long
term. In so doing individuals in interaction both construct and enact culture, many aspects of
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which are invisible to them because they become taken for granted. Trowler and Knight in a
series of publications have shown how these processes occur. In particular they show how
new academic appointees are better able to identify them and their effects than more
established members of staff (Trowler and Knight, 1999, 2000, 2001; Knight and Trowler,
2000, 2001) while Trowler and Turner (2002) have used the case of Deaf academics in a
hearing community to illustrate the effects of being excluded from these constitutive
processes. TLRs are one dimension of the cultural make-up of academic departments, and
this paper focuses on the impact of that dimension on the reception and success of
educational development programmes.
The questions addressed are:
1. why do some participants embrace the programme positively and use it to develop their
professional practice whilst some express dissatisfaction or unease and sometimes not
complete the programme?
2. what could be done to enhance the positive and minimise the negative response?
These questions reflect the experience of educational developers as exemplified in the quotes
at the head of the paper. They also result from the professional experience of one of the
authors, Ali Cooper, who has been an educational development programme leader in two
quite different higher education institutions. The discussion is informed by 8 in-depth
interviews she conducted with participants on educational development programmes,
including those in both the categories the questions identify, as well as by more naturalistic
data obtained during engagement with her professional role.
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We do not claim to be making generalisations applicable in all or even most universities or
educational development programmes. The purpose of this paper is to develop illuminative
ways of understanding processes which occur in these contexts in order to help significant
actors, including programme designers and programme participants, to operate in a more
considered and better-informed way. We argue that all practice is underpinned by theory,
albeit often tacit and sometimes of rather poor quality. We believe practice based on explicit,
rigorously evaluated theory stands a better chance of being effective:
Without [good, explicit] theory, experience has no meaning … one has no questions to
ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning. (Deming, 1993, p. 105).
With regard to educational development programmes in particular, Ecclestone (1996) rightly
argues that it is crucial to:
examine the implicit and explicit values which are embedded in the various models of
enquiry and reflection we offer to learners on our programmes. (p. 158)
Lecturers’ Approaches to Teaching and Learning
Theoretical understandings of lecturers’ approaches to teaching and learning tend to lie in one
of three domains, each addressing different questions. The first is the individualistic
“conceptions of learning” viewpoint, rooted in cognitive psychology, which sees students and
their teachers moving through a number of clearly defined stages of development, developing
different conceptions of learning and conceptions of teaching (Saljo, 1979; Marton & Saljo,
1976; Gow & Kember, 1993). Here the key question is: “how do lecturers’ practices change
as they gain experience and insight”? McLean and Bullard (2000) review and summarise a
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range of literature on conceptions of teaching while Nyquist and Wulff (1996) cite over 20
papers that use this approach in discussing faculty members’ developmental stages. The
second perspective, the disciplinary approach, is founded in a weak or strong form of
epistemological essentialism. This suggests that academic disciplines adopt distinctive
approaches to teaching and learning. Here the key question is: “how are teaching and learning
practices conditioned by a lecturer’s discipline”? Socialisation into a discipline is also
understood to involve socialisation into distinctive approaches to teaching and learning.
Neumann (2001) cites a number of sources which take this approach, and the now-classic
example of a study rooting academic behaviour in disciplinary knowledge is Becher (1989,
Becher & Trowler, 2001). The third perspective is rooted in the notion of the reflective
practitioner (Schon, 1987), so widespread as to be almost paradigmatic. Here the key
question is: “how do effective lecturers think about their practice”? We comment on this
further below.
Teaching and Learning Regimes
What, then, do we mean by a TLR? By that term we refer to a constellation of rules,
assumptions, practices and relationships related to teaching and learning issues in higher
education.
While the concept of TLR is rooted in the idea of “implicit learning theories” as elaborated
for example by Burgoyne and Stuart (1977), that concept does not sufficiently encompass
what we have come to consider important. In particular it retains the psychological focus on
the learner, on the figure rather than its ground, and retains the focus on cognitive processes
only. By contrast the concept of a TLR moves into more sociological territory.
