Structure, Time & Power: Critical reflection on the development of a foundation degree in child & adolescent men

1. Structure, Time & Power:Critical reflection on the development of a foundation degree in child & adolescent mental health 26th November 2007

2. Key Themes & Challenges • Core point: there is a significant emotional and interpersonal component to successful interdisciplinary curriculum development • Partnership working between Further and Higher Education institutions • Developing true inter-disciplinary programme • Developing fit-for-purpose programme that reflect the needs of the workforce

3. Reflecting on University Systems • Relatively new academics, ltd prior experience of the programme approval and validation systems • Feeling ‘swept along’ by a system once stepped into could not be stepped out of • Seemed to be driven by School and Faculty meeting timetables, eg programme approval, assessment committee, etc • Quality processes are necessarily concerned with the notion of ‘product’ (Rowley, 1995) to ensure minimum standards, equity and transparency

4. Reflecting on University Systems • Another view refer to these mechanisms as leading to a ‘production-line’ outlook • Universities become like ‘sausage factories’ where consistent ‘products’ are turned out (students, programmes) but the quality of the ‘process’ is lost (Davis, 2003). • Our uncertainty wasn’t about the quality assurance debate, but about what the product actually was. • Were we engaged in a process of educational development that was about a vision for a 3-d living academic course, or just the production of the programme and module specification paperwork?

5. Reflecting on University Systems:“Audit Culture” • Written documentation prized over the less tangible aspects of curriculum design (Horrocks, 2005) • Without time for dialogue about alternative methods of curriculum design and their relative fitness for purpose • Impact on the true quality of the curriculum design may be negative (Gosling and D’Andrea, 2001) if adopted purely as a requirement of the quality system • If quality assurance mechanisms are relied on to drive the process of programme development they can become ends in themselves rather than the means to an end.

6. Double edged swordof the programme approval process • Paperwork and task orientated nature of the process gave us common goals; motivated and promoted a sense of working together. • The focus on completion of paperwork tasks also seemed to serve as a defence: • Filling the space in meetings between the HE and FE practitioners, stopping the unspoken tensions and uncertainties from being highlighted or talked about.

7. HE/FE Interdisciplinary Partnership: Stereotypes? • Intentioned for programme to sit at Faculty level, reflecting the CAMHS inter-disciplinary workforce requirements • University structures did not appear to support true interdisciplinary management and development. • Requirement that the programme should sit within a School; Nursing. • Reflection on this issue has led to us wondering if this mirrors some of the traditional stereotypes of nursing. • Nurses perceived as, and often play out the role of hand maidens (Hallam, 1998) prepared to make the best of a potentially unsatisfactory situation in order to get things done.

8. HE/FE Interdisciplinary Partnership: Multi or interdisciplinary working? • Few academic staff have had experience of multi-disciplinary learning themselves • Students experience of crossing disciplinary boundaries may exceed theirs (Moon, 2002) • The actual process of module design and development was much more uni-disciplinary as a result of task allocation e.g module leadership, etc. • Reflects (Caruana and Oakey, 2004) view of multi-disciplinary rather than interdisciplinary collaboration; bolting together work from a variety of disciplines rather than disciplines truly working to produce integrated work

9. Between the Tasks • Due to over-reliance on product or task there was no time for developing our understanding of each other. • Several aspects were not addressed which could have had a beneficial effect on the partnership working: negotiation of expectations, ground rules, differences in opinion and aspiration, identification of skills, values and beliefs; consequently the firm foundations for the partnership were not established. • Because the focus was on tasks such as module specification production, it was not only hard to establish a view of them, but also to gauge their opinion of us.

10. Conclusion • Due to the competing timescales, frameworks and language that HE/FE & employers work to can lead to difficulties, misunderstanding and resentments. • Interpersonal processes require significant consideration in order to achieve a successful product that meets the expectations of all stakeholders. • Import to ring fence space to learn about each other as academic and clinical practitioners and each other’s institution

11. Structure, Time & Power • Foster, C. & Welsh, S. (2007 forthcoming) Developing a Foundation Degree in Child & Adolescent Mental Health in Doyle, M. and O’Doherty, E. (Eds.) Foundation Degree Development and Research: Case Studies from the University of Salford, University of Salford Press • S.welsh@salford.ac.uk