by Alexandra Mihai, Maastricht University, The Netherlands.
Centres for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) are gaining visibility in the higher education (HE) landscape as key actors that support universities in providing high-quality education and fostering a culture that values teaching and learning. In our article “Understanding the complexity of centers for teaching and learning: introducing a four‑dimensional model”, my co-authors Amber Dailey-Hebert, Simon Beausaert and I tried to distil the very rich data gathered through interviewing 25 CTL Directors from higher education institutions across the USA into an integrative model that we hope will support CTL leaders, educational developers and researchers to better understand the complexity of CTLs and their evolving roles in the HE landscape.
In the past decade, we have noticed important changes in the structure and positioning of CTLs, through mergers and integration with other units, which have implications at an institutional level. During the Covid-19 pandemic but also throughout the latest wave of engagement with GenAI, CTLs assumed a leadership role to ensure the quality of the education process by supporting faculty to adapt their teaching. Given all these changes and challenges, CTLs have increasingly emerged from the fringes of the academic landscape by taking up roles that go beyond the field of educational development and into the broader area of organisational development. It is therefore more important than ever to analyse them through a more holistic lens, by capturing not only their activities but also their position and roles within the university governance systems.
The model that we developed has four dimensions: (1) governance, (2) identity, (3) social capital and (4) activities.
In terms of governance, maintaining the balance between being aligned with the institutional vision while still being perceived as a safe space for faculty is one of the main goals of a CTL and can be a sensitive issue. This point becomes more salient as CTLs are more deeply involved in the educational policy-making space and can lead to being perceived as “an arm of the administration.”
Some of the ways CTLs’ identity has been described in our study are: “a safe space for faculty”, “the pedagogical conscience of the university”, “not just a physical space where people come together, but an intellectual and social space”. Beside their “traditional” mission to support and strengthen teaching, we do notice that CTLs are increasingly playing the role of change agent at an institutional level, striving to influence organisational culture, by creating an environment where “people value talking about teaching”.
CTLs act as hubs in the university ecosystem with a clear overview of who does what on campus and usually being well-connected to other actors. Social capital plays a very important role in CTLs’ work, as they actively engage in knowledge sharing within and across institutions. Internally, CTLs collaborate regularly with educational technology teams, library, student-oriented services and college-based teaching and learning units. CTL Directors and staff are also active in various external networks such as the Professional and Organisational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education.
It was interesting to explore how CTLs engage in a variety of activities that go beyond educational development. They are increasingly involved in assessing the quality of their own activities and of the educational practices at the university level. Not all CTLs have research within their scope, but the CTLs that are active in research see this as a way to “support teaching and learning from a scholarly perspective”. Research can also be connected to the evaluation of teaching practices Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and seen as a way to communicate CTL work and gain visibility nationally and internationally.
As CTLs do not operate in a vacuum, we need to consider the underlying aspect of the organisational context. The way CTLs are positioned, the activities they choose to offer, relations with other actors, and their very identity are heavily influenced by the culture of their respective institution. Our research has shown that CTLs are being increasingly proactive in interacting with this culture and even attempting to change it by making teaching a central focus, while enabling staff and students to learn more effectively.
While CTLs have become more present and active within the university ecosystem, it will be interesting to observe whether and how they are able to maintain their position and impact in a highly volatile HE landscape. In the context of rash political decisions, threats of budget cuts and an increasingly burned out faculty, CTLs will have to renegotiate their roles and reshape their identity to safeguard the quality of education and the importance of teaching and learning.
Editor’s note: Alexandra will lead a workshop at the pre-conference event, Maximizing the Impact of Centres for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Institutions, on 17 June in Leuven, Belgium.
Author
Alexandra Mihai, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
