Advancing cultures of innovation

The change laboratory as an intervention to facilitate agency and collaborative sustainable development among teachers in higher education

Abstract

To cope with the rapidly changing Higher Education climate, teachers need the agency to act proactively to initiate and steer changes to meet their needs. The results of this study indicate that transformative agency emerges when teachers are given the opportunity to analyse, envision and redesign their practice collaboratively with the help of mediating conceptual tools. This has implications for academic development, suggesting that activities providing a ‘third space’ for discussion and criticism of current practices is needed to support the development of agency thus creating a culture of innovative practice.