A Case Study of Academic Program Development in Higher Education: Examining Implicit Cultural Patterns and Influences

Abstract

This case study explored curriculum development in a complex university, providing a cultural analysis of a largely hidden process: the creation of new degree programs. The primary research question guiding the study was: How do members of a curriculum development team understand and accomplish their work? The study examined the work of academic program development through a culture and cognition lens, seeking to identify cognitive frames that tacitly shaped the committee’s process and decision making, and utilizing sensitizing concepts from expectations states theory, to examine the role of status hierarchy and performance expectations in group processes and decision-making. Data came from observations of team meetings during a 16-month period and individual interviews with team members.

Findings suggest that while the curriculum team benefitted from positive leadership and camaraderie, they lacked needed institutional support for developing new academic programs. The analysis supported theoretical assumption that socially weighted status characteristics (i.e., faculty rank and professional roles) shaped patterns of interaction and influence in this task-focused group. Variations in members’ motivation appeared to influence the nature and extent of members’ participation. The committee’s processes were strongly influenced by multiple deans inside and outside the unit through the organizational hierarchy.

The analysis identified several cognitive frames that tacitly shaped the committee’s process and decision making. The frame of “parallel process” organized the committee’s thinking about their work, allowing them to develop a program proposal while planning the launching the program. The frame of “quality trumps innovation” reflected a stated prioritization of academic quality while managing expectations regarding innovativeness. The cognitive frame of “in-the-moment conceptions of imagined students” revealed inconsistent, fluctuating, and conflicting views of students due to a lack of evidence-based discussion of student development, diversity and attributes. Additional cognitive frames reflected the committee’s confidence in their process but also their avoidance of warning signs that the time frame for launching the program was too ambitious.

Building on these frames and the analysis of status hierarchy, integrative themes included “extrapolation of expertise,” which captured the committee’s perceptions of its knowledge and experience as extending to areas that were not, in actuality, well understood; and a “mirage of faculty control of the curriculum,” which orchestrated faculty buy-in and thus upheld the belief that faculty own the decisions, process and enactment of degree programs. The committee could be construed, alternatively, as an organizational change lever, a mechanism to enact the will of deans, or as fulfilling an organizational need to move a particular agenda forward while giving that agenda legitimacy and credibility.

Implications of this study suggest a reimagining of academic program development in higher education to include multiple sources of expertise commensurate with its complexity and resources and support commensurate with its centrality. Awareness of cognitive frames and status differences that shape committee work may lead to approaches that unlock creativity, maximize the benefits of diverse teams, and open the process to include more voices and new methods. By recognizing three intertwined elements: curriculum design, course development, and organizational systems that enact the curriculum, we can move academic program development away from outdated approaches and into the 21st century.