Avoiding a Rhetoric of Resistance and Imposition: Strategies for Successful Implementation of Central Policy
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: When the University of Glasgow (UoG) launched its Learning & Teaching Strategy (L&TS) in 2021, it aimed to provide a blueprint for change amidst a rapidly evolving world. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns significantly impacted both students and staff, diverting their energies. Plans to accelerate student growth led to an unprecedented 25% increase in total student numbers between 2019/20 and 2022/23, peaking at 42,980 students in 2021/22. These factors have placed considerable added pressure on each of our four colleges, each distinct in their disciplinary focus and methods, to innovate and rapidly evolve their teaching practices. Moreover, the mission of higher education has shifted; universities are now tasked not only with imparting academic knowledge but also with ensuring that graduates possess enhanced skillsets that boost their employability. This paper reflects on and critically evaluates how the L&TS has served as a ‘north star,’ unifying and aligning our efforts to transform curricula at the University of Glasgow. We also describe how the different L&TS workstreams have collaborated, highlighting transferable lessons in leadership, engagement, and communication. The University’s Sustainability Strategy (USS) has also played a crucial role as a unifying force in implementing the L&TS. Aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the USS has inspired academic leadership, as evidenced by the Times Higher Education’s Impact agenda. With the SDGs set to expire in 2030, we discuss in line with the conference theme, how the implementation of the L&TS will enhance our agility and responsiveness beyond current frameworks. The implementation of the University of Glasgow’s Learning and Teaching Strategy is managed across four workstreams: • Assessment and Feedback Practice & Policy • Evolving Teaching Practice • Student Skills & Professional Development • Transforming Curricula The transforming curricula workstream asked a simple question: what if every student at the University of Glasgow had the opportunity to engage in a curriculum that expanded their work-related and experiential learning, while addressing societal challenges such as climate action, sustainability and social justice? The University of Glasgow (UoG) is ranked 13th in the world for impact, one of four UK institutions in the top 25, (THE, 2024). This paper introduces the Curriculum for Life (C4L) as the UoG’s programmatic response as a civic university to societal challenges. C4L is a pioneering suite of courses, designed to be meaningfully research-based (Healey, 2005). They will enable students to engage with societal challenges, learning that fosters creativity and problem solving, learning that develops skills for the future, recognising learning that is gained through experience as well as through formal classroom environments, and that allows all students to experience learning beyond their chosen discipline in a way that fosters continuing, lifelong development. All C4L courses are unified by programmatic aims and outcomes: IDEA. To qualify, courses must offer ‘Interaction’ across disciplines,’ Disrupt’ ways of learning and knowing, ‘Enhance’ awareness of self, community and positionality and ‘Apply’ learning to confront societal challenges. Taking advantage of ‘space’ in the pre-honour’s curriculum, we believe that C4L will also help students transition from school/College, through pre-honours, into successful honours learning towards graduation. Our aim was to develop an innovative suite of C4L courses that attract colleagues keen to inject joyfulness into teaching that does not need to service a discipline or learning trajectory (for example, a route into honours). In the paper we outline the ‘enhanced’ care taken with colleagues, in helping them create a C4L course and develop a new community of learning practice. We also consider the challenges in bringing students with us, into new forms of action-oriented pedagogy. All C4L courses for example will be badged with embedded ‘characteristics’ that will help students anchor their development in work-ready skills while reinforcing their identity as Glasgow students. This paper covers more than ‘how’ we are innovating and enacting curriculum transformation at UoG, but also unpacks our ‘journey so far’. The cultural shift required to work across traditionally siloed areas of responsibility, and around ancient bureaucracies and structures has not been straight forwards. We therefore aim to outline and share the ways in which we are working, in embodied and virtual ways to realise our vision for C4L at the University of Glasgow.
Authors: Edson Ferrie, Jo, Ross, Duncan
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7055128934
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