DEVELOPMENT ARTICLE
The critical, relational practice of instructional design
in higher education: an emerging model of change agency
Katy Campbell Æ Richard A. Schwier Æ Richard F. Kenny
Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2007
Abstract This paper offers an emerging interpretive framework for understanding the
active role instructional designers play in the transformation of learning systems in higher
education. A 3-year study of instructional designers in Canadian universities revealed how,
through reflexive critical practice, designers are active, moral, political, and influential in
activating change at interpersonal, professional, institutional and societal levels. Through
narrative inquiry the voices of designers reflect the scope of agency, community and
relational practice in which they regularly engage with faculty in institutions of higher
learning.
Keywords Instructional designers Instructional design practice Narrative inquiry
Moral agency Instructional design theory
Introduction
Research examining the actual practice of instructional designers suggests that designers
do draw on conventional techniques in instructional design, but their practice varies
widely according to context (Cox 2003; Cox and Osguthorpe 2003; Kenny et al. 2005;
Visscher-Voerman and Gustafson 2004). The literature of instructional design often
focuses on discrete skills and activities, even where it identifies non-traditional elements.
K. Campbell (&)
Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
e-mail: katy.campbell@ualberta.ca
R. A. Schwier
Educational Communications and Technology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
e-mail: richard.schwier@usask.ca
R. F. Kenny
Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada
e-mail: rickk@athabascau.ca
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Education Tech Research Dev
DOI 10.1007/s11423-007-9061-6
By concentrating on functional elements, we risk overlooking important and emerging
questions about what it means to be an instructional designer. How do instructional
designers extract meaning from their daily practice? How do they construct and enact
their professional identities? What do instructional designers perceive as their role and
how do they describe the importance of what they do?
Instructional design and change agency
In this paper, we focus on a different facet of the instructional design process, that of the
role instructional designers play as change agents. What do we mean by change agency in
instructional design contexts and how does it influence the practice of instructional design?
We describe change agency as a process in which ‘‘we play a dynamic and crucial role in
shaping our own structures and processes whether we are aware of doing this or not’’
(Herda 1999, p. 25). Although Herda refers to the actions of researchers, we believe that
the question and responses Herda offers have particular relevance to instructional design.
‘‘How do we change our actions ... within the broader professional community so that our
(work) may take on a significance in our own lives and in the lives of our participants?…
The first (response) is to change our notion of action from one grounded in behaviorism
(i.e. stimulus/response)… to one grounded in moral decisions, and the second is to change
our idea of professional identity’’ (p. 91).
This study, then, is fundamentally about how designers shape their practice, and their
professional identities, in particular socio-cultural contexts, through language and rela-
tionships with their clients, learners, colleagues and administrators, and how their actions
may contribute strongly to changing the way colleges and universities realize their
instructional missions. As a complex, socio-cultural process the moral dimension of
instructional design refers not to ‘‘right’’ and ‘‘wrong’’ decisions or actions, but instead to
this fundamental importance of relationships in which mutual commitments are made, with
integrity, to enhance success—success in teaching, success in learning, success in
service—success for positive social change.
Instructional designers work directly with faculty and other clients to help them think
more critically about the needs of all learners, about issues of access, about the social and
cultural implications of the use of information technologies, about alternative learning
environments, and about related policy development. As such, through reflexive and
critical practice, and interpersonal agency, they are important participants in shaping
interpersonal, institutional and societal agendas for change. Therefore, we view instruc-
tional design not simply as a technical methodology to be applied to design situations, but
also as a socially constructed practice.
We suggest that clients working with instructional designers in instructional develop-
ment projects are actually engaging, as learners, in a process of professional and personal
transformation that has the potential to transform the participants and the institution.
Rogoff (1990) argues that participation in learning hinges on communication between
people in a group, in terms of shared understanding or shared thinking. Glaser (1991),
Tergan (1997), and others believe that learning is most effective if it is embedded in social
experience, is situated in authentic problem-solving contexts entailing cognitive demands
relevant for coping with real life situations, and occurs through social intercourse. The
instructional design process, in which faculty, designers, and others develop new ideas and
understandings through conversation, may be a form of cultural learning or collaborative
learning.
K. Campbell et al.
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Methodology
The research design
The findings reported in this paper were drawn from a 4-year (2002–2006) study of 20
instructional designers at six Canadian tertiary educational institutions with an adminis-
trative or academic unit mandated to support, faculty-initiated course development.
Participation was elicited through a range of strategies, including the snowball technique,
based on personal email invitations, advertisements on listservs and in institutional com-
munications platforms (e.g., faculty newsletters), personal contacts at professional
meetings and through collaborative projects, membership lists from professional associa-
tions and delegate lists from conferences, references from other participants, and visits to
graduate classes. Sources of data include research conversations with instructional
designers, email, focus group transcripts, group meetings, and ‘‘story circles’’ in which
designers shared stories of practice dilemmas with each other.
