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Research on change efforts in higher education highlights the importance of change teams having sufficient authority to bring about the change they envision. This paper employs an activity-theoretical framework for organizational change known as expansive learning, along with theory on agency and intersectional power, to examine how faculty exhibited change agency in dialogue in observational data from an engineering department undergoing a major reform project. We analyzed discourse from audio-recorded faculty meetings and workshops within this six-year change project to characterize change agency in talk. Findings highlight the importance of meeting stakeholders where they are, acknowledging and legitimizing their concerns, sharing agency with them, articulating potential control, and inviting them into the effort in ways that suggest ownership. This study extends previous work on expansive learning by illuminating discursive practices that can further joint object-oriented activity in ways that foster stakeholder agency.
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The consequential agency of faculty seeking to make departmental change
Over the past decade, much attention has focused on change-making efforts, especially those funded by the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments program. We bring together theory on agency and intersectional power to investigate a research question: • How and over what/whom do faculty engaged in departmental change efforts express agency, with attention to structural, cultural, normative, and interpersonal power relations? We draw upon recordings of faculty meetings and interviews across multiple change teams and years to characterize consequential change agency. Analysis of these highlights how accounts of contentious events reveals power dynamics at play, and ways those in power prevent or promote change. We argue that key elements of change agency include meeting others where they are, sharing agency with them (“we”), using potential control verbs (can, could, might, etc.), acknowledging their concerns, and inviting them into the effort in ways that suggest ownership.
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- PAR ID:
- 10385861
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exhibition
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-7
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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