This document summarizes a case study on educational development in difficult contexts in South African higher education. There are dissonances between understandings of good teaching between senior managers, educational developers, and academic staff. Senior managers see teaching as straightforward and focused on throughput, while academic staff see it as complex work requiring supportive conditions. Educational developers promote reflective and research-based teaching. The study found that good teaching emerges from contextual practices but is constrained by heavy workloads and lack of departmental support. Recommendations include addressing dysfunctional contexts, changing perceptions of teaching, and supporting innovative practices.

1. ‘Extreme teaching’:
educational development in
difficult contexts
A Case Study
Chris Winberg
ICED Conference, 16-18 June 2014

2. I think a lot of what one does is
determined by the circumstance and
sometimes the circumstance forces
you into … or let’s say minimizes the
amount of options that are available
to you and sometimes yes it is chalk
and talk… because that’s all you
can do at that moment…that’s all
you have available to you at that
moment (Interviewee 4).

3. Background and context
South African higher education as an ‘extreme’ case:
1. Historical legacies and current dominant
practices continue to advantage some
universities and disadvantage others);
2. Post-apartheid expansion of student enrolment;
3. Expectations of a society undergoing
significant social change
All place particular pressures on university teachers
and those who offer them support.

4. Overarching research question
How should professional
development be practiced in
contexts of considerable
change and challenge?

5. Conceptual
underpinnings
Structure, Culture and Agency
(Social realist Margaret Archer)
Structure: A set of internally related objects. The
concept ‘ structure’ does certainly not refer only to
social structures. Structure refers to the inner
composition making each object what it is and not
something else … (Danemark et al. 1997)

6. Conceptual
underpinnings
Culture: any item that can be
understood by anyone
Cultural system: propositional
register of any society at a given time
(discursive practice)
Socio-cultural integration: relationships
between cultural agents

7. Conceptual underpinnings
Agency: allows for transformation
of society; emerges out of interplay
with structure and culture
Human reflexivity: internal conversation
Personal identity: achieved at maturity
when our concerns or commitments attain a
unique pattern

8. The limits of conceptual
underpinnings
• Need wide range of researchers
engaged in wide range of research projects
• Different conceptual perspectives create
different research projects (and vice versa);
• A modesty about what can be achieved in
single research projects;
• Space needs to be given for empirical data to
knock against conceptual perspectives and
change them…
• Conceptual frameworks simplify – but ‘it is in
their interactive, challenging complexity that
their humanity lies.’

9. Multi-site Study
National Policy and Landscape
CPUT
Fort
Hare
Rhodes UWC SU Wits Venda UCT
Macro
Meso
Micro

10. Policies,
guidelines
Institutional statistics
Institutional policies
Interviews: VCs,
DVCs, Deans
Unit Self reports
Research Design
Questionnaire,
Interviews
National level
Institutional level
(VCs, DVCs, Deans)
Unit/centre level
(Directors)
Individual level
Lecturers, HoDs
Macro
Structure
Meso
Culture
Micro
Agency

11. Analysing the interview data
Interviews with VC, DVC, Deans, Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, Coordinators, etc.
External interviewers, external transcribers, verified, coded by 2 coders….

12. Finding 1: understanding teaching
Senior Management Educational developers Academic staff
Good teaching is
straightforward and
aligned with
targeted student
success and
throughput rates
Good teaching starts
as reflective practice
and progresses to
scholarly, research-
based and
theoretically
informed teaching.
Good teaching is
complex, constantly
changing, responsive
to students’ needs,
and focused on their
holistic development.

13. Senior managers Educational developers Academic Staff
Need more substantial
awards, ‘compulsory’
nature of new lecturer
training, support for
educational
development
Distinguished teaching
awards, educational
research fund,
teaching forums;
teaching portfolios for
ad hominem
promotion…
Awards are not
necessary – just fill the
vacant teaching posts
and load us less, don’t
‘punish’ us for not
being researchers by
giving us additional
teaching loads,
understand that good
teaching is hard work!
we need good working
(i.e., T&L) conditions
and supportive
managers.
2. Status of teaching

14. 3. Key enablers
Senior managers Academic staff
The policy environment,
institutional and faculty
structures, extensive staff
development provision and
resources.
Structures (esp faculty),
resources , colleagues, research
groups, E.D. provision – but
MAINLY supportive heads of
department and strong teaching
and learning departmental
cultures.

15. 4. Key constraints
Senior Managers Academic staff
Large numbers of underprepared
students, lack of department
leadership for innovative teaching and
learning, and the policy
implementation gap.
Heavy teaching loads, heavy
administrative burden, low staff
morale, the strain of coping with poor
facilities and maintenance, the poor IT
infrastructure (which makes some
forms of staff development pointless)
and heads of department who do
not/cannot support innovative
teaching and learning.

16. Some reflections…
• Some similarities, but also strong dissonances between senior
managers, academic developers and academic staff in terms of
understandings, practices, structures, attitudes, and discourses;
• Senior managers are concerned that students are weak, but
good teachers take on the challenge;
• Unintended consequences (e.g., re-curriculation, departmental
reviews and audits – intended to improve – but can have
opposite effect);

17. Reflections/cont
• Good teaching makes demands on university teachers that are
exacerbated by dysfunctional environments;
• Teaching has been under-valued (teaching is ‘easy’ therefore
not rewarded/teaching is ‘punishment’ for not doing research);
• Concern: the extent to which practices promoted in ASD by the
academic developers – many of which are ICT-based – are
suited for practice within many departmental settings;
• Good teaching is emerges as highly context-specific sets of
practices…

18. I love teaching … not like teaching … I love
teaching … that’s my life… (Interviewee 3).
I absolutely love it … I’m quite passionate
about teaching and I always have been and I
have like an energy affinity with teaching … I
can see what needs to be done and what
happens when people don’t understand and
how to help people understand …so ja … I
love it (Interviewee 6).

19. Recommendations
Structure 1: clear processes and support for T&L, lines of
accountability, sanction for non-implementation (but flexibility,
sensitivity to disciplinary or professional cultures; the guiding
role of enabling structures).
Structure 2: address the failing service and support systems (The
Dysfunctional contexts place burden on academic staff takes its
toll, and teaching and learning suffers.)
Culture 1: Showcase the considerable successes in T&L in ways
that reach all staff and all managers; start the long process of
changing perceptions around the ‘second class’ status of teaching.
Culture 2: address ‘the human element’, the distress caused by
the merger, the enormous workloads imposed by re-curriculation
and other projects (over and above generally high workloads).

20. Acknowledgments
The team
Cape Higher Education
Consortium
Nasima Badsha
Rhodes University
Chrissie Boughey
Lynn Quinn
University of the Western Cape
Vivienne Bozalek
Wendy McMillan
Cape Peninsula University of
Technology
Chris Winberg
James Garraway
Duban University of Technology
Gita Mistri
Julien Vooght
University of Cape Town
Jeff Jawitz
Fort Hare University
Vuyisile Nkonki
University of Stellenbosch
Brenda Leibowitz
Susan van Schalkwyk
Nicoline Herman
Jean Farmer
University of Venda
Clever Ndebele