Implementing an institution-wide pedagogical change in an Israeli college: The AWpack advising system in support of academic writing

Abstract

Universities and colleges around the globe struggle to find ways to improve students’ academic writing skills. With the goal of tackling students’ writing skills on an institutional level, we set out on a 6-year journey to seek ways of enhancing the teaching of academic writing on a wide selection of courses. Here we describe and analyze the challenges entailed in implementing an intervention in a teachers’ college in Israel. We found that as the implementation process evolved, a shift from a top-down approach to a bottom-up approach resolved three different challenges: (a) The management challenge, which comes into play when leading any type of change; (b) The challenges specific to the academic work environment; and (c) The challenges of providing effective pedagogical tools for the implementation of the change. The one-on-one advising system, constituting the final stage of the process brings about the desirable change in broader terms. Based on the Tpack model, we offer AWpack (Academic Writing—pedagogical and content knowledge) as a strategy for implementing an institutional pedagogic change in the case of academic writing. Moreover, we show that as a working strategy within an academic institution it may facilitate other sought-after pedagogic changes.

Keywords

Pedagogical change academic skills higher education organizational culture academic writing professional development

Introduction

Universities and colleges around the globe struggle to find ways to improve students’ writing skills (Barnhisel et al., 2012; Griffin, 2013; Prestong, 2015; Seaboyer and Barnett, 2018), an effort that “[c]rosses all disciplines and educational levels” (Defazio et al., 2010: p. 34). One possible solution seems simple: provide academic writing courses. This path is chosen by most universities and colleges in Israel. However, such courses are not sufficient: “It is impossible for any writing course – including first-year composition – to prepare students for all the writing they will need to do, and do well, in college” (National Council of Teachers of English, 2013). Improving students’ writing requires a systematic endeavor, a wide engagement with writing across the curriculum (WAC) or writing in the discipline (WID) (e.g., Fung, 2017; Kolb et al., 2013; Nielsen, 2021; Vengadasalam, 2020). “The fundamental premise of WAC is that students learn writing best through discipline-specific instruction” (Zemliansky and Berry, 2017). Changing the way students approach writing within disciplinary courses, entails changing the teaching of such courses. At the core of the WAC approach lies the understanding that “Writing has been recognized increasingly as significant and invaluable in supporting reading, subject knowledge development, and critical thinking and as essential to success in education across the disciplines, civic life, and career development” (Nielsen, 2021: 753; see also Stock, 1986). Thus, resolving the problem of academic writing meant addressing the management problem of generating change in teaching on a system-wide scale.

Currently, we (the authors) serve as the Writing Program Coordinator and as Rector, respectively, in a leading teacher-education college.¹ As such, our mission was to effect a system-wide pedagogical change in our institution. We believed that just as it takes a proverbial “village” to raise a child, it would take the combined effort of the entire faculty to “raise” proficient writers. But how could we motivate our colleagues to cooperate? Moreover, even if they all agreed about students’ needs, would they then be willing and able to change their own teaching methods? The focus of these questions coincides with what Carbone and others referred to as “[b]arriers to improvement of teaching” (2019: p. 1356). As Ito and Takeuchi (2021) demonstrate, leading a pedagogical change in teaching methods may be impeded by a great variety of factors, including teachers’ lack of knowledge, reluctance to invest the time and effort in the change, or refusal to allot class time to anything that falls outside the scope of the discipline. Thus, one may wonder whether it is possible at all to lead such a change.

Over the span of 6 years, we used a variety of approaches in the effort to promote a change in the way academic writing is incorporated into as many courses as possible. This proved a complex task. Changing the way instructors approach writing involved more than simply asking them to do so and offering them useful tips. As Jones (2014) argues, any large-scale methodical change in an organization creates conflicting viewpoints. When the organization is an academic institution additional challenges ensue (e.g., Papastephanou, 2020; Shih and Wang, 2021). As we shall demonstrate, it was precisely this multidimensional conflict of perspectives and interests that required most of our attention while implementing the desired systematic pedagogical change.

In this article, we describe the evolution of our approach to leading the change, which began with the use of top-down strategies, among them plenary expert talks and collaborative activities such as peer-led workshops, and evolved to include a bottom-up strategy, which took the form of individually tailored, one-on-one counseling. Based on our analysis of this process of change, we offer a helpful strategy, which can be used in academic institutions to implement various types of pedagogical changes. Based on the Tpack model suggested by Thomas et al. (2013), this advising system promotes what we term AWpack: Academic Writing, pedagogical and content knowledge. We offer Academic writing in pedagogical and content knowledge (AWpack) as a strategy for implementing an institutional pedagogic change in the case of academic writing. Moreover, we show that as a working strategy within an academic institution it may facilitate other sought-after pedagogic changes.

