I’m studying for a doctorate in Education at the University of Lincoln. (Where I also work, in the Centre for Educational Research and Development.) If you’re only interested in my research diary, all those entries are categorised in “Research” So just click the link to “research” in the list on the right and you’ll see all those entries.
The main focus of my research is on the role of the educational development unit in the modern university in the UK. What do EDU’s do to achieve long term change? Are they forced to prioritise their work to achieve short term political, managerial and corporate objectives, such as increasing student retention, attracting more students to the university, or getting higher positions in newspaper “league tables”. If they do what effect might this have on their capability of building long term change? If they don’t, what strategies are they using – Staff development, institutional capacity building (and how is this being done), technology are all suspects in this area.
The blog is really my research journal, although I’ve decided to make it public in the hope that others with an interest in this area might a) gain something from reading it, and b) give me some feedback in the form of comments on my entries. I don’t really expect to get a massive readership!
But thanks for reading this far anyway.
1 response so far ↓
Claire Indans // March 11, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Hi Julian
Listened to the podcast re EDU and found it very interesting. I was not aware of the existence of EDU within Universities. I myself work in the area of ‘Quality’ (work based training) and have concerns regarding the value of teaching when compromised for the value of business/profit. Quality of teaching and professional practice appears to become lost, amid targets, retention, achievement, inspection, league tables, political aspects, accountability ect. Your research area is fascinating.