Finding a Fulcrum: Positioning Ourselves to Leverage Change

Survey Distribution

Data collection began with a survey, developed in Survey Monkey and emailed to all subscribers of listservs maintained by the POD Network (POD) and Small College interest group of POD (SC POD). The email invitation provided a brief description of the research and a link to the survey. Institutional Review Board and consent information was provided up front, followed by several demographic questions about each respondent’s institution and experience in educational development. The body of the survey consisted of 6 different ranking tasks where respondents were asked to rank order sets of 8 attributes across 3 different contexts. All nondemographic questions on the survey required responses to encourage survey completion. At the end of the survey, we included an invitation to participate in a semistructured interview estimated to take up to one hour. In order to preserve anonymity, interview contact information was provided via a link to a separate Google form.

Survey Responses

We received 105 responses to the survey during the three week window in spring of 2017. In order to work with the most complete dataset, we opted to focus on surveys that were 100% complete, which left 83 survey responses to include in our data analysis. While this number of responses is lower than we had hoped, it is consistent with participation in similar studies (Kelley, Cruz, & Fire, 2017). The demographics of survey respondents are similar to what we know about the landscape of educational development (POD Network, 2016).

About half of the respondents were from public institutions while the other half were from private. The greatest proportion (47%) were from large institutions (7,000 or more students), with small institutions (1,000–4,000 students) represented by 37% of respondents. Half of all respondents indicated that their institutions had a liberal arts focus. While most respondents were from U.S. institutions, about 3.5% of respondents were in Canada. Nearly 75% of respondents described their appointment in the CTL as full time and approximately 19% of respondents described their appointments as halftime or less. More than half of respondents, 57.8%, were current or former directors of a CTL, with 20.5% identifying as associate or assistant directors and 21.7% indicating a different title, such as educational developer, coordinator, or consultant. Staff member or administrator was the most common contract role at 61%, with tenured or tenure track faculty representing 24% of the respondents, and 14.5% nontenure track faculty. About 72% of respondents identified as female and 28% as male. Number of years in current role at the CTL ranged from 3 months to 19 years, with an average of 4.2 years. As depicted in Figure 2, total experience working at a CTL ranged from 3 months to 24 years, with an average of 6.8 years.

Figure 2. Total Years of Experience as an Academic Developer

Survey Design

In order to best understand the points of reference informing participants’ responses to survey prompts and interview questions, we identified three common work contexts, established through previous studies as the places that developers spend the majority of time or that are critical to their work as change agents. These included consulting with individual faculty members, serving on campus wide committees, and meeting with one’s supervisor. In the survey, respondents ranked a list of educational developer attributes across each of the three contexts. For each context, survey respondents were asked to reflect on those attributes in two different ways: what they demonstrate and how they are perceived. We asked respondents to reflect on the attributes in those ways because our study evolves from consideration of meta competencies that might include both practices (what I do or demonstrate) and impression management (how I am perceived).

Survey construction was based on a combination of research on change leadership and change management with threshold concepts as an overarching framework. We began with a list of attributes described by Caldwell (2003) in a comparison of change leaders and change managers in a corporate setting. As Caldwell and others note, it can be difficult to pinpoint a fixed set of competencies that an effective change leader or manager possesses, but there are some common, overarching attributes that “characterize the roles of leading and managing change” (Caldwell, 2003, p. 285). Caldwell elsewhere names these attributes “meta competencies” (Caldwell, 2003, p. 135), which Cheetham and Chivers (1998) describe as “certain generic, high level competencies which appear to transcend other competencies [… and that] may either enhance other (more prosaic) competencies or may be important to their acquisition” (p. 268). We mapped Caldwell’s meta competencies and the threshold concepts explored by Timmermans (2014) onto established findings in the field of educational development to generate the lists included in the current study (Table 1).

