‘Collegiality’ During a Period of Rapid Change in Higher Education an Examination of a Distinctive Feature Claimed by a Group of Colleges of Education in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

A frequent issue in discussions of British Higher Education is the particular quality of an academic institution described by phrases such as 'the academic community', 'corporate life', or 'collegiate atmosphere'. In this article the term 'collegiality' will be used to include all such phrases implying a distinctive style of living in an institution of learning. 'Collegiality' avoids the difficulties of the commonly used term 'community' which has complicated reverberations in sociological and philosophical literature.l Collegiality is in brief an expression of the value systems of a University or College and value systems are likely to be affected in a period of rapid change. Nias has suggested that the persistence of value systems associated with collegiality in the Colleges of Education may be functional in that they help the institutions to resist the disruptive effects of rapid change.2 This article takes a different approach. It examines one distinctive group of Colleges of Education, the Church of England Colleges, in order to see what forms the idea of collegiality has taken during the period from I960 and how these forms may change in the future. The Church Colleges have been chosen because they are a definable group publishing public statements, evidence to government committees, and prospectuses expressing claims about collegiality. These claims I have been able to observe in practice as a participant in two Church Colleges and, for a brief period, as an administrator to the group. The group is not unique amongst universities and colleges in its claim for the benefits of collegiality, nor, of course, is it unique in undergoing a rapid period of change. Perhaps some general conclusions about other institutions of Higher Education may be drawn from this particular selection. The Church of England Colleges of Education in I974 were 27 in number (including two in Wales). Canon Robertson has usefully summarized the voluntary nature of this part of the teacher training system.3 He stresses their distinctive administrative and legal status. The colleges themselves or their representatives are more likely to claim distinctiveness from their style of academic organization or, as they would prefer to call it, their 'sense of community'. In the Church Board of Education's evidence to the Robbins Committee for instance it was said: These are predominantly residential Colleges in which academic and professional training proceed concurrently in the context of a common life and worship. This corporate life of personal relationships we believe to be of the greatest importance and whatever modifications are made should not disrupt it.4