I gave a seminar with this rather overblown title in the Centre for Educational Research and Development’s seminar series last Tuesday (24th February, 2009.) Essentially my argument was that educational development units, through their agency, are actually making a change in the way government policies relating to higher education are implemented.  My argument is that there has been a move from a normative “you must do it this way” sort of cast of mind, to a much more collegial “lets work together to bring about this” sort of approach. In some cases that means some policies do get less priority than others and they all get revised or subverted

Anyway, here’s a brief podcast based on my talk – it’s very heavily abridged, as I don’t really think I can say what I want to in the time available but I try and get across my main findings in the short time. I’m working on producing a fuller journal article. If I get it published I’ll let you know!

Structure and Agency (MP3 file)

Podcast transcript (PDF file)