Changing Shared Work Practice : Developing Faculty and Administration Voices in Institutional Educational Technology Policy in South Korea

Clifford, Seanan and Cin, Melis (2022) Changing Shared Work Practice : Developing Faculty and Administration Voices in Institutional Educational Technology Policy in South Korea. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Institutional educational technology policies in HEIs can help or hinder the objectives of faculty and administration staff. In many national contexts, these policies typically result from a top-down unilateral canonical decision-making process and/or retroactive heuristic models of investigation. In the context of historically top-down institutional settings, research utilizing and advocating multilateral non-canonical approaches and more sociocultural models of investigation in institutional educational technology policy decision-making are novel. The aim of this thesis was to challenge the status quo and overcome tensions in institutional educational technology policy and practice concerning research and pedagogy object-oriented activity. To achieve this, five Korean faculty, seven international faculty and five administration staff from one university in South Korea participated in a 7-month long formative Change Laboratory research intervention supported by the theoretical framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory. Data were collected from the actual-empirical, historical, and modelling actions of the intervention. Findings show that the project allowed participants to both analyse existing practice and its contradictions, and to propose new models that might overcome the contradictions they had identified. Current institutional educational technology policy has created barriers of complexity, exclusion, impotence, obfuscation, division, disconnect, limitation, and incognizance in research and pedagogy object-oriented activity. For example, Research policy findings show problems concerning research activity information, horizontal support, vertical hierarchy, community, and collaboration. Pedagogy policy findings show problems of syllabi input, bi-lingual training, documentation, professional development, indoctrination, national mandated training videos, grading pages, and difficulties contacting international students. To resolve these barriers, intervention participants proposed 25 new institutional educational technology policies (13 for Research, 12 for Pedagogy), a new Research Homepage and a new International Faculty Portal which would lead to sustentation, support, inclusion, collaboration, community building, accommodation, and awareness. Findings further show that allowing a group of people to successfully redesign and co-construct their work practice leads to a stronger inter-cultural community, the realization of shared problems, empathy of others' activity and commitment to practical change. Reflecting on the process and experience, this thesis argues that this bottom-up multilateral non-canonical approach offers a more appropriate toolkit, systematic steps, and a safe democratic environment for change, resulting in new policies and practices which are more relational, democratic, practical, and meaningful. Along with the values of the intervention, concept development, participant empowerment, and institutional change, several challenging aspects such as participant recruitment, engagement, and process are discussed. While the findings are reflective of one particular context and may not be wholly transferable, the values and issues discussed contribute to literature on policy, decision making and governance in HE, ICT and change in HE, and the use of Change Laboratory interventions in HE research.