(1681.pdf) ACADEMICS' CONCEPTIONS OF PEDAGOGICAL CHANGE AGENCY AND THE CHALLENGES OF ACTING AS A CHANGE AGENT IN THE FIELDS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

摘要

As the academics in universities are experiencing rapid and continuous change, skills for promotingpedagogical transformations on an organizational level are called for. Pedagogical transformations aretypically explored in the context of pedagogical training programmes targeted towards educating morepedagogically aware individuals. However, in most Finnish universities, especially in the fields ofscience and technology, no pedagogical training is required from the teaching faculty. In this study,pedagogical transformations are explored on a communal level through unofficial change agency.Change agents are pedagogically aware faculty members who act as brokers by establishing newmutually shared pedagogical concepts and practices between their academic and pedagogicalcommunities of practice. The aim of this study is to investigate how university academics definepedagogical change agency in the fields of science and technology, and what kinds of challenges arerelated to acting as a change agent. 13 university teachers from the fields of science and technologywere asked to describe change agency before participating to pedagogical change agencyprogramme in Spring 2011. The descriptions were compared to the model of brokering andcategorized with content analysis.