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In deploying the term “regime” we draw attention to social relations and recurrent practices,
the technologies that instantiate them (room layouts, pedagogic techniques) and the
ideologies, values and attitudes that underpin them. So, when an architect designs a university
building, its classrooms, staff rooms and public spaces he or she is articulating and
reproducing aspects of a TLR. When an academic enters a classroom and finds it necessary to
re-arrange the furniture in particular ways, s/he is making choices between aspects of
alternative TLRs. TLRs condition course leaders’ decisions about curriculum content and
sequence, teaching methods and assessment tasks. A discipline-based research project
investigating the dominance of the lecture as that subject’s traditional teaching approach may
challenge the embedded TLR. Thus dimensions of TLRs may be instantiated (e.g. in
architectural forms); selected (insofar as academics and others sometimes make conscious
choices rooted in aspects of alternative TLRs), negotiated (e.g. in designing courses) and
contested (e.g. in debates over pedagogical processes). Clearly there will be contest, tensions
and the use of power to enforce regimes even within the groups which create and sustain
them. The communities of practice within which TLRs are generated and played out are
rarely as homogeneous as they are sometimes portrayed (for example by Wenger, 1998), as
one of us has argued elsewhere (Knight & Trowler, 2001, p. 64). Moreover there may be an
unrecognised difference between espoused versions of a regime and the way it is actually
realised in activity - the “theory in use” (Argyris & Schon, 1974). An instance is when an
educational development programme markets itself as having a negotiated curriculum and
assessment strategy, whilst imposing a rigid set of assessment criteria that pre-determines the
students’ focus of attention in their final submissions.
Higher education appears to be moving to a situation where there are increasing levels of
contest between competing TLRs. At one time in the UK there was a dominant, even
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hegemonic, TLR in higher education. This was equivalent to the “grammar of schooling”
identified by Tyack and Cuban (1995) in which there was an unquestioning recognition of
what a “real school” was like. When a school departed from this template "trouble often
ensued" (p. 9). In recent years in the UK the equivalent “grammar of higher education” has
become contested, creating both opportunities and difficulties - “trouble”, as Tyack and
Cuban put it - for those responsible for designing and implementing educational development
programmes.
The Components of Teaching and Learning Regimes
Any teaching and learning regime will comprise a constellation of usually mutuallysupporting components. These include aspects of the following salient to teaching and
learning, each of which we elaborate and illustrate below: identities in interaction; power
relations; codes of signification; tacit assumptions; rules of appropriateness; recurrent
practices; discursive repertoires; implicit theories of learning and of teaching. These have
been disaggregated in this way purely for heuristic reasons: in practice they interact
dynamically with each other. We deal with each of them next.
Identities in Interaction
The concept of identity is an important but submerged one in the literature on the impact of
educational development programmes. There is a clear, but usually unacknowledged, causal
link between taking up new ways of operating as a teacher on the one hand and changes to
one’s personal and professional identity on the other. However, individual identity needs to
be considered in relation to others. In the classroom context the academic is taking up a
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professional identity and is positioning his or her students in terms of other identities, or
attempting to do so. This is a normally-tacit but important aspect of TLRs. The academic’s
professional identity positioning may be aligned with, for example, “the sage on the stage”
or, by contrast, “the guide on the side”. This is more than just a more or less developed
conception of learning, one which stresses transmission of content and focuses on the teacher
rather than on the learners (Kugel, 1993), it is about identity: the conception of self in relation
to others. This is inherently relational and fluid, not individualistic and fixed. As contexts
change so our relationships will alter. We engage and suspend aspects of our identity, and
take on new aspects, in different contexts, though some individuals do this more fluently than
others.
For example, in the context of this discussion, an educational development programme
leader’s identity will change in a move between different universities. Whilst his or her
underlying beliefs and values may not fundamentally change, the positioning of teaching,
research and professional development within different HE institutions necessitates
significant readjustments in thinking, practices, and sense of self in order to accommodate
and be accommodated within the new culture. The cultural configuration of the new context,
particularly that of the new department, offers new choices - often taken unconsciously within parameters set by the TLRs found there (or new risks in attempting to move beyond
those parameters).
Importantly, however, professional identities may be more, or less, contextually situated for
different individuals. That is, different university teachers may be more, or less, able and
willing to “give up” particular identities when they join educational development
programmes and feel themselves potentially repositioned as “a novice”. That positioning is
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one which in other contexts such as in their own research field or in another professional role
outside of HE they may not have held for some time. In cases where an individual’s identity
is relatively fixed and where this involves rejection of a repositioning as “novice” or
“learner” in a new social context then we can expect trouble when they join an educational
development programme. Rogers expects this to some degree in all adult learners who may
find themselves unable to learn …
… where the new learning is also perceived to be a threat to identity … my working
assumption is that there will be some anxiety wherever there is real learning because real
learning involves change, and that’s difficult stuff for most of us. (Rogers, 2001, pp. 1012)
The following vignettes illustrate this:
Helen was head of a research institute and international expert in a humanities field when
she joined the educational development programme. She was an accomplished researcher,
scholar, practitioner and consultant. She already had two years’ HE teaching experience.
