The first treatment for the stakeholder groups was to reduce any resistance to the program and showcase its benefits, so there would be both buy-in and motivation to participate. EnhanceEdu did this through the introduction of the TPO and the stu-dent orientation as well as the principals’ meeting and Open Day for management.
Rogers’ theory of diffusion of innovation principles was used, as seen in the Key Re-sults chapter.
As seen in the Review of Literature chapter, the four categories of change strate-gies (Borrego & Henderson, 2014) apply to both individuals and organizations (en-vironments and structures); see Figure 2.6, redrawn as Figure 6.10.
6.4.1 Four categories of change strategies
Here I reflect on our TTP and student training programs and processes in infor-mation technology education from the perspective of the four categories of change strategies.
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Figure 6.10. Four categories of change strategies (adapted from Borrego & Henderson, 2014)
My approach to viewing the problem both from a systems perspective and from an individual or group perspective helped me in devising several strategies to sup-port change at multiple levels. This system view of the problem and the approaches for addressing the parts of the problem helped EnhanceEdu tightly integrate our story and interventions. I saw research spanning multiple categories as an important direction for future research, in accordance with Borrego and Henderson (2014).
When viewed using the four-categories lens, EnhanceEdu work spans multiple change strategies and multiple perspectives and categories. The strategies adopted in each of the categories were as follows (Figure 6.11).
Category I. Prescribed/individual.
In this category, the change strategies of implementation and diffusion are sug-gested. EnhanceEdu used the implementation of teacher training on curriculum and pedagogy in the TTP for faculty as our change strategy for this category. The change agent (the EnhanceEdu training team and mentors) helped the faculty learn the new
137 teaching conceptions and practices, learning the IT and other content, through LBD.
EnhanceEdu solution aligns as a best practice developed and evaluated in line with Fixsen et al., 2005.
Figure 6.11. EnhanceEdu training programs mapped to the four categories of change strate-gies. (adapted from Borrego & Henderson, 2014)
Diffusion is another strategy within the same category. As these trained teachers carried this information back to their colleges and other social groups, their own per-sonal enthusiasm and confidence in this new program and these practices spread to other teachers, who then signed up for subsequent training programs. This message spread by word of mouth and helped attract more teachers from their own and other colleges to the next TTPs. The diffusion strategy helped through more teachers sign-ing up for later sessions of teacher trainsign-ing.
Category II. Individual/emergent - Developing reflective teachers.
By design, the TTP had rubrics for faculty self-evaluation and reflection and for when mentors gave feedback on their daily tasks. Thus, the teachers would have an oppor-tunity for praxis and reflection to help improve their practice when in the training
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program itself. The faculty that participated in a single course of training was grouped together as a community. They not only reached out to EnhanceEdu for help and support but also to one another as part of the faculty learning community. The change strategy in this case is developing reflecting teachers using faculty learning com-munities. Further, when they were back in their own institutions, and when they were supporting students in learning and were mentoring them, they worked to improve their practice on a daily basis through further reflection. Thus, many faculty cohorts who went through TTP became part of a larger faculty learning community.
Category III. Environments/prescribed - Enacting policy.
Here the goal or the prescribed outcome was very clear—to offer the CIT as an en-richment course to the students. This was an implementation strategy at the organiza-tional level, where new environmental features encouraged new teaching concepts and practices, with the support of management and administration. Implementation was chosen as a change strategy in this category. Here the view by Fixsen et al. (2005) on implementation is valid for EnhanceEdu and for the stakeholders, who were held accountable through reporting and visits and observing through Moodle, as seen in Chapter 4 and in PIII and PVI. Fixsen et al. (2005) posit that what is needed is an
“implementation perspective on innovation—an approach that views post-adoption events as crucial and focuses on the actions of those who convert it into practice as the key to success or failure.”
Category IV. Environment/emergent – Developing shared vision.
Here the clear example is that of EnhanceEdu, the research team itself. EnhanceEdu was first created with certain goals and a culture. The team members imbibed the ideas of taking ownership of its goals, of continuous improvement, of teaming for excellence and of a growth mindset; they did this so well that they empowered them-selves to create new principles and operate in a way that worked towards the shared vision and goals of EnhanceEdu, in the spirit of a learning organization.
EnhanceEdu took the systems perspective for our problem and worked with sev-eral important stakeholder groups to see how student learning would improve. The authors of the four categories of change strategies model (Henderson et al., 2011), state that “it is sensible to assume that employing multiple perspectives on change will lead to better results, but the fact remains that there is little empirical evidence or theory-based rationale to support or refine this assertion.”
EnhanceEdu’s work spanned the four categories of change strategies. Also, mul-tiple strategies of change within each category were considered. It was seen (with empirical evidence presented in the Results chapter) that a successful change in teacher instruction (from teacher-centric to learner-centric approaches), leads to
139 student learning improvement (through LBD, success in formative and summative tests, mastery learning [Bloom, 1968] and the obtaining of certification in IT).
Through this research, I claim that one of the key factors for facilitating change was employing multiple perspectives and strategies for change, engaging multiple stakeholder groups and keeping them all engaged and empowered, an approach that led to better results. I hope that this work has helped move forward the research on facilitating change in IT educational contexts by using multiple categories of change strategies.