Institutional Change Efforts Research Articles

Leveraging Power: A Multiple Embedded Case Study of Institutional Change Efforts for Racial Equity at Four Private Universities

ABSTRACT Despite research signaling the need to advance racial equity in university policies and practices, power dynamics in institutional change processes are not well understood. Using a constructivist embedded multiple case study design, critical theoretical perspective, and explanation-building technique, we analyzed how four private institutions with demonstrable change in student success and closing racial equity gaps in graduation rates enacted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts over the last 5 years. Findings led to understanding how institutional agents synergistically used strategies in two phases: one, advocates, partnerships and coalitions, and capacity-building; second: resources, assessment, and accountability.

Leading Change at Berkeley Public Health: Building the Anti-racist Community for Justice and Social Transformative Change

A transformative change grounded in a commitment to antiracism and racial and health equity is underway at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. Responding to a confluence of national, state, and local circumstances, bold leadership, and a moral and disciplinary imperative to name and address racism as a root cause of health inequities, our community united around a common vision of becoming an antiracist institution. Berkeley Public Health has a long history of efforts supporting diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. Building upon those efforts, we pursued an institution-wide initiative, one that creates a more equitable and inclusive school of public health that models and supports the development of future public health leaders, practitioners, scholars, and educators. Grounded in the principles of cultural humility, we recognized that our vision was a journey, not a destination. This article describes our efforts from June 2020 through June 2022 in developing and implementing ARC4JSTC (Anti-racist Community for Justice and Social Transformative Change), a comprehensive, multiyear antiracist change initiative encompassing faculty and workforce development, student experience, curriculum and pedagogy, community engagement outreach, and business processes. Our work is data informed, grounded in principles of change management, and focused on building internal capacity to promote long-term change. Our discussion of lessons learned and next steps helps to inform our ongoing work and antiracist institutional change efforts at other schools and programs of public health.

Indigenous refusals in educational leadership practices in Canadian universities

Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released 94 calls to action in 2015, Canadian universities have responded in numerous ways. A particularly significant response has been the creation of Indigenous Initiatives Offices and the appointment of senior leaders to help lead transformative institutional change efforts. Many of these new administrative appointments report directly to presidents and provosts, and have been taken up by Indigenous women. In this article, I present five key findings from research that explored the experiences of 12 Indigenous women administrators working in Canadian universities. The study highlighted how these Indigenous women enact Indigenous refusals as part of a transformative decolonial leadership praxis in universities.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion – does social justice from the top trickle down?

ABSTRACT We analyse an institutional curriculum change initiative from the perspective of academics in a physics department to identify the barriers faced when curriculum change is used as a process to increase equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). We explore what curriculum means in physics, how power relationships within the university affect the response to top-down change, and ultimately who has control over the curriculum. We find that the different conceptualisations of curriculum in physics compared to educational research mean that a directed top-down approach stalls when concepts that fall outside of the physics curriculum, such as EDI, are introduced. Nevertheless, initiatives that are in response to EDI concerns that would be considered to be curriculum change from an educational research perspective are enacted within the department on a localised scale. Understanding the different conceptualisations of curriculum and how they interact to support or hinder change should help guide future institutional change efforts.

Relationships between undergraduate instructors' conceptions of how students learn and their instructional practices

AbstractSupporting changes in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction requires an understanding of the relationship between STEM instructors' conceptions and practices. In this study, the authors used the Teacher‐Centered Systematic Reform (TCSR) model as a framework to understand how instructors' conceptions are related to their instructional practices. This multiple methods study included interviews and classroom observations of 22 STEM instructors. We used qualitative methods to describe instructors' conceptions of how students learn and quantitative methods, including a hierarchical cluster analysis, to analyze the types of relationships that exist between their conceptions and practices. Results indicated instructors had a wide range of conceptions that exist along a continuum from teacher‐centered to student‐centered. While many faculty members perceived student‐centered practices as valuable, they conceptualized these practices in different ways. Instructors implemented a wide range of instructional practices, and these practices varied independently of conceptions. We identified three distinct clusters of participants based on the relationships between instructors' conceptions and practices: congruent lecturers, congruent active learning facilitators, and incongruent lecturers. In the first two clusters, instructors' conceptions were aligned with their instructional practices. However, incongruent lecturers thought that students learn through active learning approaches but primarily lectured in their courses. Instructors in this group described several personal and contextual factors that influenced the relationship between their conceptions and practices. The results include an in‐depth portrayal of one participant in each cluster. We found that student‐centered conceptions may be necessary but are not sufficient for instructors to implement active learning. Implications focus on instructional and institutional change efforts. To promote instructional change most effectively, it is important to address each component of the TCSR model, including personal and contextual factors. A focus on conceptions and practices alone may not sufficiently support faculty members in overcoming barriers that limit active learning instruction.