She was however able to position herself as a relative novice in relation to teaching - even
though there are close links between teaching and her field. She positioned the programme
as a source for learning and the tutors as individuals with valuable expertise that she did
not have. She noticeably adopted a similar approach to identities in the interaction with her
own students, whom she positioned as bringing a wealth of prior knowledge and expertise
to apply to her own courses, and wished to develop teaching practices which drew this out
and honoured it. What she did not do is position either herself, or the educational
development programme tutors, as definitive experts whose role was to impart fixed
bodies of knowledge. She saw knowledge and personal identity as integrated, and for her
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therefore building open relationships between teacher and learner was central to both her
own and her students’ learning.
By contrast Sally’s instinctive response was to critique the premises of the programme
from her academic social scientific perspective: attempting to deconstruct and challenge
the philosophical underpinnings of the programme, particularly in relation to assessment.
She critiqued the existence of a set of criteria through which her identity as a teacher could
be scrutinised - she wanted to define the criteria herself and not be subjected to an
assessment regime predetermined by someone else - challenging the authority and
legitimacy of the programme leader and the validating body, seeing it as irrelevant and
challenging to their academic identity as social scientists. Significantly, assessment was
the critical issue that brought to the surface the incongruities of identity – she was
rebelling against a subject positioning. This focussed in particular on the explicit values
and principles laid down by the external accrediting body, which used terms such as
“must” and “should” apparently to prescribe what participants needed to demonstrate and
achieve. Sally read these as imposing a conformity upon her practices and thinking,
thereby challenging her identity as autonomous and self-determining. Her identity as
teacher and subject expert was so intertwined, having taught for two years and being an
accomplished researcher and scholar in the field she was teaching, that she was neither
willing nor able to be re-positioned as she saw it as a novice teacher.
The ability to move between alternative TLRs flexibly with regard to personal identity is thus
an important condition of success.
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Power Relations
Linked to the above, social interactions will usually involve the operation and flow of power.
Alternative TLRs are characterised by different patterns of power relations. This especially
relates to the ways in which power is distributed between teachers and students, but also in
terms of the locus the teaching and learning relationship within other institutional power
configurations. The autonomy of academic staff and their positioning in relation to the
curriculum are examples of this. These aspects of the operation and flow of power are, again,
often invisible to participants until they are exposed by events which may uncover power
relations by threatening to change them. Academics are normally in positions of power in
their everyday practices in relation to their students, at least. In the context of educational
development programmes, however, academics are in a different location in relation to the
operation of power. This may be exemplified in an attempt to exercise power over the
curriculum or teaching and learning practices on such programmes in a way which would not
normally be abrogated to the lecturers’ own students.
For example, Dave, with only months of recent HE lecturing experience having worked in
industry for many years, requested a high level discussion between a member of his
faculty management and the educational development programme leaders to express his
firm belief that the programme was inappropriate and irrelevant to the needs of all the
participants, criticising the design of content, delivery methods or assessment tasks, and
suggesting it should be changed in ways that he suggested.
Wareham (2002) explains why this is the case, showing how the switch to a different activity
system and associated community of practice which is quite different to their departmental
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one places participants in a new role. In the educational development programme they are the
object rather than the subject of activity. Thus they are likely to feel uncomfortable and
disempowered. Suddenly there are new …
rules, concepts and division of labour … quite different from their more usual activity
system within the department or research group and in which they are the subject. Their
identity is threatened. (Wareham 2002, pp. 94-5).
Put another way, some individuals find the transition in power relations from one TLR to
another rather difficult, others less so.
We can see how this is playing itself out in the conflict with Sally in the section above.
Another example of the power dynamic is revealed in Simon who appealed against his
failing part of the assessment of the programme. His challenge was against the academic
judgement; he deemed the judgement of failure to be inappropriate to someone who has
been teaching for 9 years. Here he was attempting to take back power to himself, having
felt acutely disempowered by the judgement of failure.
