Transforming higher education for critical thinking: catalysts and barriers in Kenya, Ghana and Botswana

• In Event: Reforming pedagogy to support the development of critical thinking skills: evidence from universities in Ghana, Kenya and Botswana

Proposal

The success of pedagogical interventions depends in large measure on the nature of their implementation. In the case of higher education, innovative reforms have to negotiate a range of complex factors, including governance structures, resources, workload models, institutional culture and academic identities (Ashwin 2009; Schendel forthcoming). While there many initiatives for enhancing teaching and learning in higher education underway across Africa, there is a significant lack of research on how they might best overcome the barriers and benefit from the catalysts.

This paper analyses the experiences of pedagogical reform in eight universities in Kenya, Ghana and Botswana, as part of the Pedagogies for Critical Thinking project. The paper focuses on the qualitative phase of the study, aiming to interpret the results of the critical thinking assessment and explain why some institutions progress more effectively, as well as providing broader insights into the environment for teaching and learning. The data comprised institutional documentation, interviews with lecturers, senior management and initiative coordinators, and focus groups with undergraduate students. The data was analysed using a combination of emergent themes and Trowler’s (2008) questions relating to institutional policy and institutional culture.

The paper starts by providing a portrait of the teaching and learning environment in the institutions in question, and of the implementation of the initiatives. While all of the interventions were in evidence, institutions had uneven implementation in terms of uptake across departments and lecturers, and in terms of continuity across time. In some cases there was adoption of surface practices without transformation of underlying principles, and in others a lack of alignment between the pedagogical approaches and forms of assessment, with a consequent undermining of the former.

The most important factors influencing implementation were found to be: first, governance of the intervention – its leadership, succession and rolling out across different departments, with a degree of path dependency in relation to the origin of the initiative; second, institutional cultures influenced by assumptions about teaching and learning ingrained throughout the education system, and reproduction of practices and discourses in departments through the recruitment of former students; and third, system logics and financial pressures that prevent long-term lecturer engagement.

Finally, the paper draws out implications of these findings for the sustainability and effectiveness of the interventions and institutions in question, and more broadly across the region. While lecturers, students and institutions almost universally endorse the goal of critical thinking, there are significant barriers in the way of effective change: attention at the institutional and national levels is needed to the material and symbolic conditions that will underpin successful transformation.

References

Ashwin, P. (2009). Analysing teaching-learning interactions in higher education: Accounting for structure and agency. London: Continuum.

Schendel, R. (in press) Understanding the relationship between institutional cultures and pedagogical change. In P. Ashwin and J. Case (eds) Higher Education Pathways: South African Undergraduate Education and the Public Good. Cape Town: African Minds.

Trowler, P. (2008) Cultures and Change in Higher Education. Theories and Practices. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author

• Tristan McCowan, University College London