‘I Did Not See it Coming’: Intentional Efforts and Unintentional Effects in Institutional Change

The literature on institutional change is characterized by two views – the consensus view emphasizes mutually supportive efforts amongst organizational actors who drive institutional change, while the frictional view sheds light on potential conflict amongst actors seeking change. Both views assume that human praxis – the transformative efforts of social actors – which emerges from societal contradictions, is directed to create intended changes in institutional targets. This single case study of a social movement organization challenges the assumption by theorizing how such transformative efforts can also unintentionally insert and amplify contradictions within organizations. The analysis uncovers three distinct tactics that help theorize how unintended effects emerge, escalate and are mitigated during an institutional change project. By offering a temporally bracketed multi-level model that complexifies the relationship between institutional change efforts and its effects, this study challenges core assumptions in the literature on institutional change.

Development of the Cooperative Adoption Factors Instrument to measure factors associated with instructional practice in the context of institutional change

BackgroundMany institutional and departmentally focused change efforts have sought to improve teaching in STEM through the promotion of evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs). Even with these efforts, EBIPs have not become the predominant mode of teaching in many STEM departments. To better understand institutional change efforts and the barriers to EBIP implementation, we developed the Cooperative Adoption Factors Instrument (CAFI) to probe faculty member characteristics beyond demographic attributes at the individual level. The CAFI probes multiple constructs related to institutional change including perceptions of the degree of mutual advantage of taking an action (strategic complements), trust and interconnectedness among colleagues (interdependence), and institutional attitudes toward teaching (climate).ResultsFrom data collected across five STEM fields at three large public research universities, we show that the CAFI has evidence of internal structure validity based on exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The scales have low correlations with each other and show significant variation among our sampled universities as demonstrated by ANOVA. We further demonstrate a relationship between the strategic complements and climate factors with EBIP adoption through use of a regression analysis. In addition to these factors, we also find that indegree, a measure of opinion leadership, correlates with EBIP adoption.ConclusionsThe CAFI uses the CACAO model of change to link the intended outcome of EBIP adoption with perception of EBIPs as mutually reinforcing (strategic complements), perception of faculty having their fates intertwined (interdependence), and perception of institutional readiness for change (climate). Our work has established that the CAFI is sensitive enough to pick up on differences between three relatively similar institutions and captures significant relationships with EBIP adoption. Our results suggest that the CAFI is likely to be a suitable tool to probe institutional change efforts, both for change agents who wish to characterize the local conditions on their respective campuses to support effective planning for a change initiative and for researchers who seek to follow the progression of a change initiative. While these initial findings are very promising, we also recommend that CAFI be administered in different types of institutions to examine the degree to which the observed relationships hold true across contexts.

An Equity-Minded Approach to Faculty Development in a Community of Practice

Communities of Practice (CoPs) have been identified as successful models of innovation in higher education institutional change efforts, particularly geared toward faculty. Accordingly, this multi-method qualitative study examined how participation in one equity-minded CoP contributed to participants’ understanding and mobilization of equity in their work at a public university in the Northeast United States. Through grounded theory, the authors investigated how participants critiqued current educational inequities, supported one another, shared knowledge and resources, and championed social change, while situated within oppressive academic structures. Although all participants aimed to contribute to equitable practices, findings showcased evidence of accomplice behavior given the nature of academia. However, the CoP provided a unique and supportive space for faculty to critique perceived inequities and systems of power and actively advocate for social justice change in their educational environments.