Codes of Signification
Codes of signification are related to what are often referred to as “connotative codes” - the
layers of meaning which accrete upon “signs” during the process of cultural construction,
thus going beyond the “denotative code” imbued in the sign itself (Barthes, 1967). Thus, for
example, the letters QAA denote a British higher education organisation, the Quality
Assurance Agency, but as academics work with representatives of and discuss that
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organisation and its products and processes they develop shared understandings of its
significance: a set of connotative codes. These might involve the perception of a threat to
disciplinary and institutional autonomy, imposition of managerial practices, an attempt to
redefine and control academic practices, or a welcome shift in power towards the consumers
of higher education. However we prefer to collapse the distinction between these two types of
code and unify them in the phrase “codes of signification”, which represents dispositions in
the attribution of meaning and emotion.
Kay Harman’s work in Australia (1989), for example, has shown how vocational knowledge
is frequently given a lower status than “pure” knowledge (for example in Education
departments where there is a divide between teacher educators and educational theorists).
Here codes of signification, related to status in this case, are attached not only to forms of
knowledge, but also to the people associated with them, and their work.
Also pertinent to our discussion are notions associated with “real” higher education; “distance
learning”; “peer assessment”, and so on. However we argue that codes of signification are
often highly localised, developed in the process of engagement in work projects such as
designing and implementing an undergraduate programme. They are part of developing
TLRs.
Where salient codes of signification within educational development programmes, articulated
in their texts and by providers, are incongruent with those held by a participant, then we can
expect trouble.
Thus, for example, an aspiring professor who became an early member of the Institute for
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Learning and Teaching (ILT) commented of that membership that “I’m proud of it, but I
don’t particularly want it spread around in my department”. Her reasons were associated
with the lower status of teaching compared with research; she was acutely aware that in
her departmental culture enthusiasm for teaching might inhibit her eligibility for
promotion and status. Another academic asked that his participation on an educational
development programme be kept from his departmental colleagues: he believed that
expressing an interest in teaching in his department signified a weakness in his
commitment or ability to do high level research.
Particularly in some research-oriented departments or institutions an interest in teaching or
involvement in educational development programmes can be interpreted in one of two
ways, both of which are based on a deficit model. Either the person is a poor teacher and
needs help, or they are a poor researcher and have turned their attention to teaching as a
second best. These signify that research has a higher status than teaching and that it is not
possible to do both successfully. This may not be the case in more teaching-oriented
institutions. The “departmental or institutional logic” (Raffe, Croxford & Howieson, 1994)
is therefore a significant factor here.
Tacit Assumptions
A further dimension of culture, the tacit or taken-for-granted assumptions involve
“typificatory schemes” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 58) concerning, for example, the
nature of students in higher education (including their abilities and preferences), the nature
and direction of external involvement in higher education, and the direction and quality of
leadership in universities. Wareham (2002) puts this in historical perspective.
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For centuries no-one gave any particular thought to how university teachers acquired their
knowledge and understanding of teaching … Simply being in proximity to great minds
would mean that students would learn and be inspired. There was certainly no question
that lecturers should receive any training for doing this part of their job … If students
could not benefit from their teaching, however good or bad this might be, then they had no
business to be at a university. (p. 86)
These sets of assumptions also include tacit relevance structures (Berger & Luckmann, 1966,
p. 61): understandings of what is and is not considered relevant to a teaching and learning
issue. Thus when discussing (for example) rooming requirements for a new course the
discussion may, or may not, include consideration of provision for students with disabilities
depending upon the relevance structures of participants involved. An example is the rejection
of the salience of equal opportunities issues by one teaching course participant on the grounds
that there were no female or ethnic minorities students on the courses in his department, nor
indeed any staff other than white males.
Once again, where there is incongruity between tacit typificatory schemes and relevance
structures in educational development programmes and those of participants we can expect
problems, or at least a longer than usual learning and accommodative process.
An educational development programme may be operating on the assumption that most
students benefit from structured support in their learning, for instance explicit instruction
on academic literacy, bibliographic skills, or organisational approaches to their study and
assessment. However some programme participants operate on the assumption that
knowing how to learn autonomously is a pre-requisite for entry to HE. The corresponding
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assumption is that students who do not have this ability are inadequately equipped for
higher education and are therefore not suitable entrants. Thus one young participant
ventured the suggestion with departmental colleagues that the students needed more help
to become better learners, to be told sharply that “we are not teachers, we are academics,
that is not our job”.
Rules of Appropriateness
Rules of appropriateness are localised and created as well as (to some extent) received via
images and experiences from the past. Based on tacit assumptions, they set out what is, and is
not, appropriate practice in teaching and learning situations and are usually only manifested
when practices are proposed which contravene them: that is, by “deviance”.