In the following sections, we describe and analyze the process of leading the change, concluding with the suggested strategy. Importantly, in presenting AWpack here, we do not offer specific tools for WAC or WID, but rather exemplify a strategy for implementing a system-wide pedagogic change in academic institutions.

Theoretical background: Two focal points in leading a pedagogical change

Effecting large-scale, long-term change in any institution involves multiple challenges (Al-Haddad and Kotnour, 2015; Bergman, 2016; Clarence, 2012; Van Schalkwyk, 2010). The following section reviews two key challenges considered in the research literature: that of motivating and effecting change in any hierarchical institution, and the challenge of providing teaching tools for the pedagogical goal of improving students’ writing proficiency.

The first challenge pertains to motivating and advancing a change in the work habits of the employees. A manager wishing to promote a new agenda should focus on the goals, clarify the desirable outcomes, and create mechanisms for purposeful peer interactions (Fullan, 2011; see also Bammer, 2015). Motivating employees to embrace change requires overcoming their initial resistance to altering their habits, by clearly demonstrating that attaining the objectives is a common interest, which is also the underlying rationale for the change. According to Fullan (2011), purposeful interaction works when the values of the organization mesh with those of individuals, when information and knowledge about effective practices are widely and openly shared, and when monitoring mechanisms direct the actions. A successful implementation of the change includes providing employees with practical and efficient tools.

All components of the general managerial challenge are necessary to yield change. Employees who identify with the need for change but lack tools for its implementation are likely to become frustrated. Similarly, employees who are taught how to change their routines, but who do not identify with the goals of or rationale for the change, may become resentful and seek ways to avoid or bypass the new agenda.

Thus, on top of attempting to involve staff in the logic of the new agenda, management should also provide them with effective tools with which to implement the change in their fields of activity (Fullan, 2009). In our case, this meant pedagogical tools for improving students’ WAC (see Harper and Orr-Vered, 2017; Sullivan, 2009). Beyond attending to “[t]he obvious difference between assigning writing and teaching writing” (Condon and Rutz, 2012), faculty members teaching courses in a particular discipline need simple and pragmatic tools to incorporate teaching of writing in their classes. Given that not all faculty members are comfortable with their own academic writing skills, the pedagogical introduction of the new agenda must tackle any potential opposition toward the explicit teaching of writing (Bazerman, 2014). In the context of higher education, faculty members’ understanding of what constitutes good academic writing differs according to the particular discipline being taught (Barnhisel et al., 2012) and hence the guidance offered to the faculty members had to be adapted both to the disciplines and to the various course formats, for example, workshop-oriented courses in small classes, large-scale introductory courses, or courses that combine lectures with online teaching. Clearly, introducing elements of academic writing in an Introduction to Philosophy of Education course taught in an auditorium before an audience of one hundred students requires a different approach than that which is called for when teaching a class on kindergarten curriculum to 25 students. All this requires a supportive infrastructure for faculty members, as they struggle to adapt their teaching to the pedagogy of WAC (Condon and Rutz, 2012). The creation of such a supportive infrastructure was made viable by treating WAC as a catalyst for institutional change (Condon and Rutz, 2012; Marshall et al., 2011).

In the context of a teacher-education program, the integration of writing instruction into discipline-specific courses as part of the WAC initiative required paying careful attention to the specific pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) associated with developing writing skills (Harper and Orr-Vered, 2017). To this end, writing skills need to be taught directly and explicitly in the context of the discipline-specific courses, while providing the learners with important metacognitive knowledge, such as formal terminology for discussing the skills, awareness of the need to use the skills in particular circumstances, and the ability to apply them properly (Weinberger, 2018b; Segev-Miller, 2004).

The context of the study

The system-wide change analyzed here began in the Faculty of Education at a leading teacher-education college in Israel and was expanded to include the entire college 5 years later. The college consists of four faculties (Education, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Science and Mathematics, and Arts), and offers more than 30 undergraduate and graduate programs (B.Ed.; M.Ed.; M.Teach; M.A.A.T; and Teaching Certificate). The student body includes around 5500 students, taught by a core teaching staff of approximately 450 members.

The improvement of academic writing, at the heart of the new WAC/WID agenda, was broadly defined to include aspects of reading, as well as other communication proficiencies that support writing. It therefore focused on clarity and coherence, and the accurate use of language (for a detailed description, see Weinberger, 2018a). Previous studies, which analyzed the characteristics of a new agenda’s implementation process based on the perspectives of students and lecturers, highlighted the extent to which their needs were addressed, as well as the requirements for future action (Weinberger, 2018a, 2018b). The positive stances of both groups toward the new agenda indicated that they welcomed the change and deemed it important. However, said studies also found that the implementation of the change was relatively minimal, and concluded that, in addition to their willingness to apply a new agenda, instructors needed specific pedagogical content and metacognitive knowledge to successfully integrate deep pedagogical changes in their students’ learning experience (Weinberger, 2018b; for a similar attempt regarding a different pedagogic theme, see Shih and Wang, 2021). These insights called into question our initial strategies for leading the change and precipitated some of the evolutionary changes described below.