Cultivating a culture of scholarly teaching and learning in a college of engineering: An ecological design approach

ABSTRACT This paper describes a novel institutional change model, embodied in the Engineering Education Transformations Institute at the University of Georgia, that was intentionally designed to build community and expertise around scholarly teaching and learning in engineering education. The model is informed by several theoretical constructs, including complex systems theory, the propagation paradigm, a strengths perspective, and ecological design principles. The goals of this paper are twofold. First, we introduce these theoretical constructs and describe how they inform both the organisational structure and day-to-day operations of the Institute. Second, drawing on data collected using ethnographic methods and a thinking with theory analytical approach, we share two practice examples that demonstrate some of the opportunities and challenges associated with our institutional change efforts. The first example shows how our Institute’s programming enabled a teaching-focused faculty member to connect with others in our college in ways that dramatically enhanced his existing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) outreach efforts to a local, resource-constrained high school. The second example demonstrates how complex systems theory and ecological design principles can be used to both create the conditions for scholarly teaching, learning, and research in engineering education, and provide a set of theoretical perspectives through which to better understand and solve challenges that arise in collaborative, educational research and practice settings.

Creating a more supportive and inclusive university culture: a mixed-methods interdisciplinary comparative analysis of medical and social sciences at the University of Oxford

ABSTRACT Results of two C-Change surveys of 4997 faculty and staff in medical and social sciences are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively and presented with illustrative quotations giving voice to critical personal perceptions of the culture and efforts to improve it. The C-Change survey included 12 dimensions of the culture: Vitality; Self-Efficacy in Career Advancement; Institutional Support; Relationships/Inclusion/Trust; Values Alignment; Ethical/Moral Distress; Leadership Aspirations; Work-Life Integration; Gender Equity; Black and Minority Ethnic Equity; Institutional Change Efforts for Diversity; Institutional Change Efforts for Faculty Support. Women were less positive than men on six dimensions in medical and ten dimensions in social sciences, suggesting that women’s experiences are different to those of men. Both women and men were more positive about the culture in medical than social sciences. A more positive culture in medical sciences is attributed to the wide-spread implementation of Athena SWAN gender equality action plans linked to the NIHR funding incentives.

ADVANCING Women Academic Faculty in STEM Careers: The Role of Critical HRD in Supporting Diversity and Inclusion

The Problem The low representation of women and women of color (WoC) faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academic disciplines represents a critical talent development issue by constraining universities from being truly diverse and inclusive therefore limiting the development and advancement of women scientists. The Solution We describe the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) ADVANCE program as a mechanism for increasing STEM women and WoC faculty career development, inclusion, and advancement. We situate this program as a critical human resource development (CHRD) project and analyze the interventions of ADVANCE Centers at five institutions using a coding scheme based on Acker’s theory of organizational gendering. We identify how key interventions address gendered processes and how these efforts align with human resource development (HRD) disciplinary expertise. The Stakeholders This article will benefit HRD scholars and professionals by identifying how HRD disciplinary expertise can be used to support institutional change efforts focused on faculty diversity and inclusion.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Black Women's Blueprint for Institutional Transformation in Higher Education

Many institutional leaders find themselves struggling to achieve racial equity in a sociopolitical context where hatemongering, misogyny, xenophobia, heterosexism, and racism have been normalized and minoritized students, staff, and faculty have been relegated to the margins. Few institutional leaders (e.g., presidents, provosts, chancellors, boards of trustees, deans) understand how, why, and the extent to which minoritized peoples are affected by multiple and overlapping forms of oppression. As a result, institutional change efforts to transform campuses into identity-affirming and socially just learning environments often prove ineffective because college and university leaders typically engage in single-axis identity politics to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this article, the authors challenge institutional leaders to take up intersectionality as a method of engaging in lasting transformational change that promises to advance racial equity in higher education. The authors also expose the limitations of existing institutional change models by highlighting their intersectional failures and prompt readers to imagine Black women as possibility models for institutional change that transforms higher education and advances racial equity.

Building Practical Authority for Community Forestry in and through Networks: The role of community‐based organisations in the U.S. West

AbstractPolicy and economic changes in the late 20th century fundamentally reorganized the governance of public forestlands in the US West, throwing longstanding rural development trajectories into disarray. Place‐based NGOs emerged across the West in the wake of this transformation to help rural communities gain access to the benefits of new restoration‐oriented management paradigms. Here we analyse the practical efforts of two of these community‐based organizations, Wallowa Resources and the Watershed Research and Training Center, as they attempt to implement community forestry practices in highly complex institutional environments. We focus on the ways in which these organizations access and utilize social networks at multiple scales in order to build the ‘practical authority’ necessary to lead institutional change efforts in and on behalf of rural communities. We consider both the strategic advantages and the practical challenges of working in multiple forums at multiple scales in pursuit of linked community and environmental benefits. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

A Novel Measure of "Good" Mentoring: Testing Its Reliability and Validity in Four Academic Health Centers.