Areas in which rules of appropriateness are particularly relevant to the current discussion
include: patterns of classroom interaction; assessment strategies; activities students are
requested/required to engage in; the behaviour of lecturers; the boundaries of student input to
curricular design and processes; the nature and patterns of student evaluation of courses. The
following extract from Neil Mackay’s electoral address to the ILT provides an example of the
articulation of a set of perceived rules of appropriateness:
The ILT has an important role to play in resisting the creeping infantilisation of students in
HE institutions and in encouraging students’ own sense of responsibility to learn. It is
important that its own ethos is one of mutually supportive professional development,
rather than of patronage - we must treat each other as intelligent adults, just as we would
treat our students. If the ILT is to obtain the trust of the profession there must be no place
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in it for the use of jargon, unsubstantiated educational theory or infant-school games.
(Mackay, 2001, p. 5: emphasis ours).
Again, where there is a mismatch between the rules of appropriateness which predominate in
an educational development programme and those held by a participant, we can expect
trouble. Teaching methods and assessment tasks suggested as possible new approaches to
addressing student learning problems may be rejected out of hand as being inappropriate to a
particular discipline. Meanwhile programmes themselves are frequently challenged in their
early weeks as belonging to a regime of teaching and learning that resides in the Social
Sciences and therefore inappropriate to Management or Science disciplines, as Dave was
suggesting earlier.
Recurrent Practices
Based on what Berger and Luckmann (1966, p. 65) call “recipe knowledge”, that is
knowledge related to pragmatic competence in routine performance, recurrent practices
involve unreflective habitual routines which are often developed in situ and learned by
newcomers during the process of secondary socialisation. Examples relevant here include
practices associated with the way in which academic staff interact with students; turn-taking
and speaking practices in classrooms; practices associated with the availability of staff to
students and the giving of information related to that, the routine giving of feedback on
assessed work. Recurrent practices are clearly associated with rules of appropriateness and
often based on tacit assumptions but are distinguished from them insofar as they relate to
realised behaviour, not rules for practice or views of the world.
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Recurrent practices and technologies in use, understood very broadly, are also intimately
related. Technologies such as the infrastructure of buildings and classrooms, libraries, ICT
equipment, audio-visual aids and the rest simultaneously open possibilities for changing
practices and are themselves used in ways conditioned by context and history. They shape
and are shaped by relevant aspects of local cultures.
Clearly, where an educational development programme propagates models of practice and
uses of technologies that are divergent from usually-unconsidered recurrent practices
prevalent in participants’ professional contexts then one can expect limited penetration of
new practices into those contexts; participants often encounter resistance when they “take
new ideas back” from the programme to their department.
The role of talk in seminar teaching is taken as a given in some disciplines and contexts.
There tends to be limited reflection on what a seminar is, what happens in a seminar and
what it is the role of talk in learning. However in others there tend to be no routines,
recurrent practices, involving student talk – student talking is seen as irrelevant to the
process of learning. As a result, if programme participants are invited to consider teaching
practices involving talk as part of the learning process - which foregrounds oracy in that
process - they are likely to be more reluctant to adopt it or see its relevance than
participants from disciplines where such approaches are part of recurrent practices. Ruth
dropped out of the educational development programme soon after receiving feedback on
her observed lecture (40 students) and her tutorial (9 students) at which students were not
invited to talk other than when specifically asked to read out an already corrected answer
to a homework task. She rejected the tutor’s argument that students need to engage in talk
as part of the meaning-making process as being inappropriate and unnecessary for
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teaching her subject discipline.
Here reference is made to the predominant TLR in a discipline. However it remains to be
established how far disciplines are characterised by particular TLRs, or how far and in what
ways disciplinary differences interact with locally constituted TLRs.
Discursive Repertoires
“Discourse” is used here to mean the production of text (speech or writing, for example) in a
way which is influenced by the social context - by ideologies and “ways of seeing” generally
(Trowler, 2001). Any discourse has ways of giving expression to ideas that can be thought of
as a “discursive repertoire”. This will involve specific ways of producing text - giving
priority to particular words and phrases, ways of representing the world - and at the same
time will appeal to particular codes of signification and systems of representation. For
example, the discourse associated with “new higher education” uses discursive repertoires
associated with finance and commerce: delivery of learning outcomes; franchising of courses;
audit of skills; customer-focus and so on. These can jar in contexts where alternative
discursive repertoires are in use, for example those founded in a more humanistic approach to
education (Trowler & Knight, 2001). The new managerialism in higher education likewise
appeals to particular ways of representing the world and expresses and values sets of
practices and goals in ways which would have seemed alien in higher education in the UK
only a few decades ago (Prichard, 2000).
