This presentation was the first of two that addressed the challenges of collaborative work, and offering strategies to make this a reality of academic life. It presented a model, detailed at length in Walsh and Kahn (2009), which was developed through a theoretical synthesis of perspectives from a body of literature and experience on collaborative working. The work draws on critical realist perspectives, including Bhaskar’s (1998) notions of stratification in social reality. The presentation focused on professional dialogue and social structures with a view to stimulating discussion around the role of collaborative working as an informed and meaningful approach in addressing the current challenges to cohesion of academic practice.

1. Addressing division within the
academy
A model of collaborative working for HE
SRHE Seminar ~ 29th April 2010
Lorraine Walsh, University of Dundee
Peter E. Kahn, University of Liverpool

2. Drivers, change & challenge to the
cohesion of C21st academic practice

3. The academy divided?
Different staff?
Different focus?
Research
Teaching
Physical
separation
Psychological
separation
What effect on practice?
What effect on academics as
individual scholars?

4. ‘Training the mind to go visiting’
(Arendt, 2003)
Teaching and research as increasingly
separate and ‘ideologised’ aspects of
practice (Barnett, 2003: 146-7)
Kinser’s (1998) concept of the
‘unbundling’ of traditional academic
work into specialist roles (MacFarlane in
Barnett, ed., 2005: 173).

5. Model of Collaborative Working in
Higher Education (Walsh & Kahn, 2009)
Social Vehicles
Context
Professional
Dialogues
Practice
Engagement

6. Collaborative Vehicles
Virtual
Conceptual
Collaborative Vehicles
Local or Global
Single or multi-disciplinary focus
With colleagues, students, industry

7. Professional Dialogues
Ownership and empowerment
Opportunities for re-discovery, reinvention or revitalisation of scholarly
relationships
Idea of the Teaching
Commons
‘a conceptual space’
Huber & Hutchings (2005)

8. Case studies – collaborative
spaces in action
Parker (2009)
Collaboration around writing in the disciplines.
Mackenzie (2009)
A learning community of university teachers.
How do collaborative vehicles and
professional dialogues open up space for
collaboration and ensure cohesion?

9. Collaboration centred around courses
for students within the discipline.
Underpinned by an institute, endowed
research student fellowships, roles linked
to establishing and teaching courses
within disciplines.
Contrasting perspectives from across
academic hierarchies, focusing attention
on the most significant questions.

10. A Learning Community
Understanding, and possibilities for common
action, emerge from dialogue.
Learning community, roles and small groups
focused on progressing projects.
Roles focused primarily on teaching may
sideline the collaborative space required to
engage in research.

11. Opportunities and Challenges of
Collaborative Working
Dealing with ‘supercomplexity’ (Barnett) or
‘troublesome activity’ (Walsh & Kahn)
Empowerment of the academy
Identity – ontological shift
Dunbar’s number

12. Collaboration and Empowerment
in Action
Friday Fry-Up
Club

13. ‘It is through action that we have the chance
of renewing our common world’ (Arendt)
Collaborative spaces may be one of the last
areas of the academy which can be owned
and shaped by academics

14. References
Arendt, Hannah. 2003. In Kreber, C. (2010). ‘Empowering the
scholarship of teaching & learning. Towards an authentic
practice.’ Presentation at the Developing Pedagogic Research
seminar, University of Dundee, 20.4.10
Barnett, Ron. 2003. Beyond all Reason. Living with ideology in
the university. Buckingham: SRHE/OUP.
Barnett, Ron. (ed.) 2005. Reshaping the University. New
relationships between research, scholarship and teaching.
Buckingham: SRHE/OUP.
Huber, Mary & Hutchings, Pat. 2005. The Advancement of
Learning. Building the teaching commons. Jossey-Bass.

15. References
Parker, Jan. 2009. ‘Collaborative academic work: writing in the
disciplines’. In Collaborative Working in Higher Education, L.
Walsh and P.E. Kahn, 157-62. London: Routledge.
MacKenzie, Jane. 2009. ‘A learning community of university
teachers: an exploration of the scholarship of learning and
teaching’. In Collaborative Working in Higher Education, L.
Walsh and P.E. Kahn, 20-5. London: Routledge.
Walsh, Lorraine. & Kahn, Peter E. 2009. Collaborative
Working in Higher Education. London: Routledge.

16. Further Reading
Collaborative Working in Higher
Education. The Social Academy
(Routledge, 2009)
Lorraine Walsh
l.walsh@dundee.ac.uk
Peter E. Kahn
peter.kahn@liverpool.ac.uk