Despite the well-recognized benefits of mentoring in academic medicine, there is a lack of clarity regarding what constitutes effective mentoring. We developed a tool to assess mentoring activities experienced by faculty and evaluated evidence for its validity. The National Initiative on Gender, Culture, and Leadership in Medicine-"C-Change"-previously developed the C-Change Faculty Survey to assess the culture of academic medicine. After intensive review, we added six items representing six components of mentoring to the survey-receiving help with career and personal goals, learning skills, sponsorship, and resources. We tested the items in four academic health centers during 2013 to 2014. We estimated reliability of the new items and tested the correlation of the new items with a mentoring composite variable representing faculty mentoring experiences as positive, neutral, or inadequate and with other C-Change dimensions of culture. Among the 1520 responding faculty (response rate 61-63%), there was a positive association between each of the six mentoring activities and satisfaction with both the amount and quality of mentoring received. There was no difference by sex. Cronbach α coefficients ranged from 0.89 to 0.95 across subgroups of faculty (by sex, race, and principal roles). The mentoring responses were associated most closely with dimensions of Institutional Support (r = 0.58, P < .001), Institutional Change Efforts for Faculty Support (r = 0.52, P < .001), Values Alignment (r = 0.58, P < .001), Self-efficacy (r = 0.43; P < .001), and Relationships/Inclusion/Trust (r = 0.41; P < .001). Data demonstrated that the Mentoring scale is a valid instrument to assess mentoring. Survey results could facilitate mentoring program development and evaluation.

Exploring Faculty Conceptualizations of Sustainability in Higher Education: Cultural Barriers to Organizational Change and Potential Resolutions

It is often suggested that for institutional change efforts towards sustainability to bear fruit a common vision for sustainability in higher education (SHE) is necessary. Given the contested nature of the concept and the complexity of academic institutional culture, seeking broad consensus around sustainability presents a significant challenge to those seeking organizational change for sustainability. This article describes a research project that explored professors’ conceptualizations of SHE in the case study of Dalhousie University. We identified a number of divergent and conflicting conceptualizations around not only the concept of sustainability but also the role of the university in education for it, and promoting sustainability outside of its walls. Given the nature of the tensions in this study in particular and how they relate to important debates in the field of SHE generally, we propose embracing a vision of sustainability rooted in plurality and dialogue.

Editorial: Changing the Change Agents through Palliative Care Education for Psycho-Oncology Professionals

This special issue of OMEGA celebrates the institutional change efforts of 28 selected psychologists, social workers, and spiritual care professionals who participated in the ACE Project, a transdisciplinary palliative care education program funded through the National Cancer Institute (2006-2012). Participants reflect the three disciplines targeted by this educational grant and report on the institutional change efforts that emerged from their ACE Project activities. An article describing the ACE Project is followed by articles that address the participants’ work to enhance collaborative palliative practice, address the concerns of diverse populations, integrate spiritual and existential care into palliative care, and their efforts to improve the delivery of end-of-life and bereavement support services within their institutions. The articles that follow are authored by 28 ACE Project participants who responded to an invitation to share their work through this special issue. Many of these authors are being published for the first time and each reported that the experience of being a part of the ACE Project inspired them to more formally disseminate their work through additional venues.