One reason why some participants do not complete educational development programmes
is because they find what they were being asked to do in terms of writing portfolios and
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other assessments an alien form of discourse. Helen for example responded to the stated
requirement to use evidence to substantiate “how effectively and appropriately you have
addressed the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) objectives in your
teaching practices”, with the comment “this feels like doing a personal teaching quality
assessment (TQA)”. She had used evidence to substantiate “how effectively and
appropriately you have addressed the SEDA objectives in your teaching practices”. Helen
had interpreted “drawing on and critically analysing contextual evidence emerging from
your academic and professional practice” as being the “discourse of surveillance”
(Foucault, 1975) having just undergone the Subject Review process in her department. She
felt that a student-centred rhetoric was masking a reality of widening surveillance and
control (Sharp & Green, 1975; Keat & Abercrombie, 1991).
A conversation with the programme leader released Helen from the QAA discourse she felt
trapped in. She had made an incorrect assumption about the discourse required and,
overnight, she wrote an insightful and creative playscript about her teaching development
because she was released to adopt a different discourse. Again this links back to the issue of
the legitimacy of authority raised by Sally above – in terms of who has ownership over the
work being.
Implicit Theories of Learning and of Teaching
Conceptions of learning are well established and theorised in the literature (see, e.g. Entwistle
& Ramsden, 1983). We consider them to be important, but we wish to stress the need to go
beyond this psychological approach into more sociological territory, as we have done above.
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It may be helpful to situate implicit theories of learning and teaching on a spectrum which
ranges from Transmissive/Authoritarian on the one hand to Constructivist /Democratic on the
other. Burgoyne and Stuart (1977) identify 7 which lie along this spectrum plus one
(pragmatic) which denies the utility of theory. Transmissive/Authoritarian theories of
learning and teaching focus on the role of the teacher in transmitting content s/he has chosen
to students who are situated in a passive, receptive and subordinate role. Constructivism, on
the other hand:
… starts from the assumption that people have a great desire or even an imperative to
make sense of the world around them. They are not, either in the academy or in the
workplace simply receiving knowledge that is external to them. Rather they are seeking to
understand, revise, reinterpret and apply … knowledge in an attempt to make personal
sense out of it. Both the physical context and the social context are important in learning.
The role of the educator in this process is to help the learner uncover meaning and
construct for themselves an authentic view of the practice in which they are engaged.
(Finlay , 2001, p. 14).
Bob, an inexperienced HE teacher coming from an industrial engineering background,
approached the educational development programme with the preconception that there
existed a defined body of pedagogical knowledge about teaching and learning in HE
which was, seemingly perversely, being withheld by the programme tutors because of a
misguided belief in the need for participants to “discover” learning for themselves. From
his perspective the tutors were the experts who held the fixed knowledge and it was their
role to teach it to him - this is a commodity view of knowledge. Groupwork and discussion
with other novices was irrelevant in his view because they did not hold sufficient
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quantities of knowledge to be able to talk with any authority. He accused the programme
of being “solipsistic”, meaning self-referential – seeing “reflective practice” as ignoring
the outside world and the value of what is known. He clearly lay on the
transmissive/authoritarian end of the spectrum. Here there was a clear contradiction
between this aspect of the TLR of the programme and that drawn on by the participant.
Somewhat ironically, because of other factors in the regime he inhabited, in terms of
power relations, tacit assumptions and recurrent practices, he at the same time refuted the
validity, authority and relevance of almost all the content that was offered him about
teaching and learning. He did not complete the programme.
TLRs on Educational Development Programmes
Just as participants approach educational development programmes from positions
conditioned by TLRs to which they have been exposed, so those programmes themselves
instantiate aspects of specific TLRs in significant ways. One way of looking at the aspects of
TLRs that underpin educational development programmes is to examine the textbooks used
on them. McGuinness’ (1997) analysis of staff development textbooks on teaching and
learning notes that they promulgate a generally consistent model of good practice: they stress
active learning on the part of students and autonomy for students in their learning, and a
constructivist approach to HE teaching and learning. They therefore recommend teaching
behaviours which promote student-centredness regardless of discipline. McGuinness notes
that the textbooks fail to undertake
a more fine grained analysis of the cognitive or learning outcomes of different disciplines,
and of particular courses … For example not sufficient distinction has been drawn
between conceptual learning (knowing that) and procedural learning (knowing how).