Materials and methods

The research presented below is an action research (Stringer, 2008), conducted during a 6 years wide-ranging intervention, in a large teacher-education college in Israel. The stages of work presented below follow the outlines of an action research:

1. Identifying the problem—the inadequacy of students’ written work.

2. Deciding to act—the Dean of Faculty of Education decided to address the problem.

3. Planning the action—the Dean consulted with many teachers from the Faculty of Education in a series of meetings, in order to plan the intervention and set precise goals.

4. Taking action—the implementation of the new agenda (see Discussion).

5. Research and further action—the leaders of the new agenda, who are also the researchers,² reviewed the outcomes of that year’s intervention over a period of 6 years and fine-tuned the plan accordingly. During the 6 years of the intervention, yearly pauses were made for analysis and reflective examination of the previous phase, reaching conclusions, and adjusting the plan for the following year. This part of the research is the focal point of the results and discussion sections below.

Actions were taking place in collaboration with the leading partners of the agenda, aiming to refine their own practices and expand their professional knowledge, by creating a model for a wide range of pedagogical changes. Therefore, the study could contribute to the theoretical as well as the practical aspects of leading pedagogical changes. The researchers’ involvement in leading the intervention facilitated their understanding of the data collected at each stage.

Data collection

Over the 6 years of the intervention process, data were gathered systematically, by means of document analysis from several written sources, such as meeting protocols, decision summaries, emails, faculty members’ written reflections and comments, and seminar booklets. These documents were organized chronologically prior to the analysis process.

Data analysis

Data analysis included a combination of qualitative data analysis methods, a theoretical literature review, and constant comparison between researchers about the interpretation of the data. Through a process of a systematic data analysis collected in the field and the interpretation of the date, a clear rationale was constructed.

The interpretive content analysis was conducted in stages, while following the intervention from within. First, an intuitive process of bottom-up coding was used (Bowen, 2009). Main insights were drawn using an emic approach (Denzin and Lincoln, 2002), based on the theoretical sensitivity of the researchers (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Next, the main themes were mapped and categorized to find connections that could define the investigated components in the study: Defining the goals, top-down implementation attempt, bottom-up implementation attempt, and AWpack strategy development. Throughout the process of gathering and analyzing the data, we often consulted with our colleagues who were involved in implementing the new agenda. Their points of view provided us with important feedback, helping us to fine-tune our understanding. The system of conceptualizations that has been developed reflected both the researchers’ and the participants’ perceptions regarding the research goals and the methods of action. The insights that emerged from the theoretical saturation process were anchored in a certain place, time, and culture where the events took place (Glaser, 1978).

The deep involvement of the researchers in leading the new agenda contributed to the authenticity of the analysis.

Ethics

The information was gathered anonymously. There was no personal identification of the respondents during the analysis phase nor during the writing of this paper.

Results: A description of the intervention

This section chronologically overviews the evolution of the intervention program, describing the developments in our understanding and practice, according to the five stages of the action research (see materials and methods).

Year 1: Defining our goals: From corridor talk to formal discussion

Teachers in academia are typically experts in the subject matter of the courses they teach (Fredman and Doughney, 2012); hence, their engagement with the aspects pertaining to their discipline, such as covering key points in the material and ensuring learners’ understanding, easily overshadow the need to address the form and quality of their students’ written work. Thus, students who learn the general principles of academic writing in a designated writing class may be left to their own devices in applying these principles in the new context of discipline-specific courses. Because students might lack the metacognitive skill required for transferring skills from one domain to another, it is the responsibility of the discipline-expert faculty members to address, in their teaching routines, the subject of their students’ written work. With this understanding and identification of the problem, we began the system-wide change, by relating to the faculty members’ prevalent complaint about the level of students’ course work.

This consensus about students’ poor level of writing confirmed the need to act, which was then formalized in a series of staff seminars during one academic year (in 2013), initiated by the Dean of the Education Faculty (Weinberger, 2018a), who decided to take action and address the problem. During that year, faculty members led six work sessions (of 3–6 h each) in various settings: lectures, open talks, and round-table discussions in order to gather suggestions and plan the action accordingly. The participants included the chairs of all Faculty programs and departments, senior lecturers, pedagogical instructors, and academic writing instructors; the sessions were open to all interested academic faculty members. This format allowed the involvement of a wide range of faculty members and created a safe atmosphere, encouraging the expression of thoughts and concerns. One result of the open exchange was that some misconceptions about academic writing were addressed. Thus, for example, one department chair voiced her concern that standard academic writing would stifle students’ creativity. One of the academic writing instructors reassured her that the goal is not to make their writing technical and lifeless, but to ensure a well-argued and substantiated form of self-expression.

