Mike Rowe & Elaine Eades: Learning to Change: developing reflective public service practitioners. Slides from the University of Liverpool Learning and Teaching Conference 2009.
The paper will present evidence emerging from a new Masters programme (commenced in September 2008). The programme is part-time, aimed at practising managers in partner organisations and entails deliberate learning across organisational boundaries. The programme explicitly links personal development with organisational change. It is asking students to critically reflect on their practice and to develop themselves and their organisation through active learning and ‘live’ projects and challenges. These in turn are directly connected to on-going processes of organisational development in partner public agencies. Since the programme has just started, the paper will report on progress and experience to date. Initial discussions have already identified some clear learning in some areas:
* Recruitment – participants must clearly be recruited to the programme on the explicit basis that this will involve challenge and change.
* Flexibility – in the design and delivery of the programme, responsiveness and renegotiation are already emerging as key issues.
* Partnership – an overriding theme in the design and, more clearly now, in the delivery of the programme is the need to develop long-term relationships to sustain the programme
In essence, to deliver a programme of this nature, we as teachers/educators/developers must practice explicitly those things we seek to preach.