Experiencing the Culture of Academic Medicine: Gender Matters, A National Study

Energized and productive faculty are critical to academic medicine, yet studies indicate a lack of advancement and senior roles for women. Using measures of key aspects of the culture of academic medicine, this study sought to identify similarity and dissimilarity between perceptions of the culture by male and female faculty. The C - Change Faculty Survey was used to collect data on perceptions of organizational culture. A stratified random sample of 4,578 full-time faculty at 26 nationally representative US medical colleges (response rate 52 %). 1,271 (53 %) of respondents were female. Factor analysis assisted in the creation of scales assessing dimensions of the culture, which served as the key outcomes. Regression analysis identified gender differences while controlling for other demographic characteristics. Compared with men, female faculty reported a lower sense of belonging and relationships within the workplace (T = -3.30, p < 0.01). Self-efficacy for career advancement was lower in women (T = -4.73, p < 0.001). Women perceived lower gender equity (T = -19.82, p < 0.001), and were less likely to believe their institutions were making changes to address diversity goals (T = -9.70, p < 0.001). Women were less likely than men to perceive their institution as family-friendly (T = -4.06, p < 0.001), and women reported less congruence between their own values and those of their institutions (T = -2.06, p < 0.05). Women and men did not differ significantly on levels of engagement, leadership aspirations, feelings of ethical/moral distress, perception of institutional commitment to faculty advancement, or perception of institutional change efforts to improve support for faculty. Faculty men and women are equally engaged in their work and share similar leadership aspirations. However, medical schools have failed to create and sustain an environment where women feel fully accepted and supported to succeed; how can we ensure that medical schools are fully using the talent pool of a third of its faculty?

Resituating race into the movement toward multiculturalism and social justice

AbstractA historical perspective is offered to explain how race has declined in significance as higher education and student affairs have moved toward multicultural social justice. Educators and administrators are urged to reconsider race and racism in dialogues, programs, policies, and institutional change efforts.

Connecting Philosophic and Scholarly Traditions with Change in Higher Education

Executive Summary Stimulated by experiences associated with the Kellogg Foundation's for Institutional (LINC) initiative, the authors argue for expanding the conventional notion of leadership required for higher education change. In addition to competently envisioning, organizing, and enacting change, we believe that change agents must become more familiar with the philosophical and scholarly traditions associated with the substance of intended change. We our case by considering two contemporary change platforms in American higher education: the shift from teaching to learning in undergraduate education, and the quest to colleges and universities more (with society) Understanding the Academy as a tapestry of scholarly traditions--with distinct philosophical roots and conceptual frames of reference--night stimulate more academic change agents to reframe leadership and change in postmodern terms. Doing that will offer change platforms that are more embracing than declarative, more inviting than directive, and more connecting than restrictive. ********** The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) invests significantly in developing the leadership qualities necessary for reforming and transforming higher education. There are numerous examples of how the Foundation--in practical and compelling ways--is working diligently to enhance higher education's understanding of change, the change process, and the leadership required to make a difference. (i) This commitment is certainly reflected in WKKF's Leadership for Institutional Change (LINC) program. LINC is associated with the Foundation's multifaceted Food and Society initiative. (ii) LINC fosters innovative forms of leadership development and supports institutional change efforts in public higher education across the United States. LINC's distinguishing feature is the quest for discovering and developing context-relevant, inspiring, and connected models of leadership and change in public higher education. Special emphasis is placed on efforts that, in theory and practice, result in collaborative leadership and encourage the development of engaged institutions. Toward those ends, all LINC projects nurture the capacity of faculty, students, staff, and administrators to discover new ways of working together and working collaboratively with external partners for the good of society. (iii) LINC project directors come together regularly, sharing what they are learning and delving more deeply into the nuances, complexities, and paradox associated with their work as higher education change agents. Conducted as conversations, the atmosphere resembles an ecology of thought (Isaacs, 1999, p. 35)--always involving reflective dialogue, sometimes giving way to generative dialogue. Reflective dialogue explores underlying causes, rules, and assumptions to get to deeper questions and framing of problems. (Isaccs, 1999, p. 41) Narratives offer a frame of reference for reflective dialogue. Stories of inspiration are conceived, written, and shared about people--on campus and off--who have been `touched' by LINC. Generative dialogue invents possibilities as participants re-frame and consider issues in fresh ways. Recently, discussion of a LINC narrative revealed that a project director faced a particularly thorny set of issues. As the conversation ensued, the issues were reenvisioned--not as problems, but as outcomes typically associated with the creation of settings. (iv) Generative dialogue revealed a literature heretofore unknown to a LINC colleague--a potential vista of understanding, offering a vocabulary and potential solutions to the challenges this change agent faces in context. For example, research on alternative settings can inform this campus change agent about the factors associated with sustaining these delicate organizational forms, including how to artfully nurture connections between the alternative setting and the broader institutional environment. …