22
(1997, p. 19).
Looking at the educational development programmes themselves, research has shown that
they tend to emphasise developing “reflective practitioners”. Ecclestone (1996) for example
notes the prevalence of references to “reflective practice” which now permeate educational
development programmes for lecturers. However, she argues that this has now become
simply “mantric theory” (Ball, 1994), that is a theoretical approach which has lost much
meaning because it encompasses such a wide range of practices and sets of ideologies, the
characteristics of which in fact remain implicit. It has simply become an unhelpful mantra
which obscures rather than clarifies:
… theory can also work to provide comforting and apparently stable identities for
academics in an increasingly slippery world … Too often … theory becomes no more than
a mantric reaffirmation of belief rather than a tool for exploration and for thinking
otherwise. Such mantric uses of theories typically involve little more than a naming of
spaces … (Ball, 1994, quoted in Ecclestone, 1996, p. 152).
Other literature has similarly identified the ways in which the “reflective practitioner” label
may be less than helpful. Eraut (1994) and Wellington and Austin (1996) argue the need to
distinguish between different types of reflection and reflective practice. Bleakley (1999)
points out that there are a number of alternative epistemologies underpinning the idea of
reflective practice while Boud and Walker (1998) identify a number of fatal problems with
the concept, especially the fact that the nature and use of reflective practice is highly contextdependent. Brookfield (1995) emphasises the (often unmet) need to engage in critical
reflection, requiring a consistent and systematic approach to unearthing and scrutinising the
23
assumptions behind our practices.
We will argue in the final section for the importance of making explicit the aspects of TLRs
which participants bring to educational development programmes and those which underpin
the programmes themselves. This section has sought to show through the literature that,
firstly, there needs to be clearer and more nuanced thinking about the ways in which TLRs
instantiate the philosophy, content and practices of these programmes and their
appropriateness. Secondly, it has indicated that there may be a difference between what
programmes say about their underpinning TLRs and the complexity of their practices:
between espoused theory and theory in use.
Conclusions and Implications for Practice
This paper has considered the influence of teaching and learning regimes on the outcomes of
educational development programmes and has offered ways of conceiving of these with a
view to illuminating and enhancing practice. Naturally we acknowledge that there are many
other factors in play. At the individual level, motivation and approaches to learning and
change are clearly influential. At the institutional level the issue of educational development
programmes being framed within a deficit model of “staff development” is another. This
paper does not seek to examine the underlying factors which condition the shape of TLRs that is for a future paper. The key points of this one are:

Some individuals are more able and willing than others to transfer across or between TLRs
- they relatively easily challenge and adjust their attitudes, values, and practices as a result
of exposure to teaching courses and other experiences. Where others are not willing and
24
able to do so this can create problems.

Those problems are likely to be more acute where there are incompatibilities between
aspects of TLRs propagated within an educational development programme and that
normally inhabited by the individual course member or his/her departmental or
disciplinary context. Incongruity tends to lead to antagonism, anxiety or other negative
responses on the part of the programme participant.

Such incompatibilities often do not surface until critical incidents occur which
demonstrate the apparently incommensurable nature of the different approaches to
teaching and learning instantiated in the programme and the individual’s attitudes, values
and practices. Indeed, the value of such educational development programmes might in
part lie in this surfacing, as a means of challenging previously unexamined
preconceptions, provided the surfacing process can be transformed into a positive
learning experience.
A number of implications for practice within educational development programmes flow
from these conclusions:
There is a need to develop commonly understood discourses about teaching and learning in
HE as a pre-requisite to being able to make TLRs explicit and challenging them openly,
allowing the “engagement in critical conversation” (Brookfield 1995, 27) that educational
development programmes are so valuable for. This paper makes a contribution to that task.
Linked to that, it is important that educational development lecturers develop a process for
25
diagnosing conceptual frameworks and revealing them to participants, as Gow and Kember
(1993, p. 32) have argued. McGuinness (1997, p. 20) concurs, noting that …
the impact of general frameworks for thinking and epistemological beliefs (lecturers’ as
well as students’) is only beginning to be recognised … [and this is] an important research
agenda.
But we argue that recognising and surfacing the social roots of these frameworks and beliefs
is a key factor in enhancing the effectiveness of teacher development. Educational
development programmes are social products and themselves instantiate TLRs which may be
more, or less, compatible with those that participants bring to them from other contexts. If
there are incongruities between the two they need not be fatal if participants are able to, or are
encouraged to, surface and reflect on previously tacit assumptions embedded in their TLRs.