Survey Analysis

We analyzed survey responses for frequency of attribute rankings for each prompt presented to respondents, looking for general trends with attention to the top three rankings for each prompt. The two lowest ranked attributes were also noted. We hypothesized respondents would report that the attributes a developer needs to demonstrate would differ depending on context and that responses to the prompt “it is most important for me to be seen as …” would similarly vary across contexts. Table 2 provides a summary of the three highest ranked responses to each prompt for each context. Survey responses supported our hypotheses and revealed some interesting trends.

For the prompt “it is important for me to demonstrate,” the highest ranking responses across all three contexts were “a scholarly or evidence based approach” and “openness to new ideas or perspectives.” Within the contexts of working on campus wide initiatives or with administrators/supervisors, “strategic or visionary thinking” was ranked highest, but was less significant when working with individual faculty. Being seen as credible and knowledgeable were indicated as important across all three contexts, while being seen as collaborative was important during one on one consultations and when working with others on campus wide initiatives. When working with administrators or direct supervisors, respondents indicated that being seen as a problem solver was important. As we had hypothesized, there were differences in the rankings across contexts, which the interviews helped us better understand.

Interview Design and Participants

Response to the invitation to participate in a semistructured interview was positive, with 37 volunteers (out of 105 total survey responses). All volunteers were based in the United States. We used a purposeful sampling approach to identify potential interview participants, accounting for characteristics such as institutional type, size, and geographic location. Our goal was to assemble a group (see Table 3) that would be as representative as possible within some specific parameters, including geographic and institutional diversity. Our interview volunteers self selected, which could certainly indicate a particular interest or self awareness that impacted their responses to our questions.

After developing interview questions informed by our survey analysis, we conducted the first interview together to assess effectiveness and then finalized the questions. In the interviews, we invited respondents to describe and reflect on a series of “memorable interactions” or “challenging situations” in different contexts before comparing and contrasting the “skills and strengths” they called on in each. Specifically, we primed them to consider their “one on one work with faculty,” their “involvement in campus wide initiatives (e.g., strategic planning, grant review)”, and “their relationship with [their] immediate supervisor.” Next, we asked them to describe why each example was memorable and “what lessons” they learned in that interaction. Finally, we asked them to compare or contrast their work “across these three areas,” including whether they approached each “similarly or differently,” whether they used “similar or different skills or strengths in each,” and whether they played “similar roles” in each type of scenario. Follow up questions or invitations to clarify or expand were offered at the discretion of the interviewer. Each interview was approximately 45–60 minutes long. The interviews were conducted and recorded via Zoom, and verbatim transcription of the audio recordings was provided by Rev.com, then checked for accuracy by the researchers.

We utilized a grounded theory approach (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2013) as we moved from interview transcripts to build a data structure that allowed us to consider and compare emergent themes and concepts relative to the literature. We mapped relevant dialogue first onto our lists of change leader and change manager attributes, and then onto Timmermans’ threshold concepts for educational developers. Next, we compared results and looked for common patterns and themes within and between each framework to see which addressed aspects of our research questions. This iterative process, where each researcher checked interpretations and coding against each other, enabled us to ensure rigor as we generated emergent themes.

Navigating Change

Before focusing on the meta competencies, it is important to consider how our participants described the dynamic nature of their work context—or, more accurately, the multiple contexts they inhabit at their institutions. Interviewees described both their position and their work as involving movement, whether they were the ones moving across the institutional landscape, or whether they were supporting individual faculty or a committee in a “journey” toward pedagogical change.

When describing their work with individuals, our participants frequently turned to travel metaphors, alternatively describing instructors as on a “journey” (Kelly) or being “really at sea” (Judith), “exploring” ideas and assumptions with them, or emphasizing the importance of being perceived “not as someone coming in to tell them what to do, but as someone who really cares with them to go on this journey” (Charlotte). Participants also used travel metaphors to describe other aspects of their work, at times paradoxically, as Kelly remarked both that it is “very interesting for me to navigate a lot of the spaces around here,” but also that “one of the difficult parts of this work is to get people to understand that you’re evolving and growing and for them to kind of come with you on that journey.” Judith reflected that at times this movement felt steady but sluggish, like “inching along by my toes.” Metaphors of movement were common, whether working with individual faculty, helping groups “get momentum going […] at the institutional level—to be an initiative” (Anna), or, importantly, contributing perspectives that help make those initiatives effective: “you can’t let that ship leave the harbor without someone from the center saying ‘Whoa, wait a minute, have you looked at any of the literature on this?’” (Kelly).

