In a provocative article in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Thomas Docherty argues that the Higher Education Academy is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy that, directly contrary to its ambitions, drives quality down to the lowest common denominator. In its place, he extols the virtues of the apprentice model of instruction, in which one generation imparts its expertise to the next.
A couple of paradoxes occur to me. First, while Prof Docherty seems uncomfortable with modern developments in higher education learning and teaching, his proposed solution falls neatly within John Seely Brown’s cognitive apprenticeship model, or even Etienne Wenger’s Community of Practice, with the novice moving centripetally towards a community’s centre. Moreover, while we all had excellent lecturers when we were undergraduates, we all had some pretty dreadful ones too, which suggests that the previous system for instruction was not all good.
The HEA is well conceived in the sense that it allows for a ‘quality stamp’ for those of us who came to H.E. teaching via the degree/Master’s/PhD route, without any formal training in how to teach. However, Prof Docherty raises a legitimate concern. I was recently drafting competencies for an academic role, and was told by someone more experienced in the field (note the expert/apprentice model) that when you devise competencies, people perform to the competencies but then stop. So, the HEA does have a problem in the sense that by defining competent performance in H.E. teaching it may also unintentionally limit it, and hence the pursuit of best practice may indeed be dragged down to the lowest common denominator.
How do we measure good performance in H.E. teaching without limiting it? Answers on a tapestry, please.
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