At the end of the year, participants agreed to set the topic of students’ academic writing as a main theme for the Education Faculty’s agenda. The general acceptance of the theme seemed to ground the Motivational aspect of the change. Thus, our focus shifted to the implementation of the new agenda. As many faculty members who supported the move lacked the practical tools to promote writing, we determined that the next step should be providing the appropriate pedagogical tools.

According to the agenda, all faculty members were expected to develop at least one method for improving students’ writing, which would coincide with the context and the goals of their discipline. An annual faculty seminar offered a variety of such methods. In the plenary lectures, the focus was on general aspects of the new agenda, and parallel sessions were then held to tackle specific implementation strategies suitable for different courses. Overall, the aim of this seminar was to share with members of the Education Faculty key elements of the new agenda and methods for its implementation, and to allow the discussion of controversial issues. During this first phase, we were mainly aware of the general management aspect of the challenge and focused on introducing new work habits, defining the features of the desired change, and motivating the lecturers. To a lesser degree, we attended to the pedagogical tools for improving students’ proficiencies, by suggesting general teaching methods, but without considering the particular context for their implementation.

Year 2: The simple top-down attempt

We next focused on the pedagogical aspect of the challenge, by providing faculty members with pedagogical tools for promoting students’ writing skills within the context of various courses. To address WAC/WID, a steering committee was appointed, and its members acted as advisors for each department in the Faculty of Education. This committee would also organize annual faculty seminars offering various tools for incorporating academic writing into courses.

The advisors’ work consisted mostly of introducing different aspects of academic writing during departmental meetings, suggesting practical tools, and addressing concerns. For example:

(1) To minimize various errors (grammatical, 2 spelling mistakes, typos) in students’ papers, they suggested encouraging students to have their own papers reviewed by peers before submission (on peer mentoring see Marino, 2020).

(2) To increase students’ interest in their writing assignments, they advised offering a choice of possible assignment topics.

(3) To avoid unfiltered writing, they advised allowing time for drafting and revisions.

Finally, to encourage active participation in the program and enable lateral learning, the advisors composed a list of useful tips suggested by other instructors in the meeting. The advisors provided their contact details for further questions. However, only one pedagogical instructor reached out concerning the phrasing of an assignment.

Additionally, one of the advisors offered an academic writing workshop for faculty members. The structure resembled that of a composition class, but the materials were thesis chapters or short articles written by the participating faculty members. Eight participants attended the first session, but attendance dwindled from one meeting to the next. Nevertheless, even those faculty members who attended only the first meeting became more engaged with the new agenda and reported a transformation in their approach to the subject of writing in their classes.

The second-year seminar focused on sharing several practices that were developed during the first year of the pilot and discussing their outcomes. The booklet for the seminar included theoretical material (e.g., the work plan of the new agenda and an opinion article on writing literacy in teacher-education settings), as well as practical suggestions of didactic principles for implementing the new agenda. Despite a general positive atmosphere, most of the staff remained uninterested and accepted the new agenda with passive indifference, as the findings of an internal study later indicated. Therefore, we began seeking new means by which to instigate the change.

Years 3 and 4: The simple bottom-up attempt

Toward the end of the second year of the program we decided to conduct a research of the action so that we can fine-tune the plan. Thus, an internal study examined the faculty members’ stance on assimilating academic writing in discipline-specific courses. Findings demonstrated faculty members’ increased awareness of and widespread support for the agenda, and they readily acknowledged its importance and necessity (Weinberger, 2018b). Their recognition of the need to improve students’ academic writing was encouraging. It again confirmed that the managerial part of this challenge had been met. Clearly, the faculty members were persuaded that this goal was a worthy one. However, the study also noted a crucial element of resistance. The direct incorporation of writing instruction into the various courses proved to be an academic “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard), or, rather NIMOC (Not In My Own Class): most faculty members agreed that students should be taught how to write, but they were not interested in advancing this goal themselves. The study demonstrated that this attitude stemmed from the faculty members’ confusion regarding the relevance of writing skills within the context of discipline-specific knowledge, and from the difficulties they encountered as they attempted to allocate time for writing instruction in the courses they were teaching. Additionally, faculty members confessed that they lacked the specific PCK required to teach academic writing in the context of their own field of expertise (Weinberger, 2018b).

