Inciting Grassroots Change

Abstract

In higher education, policies and strategic plans often achieve fewer positive outcomes than their makers intend. Motivating teachers to innovate is remarkably difficult. Pleas issued by accreditation agencies and professional organizations, asking teachers to implement pedagogies that develop transferrable skills like collaboration and self-directed learning among engineering students, have gone largely unaddressed. To help leaders achieve change, this chapter analyzes one case that accrued positive results. It studies how change unfolded at a postsecondary institution in Ireland and discusses factors that enabled learning on the part of individuals, small groups, and their college. In this case, a grassroots effort by teachers was matched by institutional support that, although poorly understood by the teachers, built their capacity and set the stage for change.