Innovation of Education at Higher Education Institutions: The Contribution of Centres of Excellence for Teaching and Learning

    Research output: ThesisPhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT

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    Abstract

    Centres of Excellence for Teaching and Learning (CETL) aim to support the innovation in teaching and learning activities in higher education institutions. These centres can be defined as innovation hubs that engage in improvement and development of teaching skills, the research-based development of educational innovations and the dissemination of educational innovations and knowledge in their higher education institutions. In Europe, several countries – including the Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom – provided funding to higher education institutions to establish CETLs. It was expected that these centres and their excellent educational innovations would stimulate large-scale changes in education at institutional and national levels.
    The thesis investigates the contribution of CETLs to educational change at their host institutions. It approaches the CETLs and their change logic from three perspectives. First, it investigates how the CETLs have been designed and embedded in their institutions and how this has affected their ability to reach out and engage teachers in their work. Second, it analyses how teachers have used the educational innovations of the CETLs and how factors such as teacher motivation, the dissemination activities of the CETL and institutional support have influenced this. Third, it investigated the extent to which CETLs were able to stimulate organisational learning processes in higher education institutions leading to large-scale educational change. This analysis compared two types of CETLs and focused in particular on which organisational factors facilitated or hindered organisational learning processes.
    The results show that CETL were able to raise awareness of teaching and learning activities and stimulated changes of teaching practice among some of the participating teachers or communities of practice. However, large-scale changes of education were rarely realised as there were only a few organisational structures to promote educational innovations within collective sense-making processes in the universities.
    Original languageEnglish
    QualificationDoctor of Philosophy
    Awarding Institution
    • University of Twente
    Supervisors/Advisors
    • van der Meulen, Barend Jan Rutger, Supervisor
    • Schildkamp, Kim, Supervisor
    Award date7 Dec 2023
    Place of PublicationEnschede
    Publisher
    Print ISBNs978-90-365-5918-8
    Electronic ISBNs978-90-365-5919-5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2023

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