In sum, the internal study showed that despite the faculty seminars, faculty members still lacked the PCK required to integrate academic writing instruction into their lessons. Thus, we discovered serious lacunae in our approach: the faculty members were still unwilling to take upon themselves the teaching of academic writing. As Wolsey et al. (2012) explain, “Teachers often have well-defined perceptions of what content knowledge is and how that knowledge should be conveyed. Sometimes these perceptions are tacit and hard to define” (p. 714). Consequently, teachers (or in this case, faculty members) may resist change and be reluctant to cooperate with a new agenda, if they perceive it as an external intrusion that threatens their sense of expertise or their academic freedom.

With this realization, we fine-tuned the plan by changing the rationale of the annual staff seminar. Instead of offering expert theoretical advice, we shifted to sharing successful practices, encouraging active participation. In the third yearly seminar, we attempted to present and disseminate, by a lateral sharing of strategies, various approaches and methods that already were being employed by the faculty, to integrate the instruction of academic writing in their courses. Assuming that faculty members could benefit from observing their colleagues, the seminar consisted of 15 presentations, in which faculty members proposed practical and original ways to develop students’ writing in content-specific classes. Each presentation was followed by a discussion on the applicability of the practice to the audience’s own classes.

The decision to base the seminar on presentations by colleagues targeted two goals. The first was to present various practical, down-to-earth, teaching methods that really work, in contrast to expert advice that may seem aloof or unrealistic. We likened this to the difference between watching a cooking TV show and tasting your neighbor’s dish, whereby the former may seem remote and impractical, while the latter exemplifies what you can achieve at home. While rendering the content more accessible, the seminar’s format served another purpose, which was to encourage faculty members’ active engagement in the proposition, by having them present the fruits of their labor to their peers. We wished to ensure maximal active participation, by having as many instructors as possible present their own techniques, thereby becoming more aware of what they themselves were doing, and by helping them tweak their own techniques in preparation for their presentations. Each of the 15 presenting faculty members received personal coaching sessions from their department’s academic writing advisor, to help prepare them for the task of presenting to their peers. This seminar was accompanied by a booklet that combined theoretical materials (opinion articles about plagiarism and about the responsibility of developing communication proficiencies in educational settings) and practical materials (the revised outlines of the presentations, serving as instructions for their application, and the steering committee’s proposal for detailed instruction in academic writing).

In the fourth-year seminar, we continued to further enhance both active participation and lateral sharing, by adding a practical session, which was open to all participants, in which they were asked to exchange strategies in a “speed-dating” format. All participants were asked to prepare a brief presentation for this session. In addition, a group of instructors were once again asked to present in a round-table format, closely coached by the members of the steering committee. The fourth-year booklet resembled the third-year booklet in including the outlines of the presentations, but a detailed document was added, detailing the principles and the relevant didactics for developing communication proficiencies.

The fourth year ended with a crisis like the one encountered 2 years earlier. We seemed to be working very hard to decipher the key step toward the anticipated solution but achieved very little. This called for further research. Another internal study, conducted toward the end of the fourth year, again confirmed our worries.

Year 5: Slow and steady wins the race: Academic writing in pedagogical and content knowledge (AWpack)

Whereas the previous internal study examined the attitudes of the faculty members toward academic writing, the new study targeted the attitudes of the students. The findings indicated that our efforts had not led the faculty members to make actual changes in their methods. Despite our efforts, the students still did not feel that they were receiving sufficient support and instruction in writing (Weinberger, 2018b). These results added to our own nagging suspicion that not only we but also the faculty members participating in the process were showing signs of exhaustion. They seemed to lose interest in the agenda. We felt despair: had we failed in our attempt to implement the desired change?

Our concerns were reminiscent of those expressed by Barnhisel et al. (2012), who—referring to conclusions drawn from a similar project conducted at Duquesne University—confessed that their intervention had failed. Although their instructors had been provided with “[s]uggestions and models of how nonwriting courses could include elements of process pedagogy,” as well as practical support via “[w]orkshops, presentations to new faculty members, and informal consultation,” at the end of their 6-year project, they concluded that there were still “[n]o signals that process pedagogy was spreading beyond the writing classes” (Barnhisel et al., 2012: p. 469). Fraser (2019) elaborated on the reasons for such failures. According to Fraser, academic staff members may resist changing their teaching routines because this requires them to develop new skills, taking a toll on their time and energy. What renders the extra work even less appealing is the risk of failure accompanied by criticism from colleagues and students alike. Thus, we were faced with the same sense of our colleagues’ indifference, reluctance toward changing their methods, and the prioritization of “students’ knowledge acquisition,” as described by Ito and Takeuchi (2021) in their study of a similar attempt for pedagogical change.