Similarly, there may not be a problem if participants are able to exercise discretion over the
application of aspects of different regimes; applying them in different contexts as appropriate.
Likewise programme designers are able to mitigate the negative impact of any incongruities
by taking actions in relation to course content and processes. Some programmes involve
some scrutiny of factors which comprise TLRs in university teaching and learning; some
even invite participants to critique elements of the programme, including its underlying
assumptions, as part of the process of demonstrating and understanding issues such as course
design. A surfaced and well articulated understanding of the nature and impact of TLRs, both
in terms of the participants and in relation to the programme itself, is essential if programmes
are to be effective in deepening understanding of the social conditions of learning and
teaching, a precondition for improved practices.
Participants need to be encouraged to be self-aware about their pre-conceptions, their social
26
roots, and the nature and implications of shifts in their thinking through the educational
development programme. This adds a new slant to Ausubel’s (1968, p. 36) dictum that the
most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows:
ascertaining this and teaching him or her accordingly is the key to good educational practice.
We are emphasising here the need to expose the social context in which TLRs are generated
and expressed through individuals and programmes. The components of TLRs need to be
foregrounded and deconstructed within and through the educational development programme,
though perhaps not in such a disaggregated way as we have done here.
It is important too in educational development programmes that the statements made about
TLRs actually reflect the regime in operation: that “espoused theory” and “theory in use” are
the same, or that where anomalies exist, these are made explicit and examined with
participants. Any programme can include cases of incongruencies between statements and
practices. We have seen in this paper that the concept of “use” here covers a number of areas
that might not otherwise be considered relevant. The example given on page 00 relates to the
ambiguity between explaining values and principles and being required to demonstrate them.
It is equally important that programmes are not only self-critical but are also used as a vehicle
for a meta-commentary explicitly to demonstrate and deconstruct issues of learning, teaching
and course design. Positioning the programme as an exploratory vehicle in this way
represents an attempt to reduce the challenges to identity and divisions of power between
learners and teachers discussed above and instead develop a community of practitioners. We
agree with Rogers (2001) that an educational event run so that the tutor is “one of us”
increases the chances of successful learning.
27
We consider the power issue to be a particularly important one for educational development
programme designers. Whether participants are able to fail such programmes, rather than
simply not complete them, is a question which has important implications for power relations
on them. Course designers may search for an appropriate position between saying that failure
has to be possible when participants are deemed incompetent in some aspect of teaching and
one which permits participants to determine their own success or failure through negotiating
the meeting of the criteria or choosing not to complete. In this search, it is important that they
be aware of the implications for the distribution of power in any decision they make. As
Brookfield says:
When we become aware of the pervasiveness of power, we start to notice the oppressive
dimensions to practices that we thought were neutral or even benevolent … (many of
which reflect an unquestioned acceptance of values, norms and practices defined for us by
others) … [This] is often the first step in working more democratically and cooperatively
with students and colleagues. (Brookfield, 1995, p. 9).
Our answer to the educational developer’s question at the head of this paper, then, is “yes”. A
course can be both fabulous and crapulous at the same time - depending partly, but not
wholly, on the compatibility between the teaching and learning regimes in which participants
are located and that of the educational development programme itself, and the extent to which
participants are able to tolerate, and even manipulate, differences and ambiguities as they
develop their awareness and explicit understandings about teaching and learning. The ability
of an educational development programme explicitly to steer a course through the exploration
and critical analysis of different and sometimes opposing TLR’s, without either seeming to
promulgate a rigid, preferred model or causing anxiety to novices by offering no value
judgements, seems to be the ideal to aspire to.
28
Postscript:
Helen, Sally and Dave all gained their teaching certificates, and declared themselves happy
with the outcomes.
Simon eventually resolved his appeal and gained his certificate.
Ruth dropped out of the programme, stating that her priorities lay elsewhere.
Bob remained very critical of the programme, and whilst having attended the whole course,
never completed the assessment.
The names and some other details about these individuals have been changed to protect their
anonymity. Only two of these people were among the eight interviewed, though data from the
other interviews were used to inform the development of our thinking. The vignettes have
been chosen to illustrate the argument rather than to “prove” it in any sense: as we stated
earlier, the aim of the paper is to develop useful concepts to illuminate practice rather than
to make general claims about the depiction of reality.
Address for correspondence: Dr Paul Trowler, Department of Educational Research, Cartmel
College, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YL, UK. E-mail: p.trowler@lancaster.ac.uk.
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