Improving Teaching and Learning: a Whole Institution Approach

This book, co-authored with David Gosling, provided the first consideration of how theories of educational development can be applied to holistic change across all the aspects of institutional policy. It contributes to the developing debates within higher education in the UK on educational development as a lever for change and reflects the role of educational development as an emerging field in higher education.

Together with other colleagues we carried out commissioned research for Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) and were appointed Co-Directors of the National Coordination Team for Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund and held the office of Chair of the UK Heads of Educational Development Group.

The book represents a culmination and consolidation of a series of related research investigations, including commissioned scoping studies and evaluation reports for HEFCE. It provides an evaluation of a number of models for improving the quality of the educational experience of higher education students and assesses the effectiveness of organisational change models currently in use in higher education. It presents a distinctive whole institution approach to quality improvement that is critical of the assumptions that underpin much of the current literature on change in higher education. Yet, it also provides a range of approaches for resolving the problems institutions face in dealing with the effects of rapid and continuous change. It employed a triangulated research approach which included: an international survey of educational development centres, interviews with a range of higher education staff in five countries and ethnographic fieldwork.