We readily acknowledged that although our current distribution strategy had reached its limits, students still needed help in improving their writing skills. Consequently, we decided to change our strategy and further fine-tune the plan. Instead of appealing to the faculty as a whole, we opted for one-on-one tutoring. We now aimed to develop specially designed teaching materials, tailored to each course. Based on the Tpack model suggested by Thomas et al. (2013), a set of teaching activities was developed for the in-depth implementation of writing pedagogy in the context of different types of content knowledge. The focus of this strategy, which we named AWpack (Academic Writing, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge), was on developing the PCK required to teach writing in the framework of an academic institution. Producing this content knowledge meant tailoring useful practices to the specific disciplines and defining explicit strategies for integrating writing education into a range of courses. Thus, the focus of this strategy was on the pedagogical aspect of leading the change. At the same time, the one-on-one approach and the tailoring of tools to address individual concerns helped reduce faculty members’ resistance to the change, thereby promoting the academic aspect of the model (so prominent an obstacle as described by Ito and Takeuchi, 2021).

The decision to embark upon the one-on-one AWpack intervention affected the structure of the steering committee. The committee members were no longer assigned as advisors to the departments but were designated as personal advisors to the faculty members who chose to participate in the AWpack program. In the selection of new committee members, we targeted faculty members who felt personally driven to help students and had experience in teaching academic writing as well as excellent social skills. The committee was newly defined as the AWpack team; the writing program administrator became the team leader, and the entire strategy changed. This entailed a budget shift from funding large-group workshops and study days, to compensating committee members on an hourly basis for the one-on-one tutorials.

Instead of offering a set of general strategies, each advisor would be matched with one teacher, to tailor together an element of academic writing enhancement that would align with the goals and methods of a particular discipline-specific course. The faculty members who participated in the AWpack program either volunteered or were referred, without coercion, by the chair of their department. The AWpack team leader made it clear that participation in the consultations should be presented as a bonus, never forced on any faculty member, nor framed as a corrective measure for faculty with poor student-evaluations. Furthermore, teachers who participated in the tutorials were encouraged to record the consequent changes in their teaching, as part of the section regarding promotion of excellence in teaching in their academic portfolios. Thus their academic promotion could benefit from the activity.

In preparation for the change of plan, the AWpack team defined a set of basic options for incorporating academic writing enhancements into the discipline-specific courses. These included:

(4) Assignments: the team could help construct or adjust various types of assignments that could help enhance academic writing, for example, a rolling, multistage task (Weinberger, 2018c).

(5) Class activities: personal or group writing assignments during class time (e.g., asking students to write short comparisons between a current lesson topic and a previous one).

(6) Teaching: using the topic of the lesson as an example of good academic writing (e.g., explicitly examining the form of the argument in a text on the topic) and directly clarifying assignment requirements.

(7) Documents: asking the participating faculty members to prepare a terminological lexicon on the lesson topic, or writing guidelines for studying the course.

These options later served as a point of reference for the AWpack team during the consultations.

Several general methods were employed in the AWpack processes. All of them included a preliminary meeting, during which the teacher introduced the course and shared the syllabus with the advisor. The preliminary meeting was an important component of the process, as it served not only to familiarize the advisor with the subject and methods of the course, but also to establish trust between the advisor and the advisee. The processes also included a second meeting, during which the AWpack advisor offered some direction for the integration of academic writing enhancement. Most processes continued to include several more meetings, email exchanges, and sometimes phone conversations, and included the preparation of course-specific tools.

This model of work emphasized the two aspects that were neglected by the previous years’ attempts: (a) the personal one-on-one aspect with the flexibility afforded by the voluntary nature of participation (Fullan et al., 2006) and (b) the motivational aspect, whereby teachers in academia (rightly) consider themselves experts and shun any potential dictation and interference. The one-on-one approach also improved the aspect of WAC/WID implementation, by adapting it more specifically to the heterogeneous faculty member audience, which ranged from those with little academic writing experience who required rudimentary advice and substantial support, to those with plenty of experience who used the process to develop their own ideas and enjoyed the fruits of shared experience and personal coaching.

In the 2 years following the change in our strategy, 20 AWpack processes had taken place, varying in duration and form. Four processes were only a few hours long and included two or three meetings and email exchanges. 12 processes included four to six meetings, email exchanges, and phone conversations. The other four were longer. They included not only meetings, but also the AWpack advisor’s observations of the faculty member’s class, and in two of these cases, also the direct teaching of the students by the advisor. In terms of the format, most took a one-on-one process, but three involved a single advisor working with two faculty members who were teaching parallel courses.

