Dear all,

this has been a very interesting discussion. I also hadn't realised this
particular sort of reorganisation was so common.

Jan Martin wrote:

>As regards CE reorganisation, we in Aberystwyth are also being re-organised.
>The Centre for Continuing Education has just been merged with the Education
>Department, to form the 'School of Education and Lifelong Learning'. As far
>as I can see, the only thing that the two departments had in common was the
>word 'education' in their titles. I understand, however, that this sort of
>merger has happened elsewhere. Does anyone have any experience of this?
>
In 1999 Glasgow University and St Andrews College of teacher education
merged, and a new Faculty of Education was created. We are one of the
four academic departments of the new Faculty, the only pre-existing
university department to come through merger unchanged. Our experience
has been like yours in some respects: we're about widening access to
university expertise, while our colleagues are focussed on the
preparation of teachers and the school curriculum. We can have nice
conversations, but the scope for really working together is limited.
There are certainly joint developments in postgrad and undergrad
teaching in Education, however. We're also looking into having some of
our fully accredited courses approved as (subject-specific) CPD for
teachers. A science teacher might find it useful to do one of our
Astronomy courses, for instance. We believe this is possible without us
having to change these courses in any way, so it won't become a
distraction from our core business. That might be a result of
differences north of the border, I don't know - or we may still find
it's not true in practice.

Of course there are other issues that arise in such a merger,
differences in culture and so on. These things get easier with time! And
they're probably less of an issue in internal reorganisations. I'd be
happy to compare experiences if that's useful to anybody, maybe best
off-list.

Alec.

--
Dr A L MacKinnon
DACE, University of Glasgow
St Andrews Building, 11 Eldon Street
GLASGOW G3 6NH
(44) (0)141 330 1857
http://www.gla.ac.uk/adulteducation/Personnel/alec.hmtl