Data collection
Two different approaches were used for gathering data. Initially, six instructional designers
in higher education institutions were interviewed using a semi-structured interview pro-
tocol and participants were asked to discuss their backgrounds, identities, practices,
communities and concerns.
For the remaining 14 interviews, we used a narrative inquiry approach. We felt the shift
in methodology was important because narrative inquiry focuses more strongly on the
storying of experience. It had become clear to us from our initial interviews that the
instructional design practices we were examining were socially and contextually situated
interpretive practices and that this approach would help us to see them as such. In essence,
we needed to start with an exploration of the personal, that is, to look at ‘‘personal
knowledge ... as a source for deliberation, intuitive decisions, daily action and moral
wisdom’’ (Conle 2000, p. 51). Stories, then, consist of a set of narratives woven together to
work towards change. Thus the methodological approach for the study mirrors a social
constructivist framework for instructional design practice, which is one of social interac-
tion and construction of meaning through conversation and within a community of
practice. In the first meeting with each instructional designer we used a semi-structured
interview protocol that served as an introduction to the study, but on subsequent occasions
participants were asked to discuss their backgrounds, identities, practices, communities and
concerns, and encouraged to tell stories of their design practice.
In all cases, except for focus group participants, whose attendance was not recorded,
transcripts were sent to participants for correction, clarification, elaboration, and approval.
As we elaborate the components of this model, and their basis in moral action, we provide
a context for designers’ voices. Table 1 relates the participants’ educational backgrounds
to the institutional contexts in which they practiced at the time of the interview.
Data analysis
Post hoc analysis of transcripts was done using Atlas Ti software, and data were analyzed
to identify shared themes and understandings. Two researchers reviewed each transcript
and negotiated the units of meaning that were extracted from the data. We then met as a
The critical, relational practice of instructional design in higher education
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full research team for two days and negotiated a set of major themes that emerged from our
preliminary data analysis. Themes included entry routes into ID, preparing for practice
(learning theory) and actual practice, roles, the purposes for instructional design, rela-
tionships and communities, power, values, identity, the public vs. private persona, and
metaphors of design. The change agency model presented below was developed from a
further explication of those themes.
A proposed multivariate agentic model
As analysis of the main themes progressed, it has become clear to us that what we initially
thought of as change agency—instructional designers working directly with faculty to
think more critically about the needs of all learners, about issues of access, about the social
and cultural implications of the use of information technologies, and so on—at the
beginning of the study is actually multivariate in nature. The narratives revealed several
different types of agency in play, intersecting at different points in practice and context and
expressed in quite different and individual ways. These types of agency appeared to fit into
four categories: interpersonal, professional, institutional and societal. We now propose that
these form a complex and reflexive ‘‘agentic model of instructional design’’ with both
intentional and operational dimensions (Schwier et al. 2007). A tentative picture of what
Table 1 Designers’ HE contexts
Institutional context Pseudonym Gender Highest degree attained
Technical college w/baccalaureates Skye F MEd
Research-intensive University—large Penelope F PhD
Nat M MEd/MBA
David M M.A. (partial Ph.D.)
Dennis M MA
George M PhD
Anna F ABD*
Steve M MA
Laura F MEd
Denise F MEd
Yan M MEd
Maria F MEd
Research-intensive University—medium Lorne M EdD
Sandra F PhD
Barbara F MEd
Halle F MEd
Darlene F PhD
Research-intensive University—small Jeanne F MEd
Open learning/DE Mehta F MEd
Heidi F PhD
Li F MA
Consultant Terry M Med
* All but dissertation
K. Campbell et al.
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this emerging model is beginning to look like is provided in Fig. 1, and the remainder of
this paper will elaborate the model.
As we elaborate the components of this model, and their basis in moral action, we attend
to the voices of instructional designers.
Four types of agency
Interpersonal, professional, institutional and societal types of ID agency regularly surfaced
in the stories we heard, so they formed the key touchstones of the model. These were not
selected as the key features of the model because of their frequency or their categorical
precision. Instead, we identified these types of agency to attempt to categorize stories that
percolated in the narrative data; the categories were not mutually exclusive, nor were they
equally represented in the data. Rather, these were categories that were resonant with the
data and that illustrated the powerful and personal perspectives of designers when they
considered their roles as agents of change. In the stories we heard, these four dimensions of
change agency undulated and interacted in ways that suggested that when combined, they
expressed agency in small (micro), intermediate (meso), and large (macro) ways. In
addition, we learned from our participants that they were acutely aware of when their
values and the values of clients, the profession, and institutions were aligned or in conflict,
and this awareness had a strong influence on their practice and attitudes. In the model, we
represented this as a zone of moral coherence, recognizing that instructional designers
operate in and out of that zone on projects they undertake in the intentional and operational
dimensions of their work.
Interpersonal agency
Interpersonal agency is characterized by the commitment made by instructional designers
to others involved in the project, and emphasizes collegial engagement and advocacy,
Fig. 1 An emerging model of change agency in instructional design
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