Educational Change Management Accreditation Learning and Teaching Systems Thinking

This paper seeks to develop a case-based systems perspective on how university-led educational change initiatives to enhance the student experience and student learning interweave with external influences on the development and management of academic programmes. The paper provides an illustration of how a case-based systems approach, systems representational tool and systems perspective may not only provide a platform for a multi-level analysis of factors impacting on the management of learning and teaching initiatives, but also highlight how such initiatives, for example, accreditation and assurance of student learning initiatives, though well-intentioned and effective initially, may have unintended and undesirable consequences. The case-based analysis uses systems notions to conceptualise aspects of change management relating to educational initiatives that provides a complementary or alternative understanding of the underlying processes through which change is affected. Our descriptive schematic systems representations depict different nested 'layers' of events, factors and relationships, which have an attendant face validity in depicting the change process as it may play out in institutions subject to internal and external forces that impact learning and teaching initiatives. In doing so, the paper bridges a perceived gap in the educational change management literature - namely, the lack of reported research involving systems methodologies.

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