When taken as a whole, the literature reviewed for this chapter clearly confirms that institutional culture is a crucial consideration that must inform any discussion of how higher education can contribute to the public good in South Africa. Although it presents a largely pessimistic picture, which suggests that institutional cultures have proven largely resistant to change and have therefore largely served as a barrier to the uptake of more transformative approaches to pedagogy, there are individual stories of hope which can be identified, particularly within some of the more recent literature examining successful departmental-level and cross-institution
initiatives (e.g. Bozalek, Carolissen, Leibowitz, Nicholls, Rohleder, & Swartz, 2010) implemented by some of the better resourced institutions in the sector.
The review also makes some important theoretical contributions. First, it underscores the highly contextual (and political) nature of the concept of institutional culture. As such, it problematises the common practice of uncritically applying theoretical understandings of institutional culture, developed within particular systems of higher education, to contexts with fundamentally different experiences with – and histories of – higher education. Although often acknowledged as problematic, the practice remains widespread, due to the dominance of particular countries within the internationally accessible published literature. Although some analysis of institutional culture is broadly applicable across national borders, much is context-specific and assumes an understanding of the conditions giving rise to the theoretical perspectives advanced. Such nuance is often missing in literature that relies on theoretical understandings developed outside of the local context in question, particularly when those understandings are part of the dominant (i.e. Western) canon.
At the same time, the review offers an important reminder of the potential wider benefit of theoretical understandings emerging from parts of the world less traditionally represented on the global stage. The literature on institutional culture presented in this chapter has much to offer to those interested in the concept outside of South Africa, including in the traditionally dominant USA and UK. The notion of institutional culture as ‘whiteness’, for instance, is a concept which could usefully inform many of the contemporary debates about racism on American university campuses, which – although prolific – tend not to explicitly position institutional culture in such racially specific terms. Indeed, given the fact that higher education has served to exclude populations in countries around the world, a frank engagement with the ways in which university cultures continue to model particular privileged norms and behaviours would be a welcome addition to the field in many contexts.
The South African literature on mergers also offers useful insights for the field as a whole.
Although mergers occur within all systems of higher education, with inevitable impacts on institutional culture, the fact that the South African mergers were effected with the explicit intention of changing cultural norms and values renders this literature particularly valuable for those interested in the possibilities of pedagogical change. The South African literature also offers a useful perspective on the ways in which institutional culture changes (or remains static) during marked periods of transition within a higher education system, a topic which is rarely acknowledged or discussed in the Western literature. Another relatively minor theme within the SAJHE literature, which nonetheless offers substantial scope for broadening international discussions on the topic, is the discussion of how institutional culture tends to be particularly entrenched (and, therefore, difficult to change) in contexts in which academics spend their entire academic life – from doctoral study through to full-time employment – within the same institution (or institutional type). Although this situation clearly arises in other contexts, it is rarely mentioned in the dominant literature, despite the fact that acknowledgement of the ways in which such norms around academic training and
HigHer education PatHways
recruitment can impact on attempts to change pedagogy would significantly enhance our broader understanding of how institutional cultures can affect teaching and learning.
The pragmatic implications of this review are harder to define, aside from the obvious acknowledgement that institutional cultures play a crucial role in any attempt to change pedagogy. Given that institutional culture has long been positioned as the ‘keyword’ in South Africa’s higher education transformation agenda, this finding alone is not new. It is, however, a useful reminder that universities must acknowledge and engage with the most problematic aspects of their histories and identities in order to effect any meaningful pedagogical change on their campuses. The ‘success stories’ represented in the literature reviewed for this chapter all managed to do this by working within departments to effect change at the local level. Some focused this work within the boundaries of a particular academic department (e.g. Heydenrych &
Case, 2015); others chose to connect departments with similar disciplinary backgrounds at institutions of different types, as an explicit attempt to find common ground across historically entrenched boundaries (e.g. Bozalek et al., 2010). These lessons could prove useful to others attempting to transform pedagogy within their institutions. The gaps identified by the review are also important for practitioners to acknowledge, as they highlight our limited knowledge about how culture might affect academic identities, motivations and behaviours within the profiles of institutions that are less frequently researched. The fact that nearly all of the articles identified within the SAJHE focused solely on the links between institutional culture and academic behaviour, stopping short of any analysis of how institutional culture may directly or indirectly affect student learning, is another crucial gap for practitioners to acknowledge.
Ultimately, the question of whether or not institutional culture can be changed to allow for more transformative pedagogies reflects a deeper question around whether higher education merely reproduces the norms of the society in which it resides or can act to shape what that society might become in the future. In other words, is higher education simply reproductive or is it potentially transformative? On balance, the literature reviewed for this chapter suggests that Walker (2015) might be correct when she argues that it can be both and, indeed, positions institutional culture as fundamentally implicated in either possibility. Although sometimes dismissed as too vague a concept to be of any pragmatic use or theoretical value, we clearly ignore the influence of institutional cultures at our peril.
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