It was clear to all that the faculty members involved had gone through a process of change. Tweaking their teaching to enhance students’ academic writing not only conformed to the faculty members’ original, discipline-specific teaching goals, but in most cases also helped alleviate—to some degree—their teaching load, as they learned to make the lessons more time-effective. For instance, the clarification of assignment instructions and the preparation of lesson plans to include learner peer-reviews had the added benefit of lightening the faculty member’s workload. Thus, instead of taking up class time dedicated to conveying content knowledge (a key factor in resistance to change according to Ito and Takeuchi, 2021), AWpack had the potential to save up precious class time. At this point, further research was needed to examine the effectivity of the new plan. Another internal study was conducted (College research unit, 2018), which included in-depth interviews with the participating faculty members and with the advisors who helped them incorporate academic writing into their teaching, as well as a quantitative questionnaire to be completed by the student-teachers. Findings of this study confirmed the general positive outcome. The faculty members attested to their growing awareness not only of the importance of explicitly incorporating the teaching of academic writing in their courses but also of the various helpful ways in which this could be attained. Student-teachers’ stances indicated that they too had begun to notice the fruits of the intervention. It seemed that, albeit to a small degree, signs of change were beginning to manifest.

Discussion

The AWpack strategy, the final stage of the evolution of leading the pedagogic change described above, provides a practical tool for implementing a pedagogical change in an academic institution. Emerging from the data analysis, we find it helpful in overcoming three distinct challenges: managerial, academic, and pedagogical challenges involved in the implementation of a new wide-scale agenda in academic institutions.

The changing format of the faculty seminars that took place in the first 4 years of the intervention indicates a gradual development over time. The first and second seminars used mainly top-down strategies (for a similar structure, see Singh and Hardaker, 2017), introducing the issue and the rationale and presenting some examples of ways to implement the agenda. The third seminar offered a more cooperative approach, by allowing many lecturers to share their best practices with their colleagues. The fourth seminar elicited active participation from all participants, due to the addition of the speed-dating session to the more formal teacher presentations. From the outset, the initiative was designed to enable the faculty members to voice their shared interests and goals, and in this sense, at no point was it a purely top-down approach. Over time, the intervention evolved in such a way that, by the last communal seminar, the emphasis was almost entirely on the bottom-up approach.

A similar gradual move from a top-down approach to bottom-up methods was seen also in the work of the steering committee during the first 4 years. Initially, the committee members worked with entire departments, presenting the agenda, and providing general advice, but as the process evolved, they turned to coaching individual faculty members in preparation for their presentations. Nevertheless, this transition alone was insufficient for attaining the predefined goals. Neither the sharing of knowledge and experience in the seminars nor the more direct interventions of the steering committee accomplished a genuinely deep change in the faculty members’ work habits regarding WAC/WID. The only approach that proved effective for achieving our goals was the AWpack strategy, which stressed the importance of collegial support (Clarence, 2012; Clavert et al., 2018) and created a culture of trust (Fullan, 2007).

As one senior management member noted, working one-on-one with the faculty members rather than in large groups was like trying to “fill the ocean with a spoon.” While she was right, of course, in observing the slow rate of implementing the change in this manner, her simile overlooks two key elements. First, our initial attempt, which sought to influence change on a more massive scale, had failed, whereas this smaller, individually tailored process was proving a success. Second, our individualized efforts were likely to have a ripple effect, as the faculty members participating in the one-on-one process informally shared their newly acquired strategies with their peers and recommended that they too participate in the AWpack consultations.

The process we went through during the 6 years of the intervention could be seen as an evolution, propelled by the need to cope gradually with various challenges. Based on the year-by-year analysis (presented in the Results section) showing how research helped us to fine-tune our intervention plan we propose the AWpack strategy as a strategy for gradually leading a wide-scale pedagogical change in an academic institution. This strategy assists in overcoming general managerial and pedagogical challenges as well as the academic challenge. Thus, the proposed strategy combines theoretical knowledge with practical and experimental insights to create an efficient way of facing the challenges associated with implementing such a change in an academic setting.

The strength of this strategy stems from a shift in focus: from the managerial and pedagogic aspects to the academic challenge. Addressing the academic challenge means considering not only the type of institution in which the change is being implemented and the assimilation of the pedagogical tools relevant to WID/WAC but also the faculty members’ sense of academic expertise and autonomy. As previously mentioned, according to the authors, the failure of the Duquesne project (Barnhisel et al., 2012) did not stem from disregard to the pedagogical aspect. Rather, it failed because faculty members’ generally refused to incorporate elements that they deemed foreign to their academic expertise, and more importantly, because of “[t]he power differential inherent in this” (Barnhisel et al., p. 484). It is regarding the power dynamics inherent in academic institutions that AWpack becomes a better strategy for implementing change than any top-down technique. Indeed, Duquesne is not unique in defining the occupational status of most writing program instructors as low, whereas discipline-based instructors who enjoy a higher institutional status have little interest in increasing their workload. The latter is also a key finding in the research held by Ito and Takeuchi (2021). The fact that AWpack takes these two obstacles into account contributed to our positive results.