Overall, most participants described navigation in positive terms: Helping individuals move along on their teaching journeys led to memorable moments that helped interviewees find meaning and purpose. Using their skills and knowledge to help facilitate broader change was similarly connected to a larger sense of purpose, and being “that voice or—that person that can … see the bigger picture and pull it together for people” (Elizabeth). Moving between allowed her to try and “find ways to help everybody, for what they need,” while also recognizing that stakeholders may have needs that are “often very different,” and often “don’t know how to name what it is they want.” (Elizabeth).

Defining the Core

Although finding ways to help “everybody” have unspecified needs met might seem to require mind reading, our analysis of the interviews reveals that respondents described a set of meta competencies that align with Timmermans’ (2014) study of threshold concepts in educational development. When explaining what worked within and across contexts, each interviewee touched on Timmermans’ “core ways of knowing and being” (2014, p. 310), which include collaborating and building relationships, adapting a scholarly approach, communicating effectively, understanding and adapting to context, and reflection—threshold concepts that also function as meta competencies. Our participants were not asked specifically to address Timmermans’ framework; however, their accounts confirm the role that meta competencies play in their work, as illustrated in the following representative quotes:

When comparing different aspects of their work, participants revealed these meta competencies each include subsets of interconnected knowledge, skills and attitudes that they draw on in a range of settings. As they navigate, developers carry knowledge and skills across the contexts of one on one, committee work, and conversations with supervisors, calling upon, for example, knowledge about teaching, learning, the faculty perspective, the student experience, or the inner workings of the institution to inform their contributions to committee efforts and campus wide initiatives. Participants relied on these meta competencies when helping individual faculty find “the tools they need” to build capacity in line with institutional priorities (Elizabeth), and also when engaging in organizational development to represent “the wider voice of the faculty …[through] the lens of what we were able to see faculty were struggling with” (Kelly) in campus wide discussions of larger institutional projects.

Interestingly, as our respondents described using these meta competencies across campus contexts, they revealed that skillsets essential for individual consultations became strategic when employed outside of one on one scenarios. For example, a subset of communication skills, listening, was described by most as crucial to consultations and also to group settings as a way to build rapport or as an important first step to problem framing. Many also explained that for developers, listening “is a strategic act” (Lynn). Active listening allows developers to “hear the subtext” (Alex), to determine “how to frame things so they will be well received” (Anna), and to “listen for the question behind the question” (Lynn) in order to understand the politics or values influencing what is being communicated explicitly or implicitly. Interviewees often described these meta competencies in ways that were both tactical and strategic—that is, as both essential in their daily work, and, when performed with a level of self awareness, intention, and purpose, also strategic for facilitating change at different levels of the organization. Similarly, the interview process revealed that ongoing reflection, like listening, was essential, and during the interviews, became “meta reflection” (Brown, D’Emidio Caston, & Benard, 2001) described in the literature as a meta process or kind of “double loop learning” (Argyris, 1976) where focus expands beyond content to consider the dynamics of our experiences, relationships, and basic operating assumptions.

Acting as a Lever for Change

As they described different scenarios from the micro to the macrolevel, participants identified meta competencies necessary for facilitating change in individuals, groups and systems (similar to Timmermans, 2014), including understanding their position, assessing the terrain, and determining how to represent perspectives while remaining a “neutral” lever for individual or institutional change. Through the meta reflection of the interview experience, participants described how positioning and impression management were key to their ability to act, particularly as they were increasingly involved in organizational development: As developers, they had to decide where best to place themselves in order to get the most purchase or to determine the load and effort necessary to help move toward the desired change. Identifying the fulcrum for change, participants suggested, allowed them to recognize when they themselves were that fulcrum as well as when they were playing a more active role as a lever, both of which enabled productive collaboration, agency, and movement.