Accomplishing Change in Teaching and Learning Regimes: Higher Education and the Practice Sensibility

Change in higher education, seen from the inside

Accomplishing Change in Teaching and Learning Regimes: Higher Education and the Practice Sensibility is a close, thoughtful study of how universities actually change. Paul Trowler does not treat institutional change as a neat sequence of policy steps. Instead, he looks at the day-to-day practices, histories, assumptions, and power relations that shape teaching and learning in real academic settings.

The result is a book that is both analytical and practical. Its central idea is the practice sensibility: a way of reading higher education that helps make sense of what is happening beneath the surface of meetings, departments, curriculum work, and reform efforts. Trowler builds this perspective from social practice theory and from his own long engagement with higher education research and consultancy.

What the book explores

• how teaching and learning regimes form and persist
• why change initiatives sometimes work, and sometimes quietly fail
• the role of disciplinary culture, institutional history, and local context
• how everyday academic practice is shaped by broader structures and discourses
• why a sharper understanding of context matters for leadership and enhancement

Who it will speak to

This is especially relevant to readers working in higher education leadership, academic development, curriculum change, educational research, and university management. It will also appeal to anyone interested in how institutions really function when policy meets practice. The writing is reflective rather than simplistic, and the argument invites readers to look again at familiar situations with more analytical clarity.

If you are drawn to books that explain universities from the inside out, this one offers a substantial and well-grounded perspective. It is the kind of ebook that rewards close reading, especially for readers who want to understand change as lived practice rather than abstract theory.