By ensuring the added value of the AWpack process, the writing program coordinator sought to promote the program, encourage other faculty members to seek the service, and maintain their enthusiasm for the change. Another added value of the AWpack strategy was networking and comradeship (for a project that addresses these two elements via students’ collective writing, see Peters et al., 2021). All members of the advising team were highly regarded faculty members with excellent social skills. Working with them, their peers admitted, was simply fun. In most cases, the faculty members and advisors had not known each other prior to the AWpack process, and so new workplace friendships and collaborations evolved as a direct result of the process. In some cases, the advisor became the faculty member’s coach in aspects of teaching that were not directly related to academic writing, mostly regarding classroom management. The Writing Program Coordinator encouraged the AWpack team to welcome every development, because a wider scope of positive consequences inherently increased the likelihood that the change in faculty members’ attitude toward writing would become permanent, as it would be associated with other positive experiences. In fact, in several instances, the positive effects of the relationships forged during the consultation sessions exceeded these boundaries of time and place, as they led to fruitful, long-term academic and research collaborations. This aligns with Will’s “win-win” approach (2015), which stresses the importance of linking the individual’s interests with those of the organization for the success of the change’s implementation.

Since the challenges we face in leading pedagogical changes in academic institutions are similar world-wide, this strategy has a potential to prove successful outside of this local context. We cannot be but curious as to the different forms AWpack and similar individually based processes would take elsewhere. Some of the challenges we faced seemed very local at the time—the percentage of non-tenured staff, the level of compliance with the change all seemed to be rooted in Israeli setting of academia—but the more we researched the more we realized that these were quite prevalent conditions internationally. Students write poorly in academia world-wide and academic staff are reluctant to change their teaching routines all over the globe. Thus, the strategy we offer may be useful for leading pedagogical changes wherever they are needed.

Importantly, although the AWpack is the final stage of the evolutionary process described herein, the previous stages were instrumental in making this last one possible. The initial top-down stage helped to raise general awareness toward the new agenda and served to convince department and program chairs that excellent academic writing should be recognized as an important goal. This allowed us, in later stages, to gain their support in spreading the word to the faculty. Notwithstanding, these earlier stages could have been significantly shorter. In retrospect, we would recommend spending a year on these preliminary stages, rather than the 4 years we dedicated to them, before transitioning to the one-on-one approach.

As we write this paper, our project continues to develop. Each year, a greater number of faculty members opt to join in the endeavor and apply to be assigned an AWpack advisor. Faculty members who already participated in and completed the process in past years spread the word and share their newly acquired methods with their colleagues. We believe that this is a case of hard work producing gradual improvement rather than an overnight miracle solution. Carefully attending to the importance of the academic aspect of the challenge helped bridge the gap between the managerial aspect that calls for change and the pedagogical tools for implementing it. We believe that awareness of the exclusive psychological aspects of the academic context and the resulting management challenge could be applicable to other academic institutions seeking to introduce a major change, as it helps dissolve faculty members’ lack of cooperation. Although the change via AWpack is unpretentious and drawn-out, we believe that the strategy offers a revolutionary approach to leading wide-scale pedagogical change in higher education. In terms of research, the novelty of our work lies in using the pedagogical method of Tpack as a model for any pedagogical enhancement and in tying together the pedagogical method to a managerial challenge of implementing change in the academia via tailor-made tutoring. Future work would present students’ achievements before and after such intervention, as well as study the outcomes of using this one-on-one strategy in the implementation of other pedagogical changes.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Dorit Barchana-Lorand

Notes

Author Biographies

Dr. Dorit Barchana-Lorand, DPhil. (University of Oxford, philosophy), teaches philosophy of art and academic writing and is the Head of Theoretical and Pedagogical Studies in the Art Department at Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts. Her research interests include Philosophy of Art, Art Education and Aesthetic Education. She co-edited (with Prof. Shai Frogel) a book on art education in Israel: - Art Education: Aesthetics and Ethics (2018, in Hebrew). Her book on Aesthetics is currently in progress (under contract): - Introduction to Aesthetics (due 2023, in Hebrew).

Prof. Yehudith Weinberger, B.Sc. (Biology), M.A. (Science Education), Ph.D. (Education), served as the Rector of Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts, between 2016-2022. Her major areas of expertise and publication are: Development of Higher Order Thinking, Empathy in Education, and Teacher Education. In 2016 she established The Center for Empathy in Education and in the Society that considers the good relations between people as the educational and social core, and sees in their nurturing a value and a condition for learning and growth. She is the author of two books (in Hebrew): - The Development of Thinking: A Challenge in Teacher Education (2005). - Thinking Chemistry: Integration of Cognitive and Didactic Aspects into General and Physical Chemistry Laboratory Activities (2007). Additionally, she edited two books: - Education in an Era of Uncertainty (2016, in Hebrew). - Contemporary Pedagogies in Teacher Education and Development. London: IntechOpen (2018).

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