Currently reading Loughlin (2025) on “Building higher education: the tension between espoused educational values and physical infrastructure”

Why is it that even though most people agree (and most university policies state) that active student engagement is desirable, there are still large lecture theatres being built? Loughlin (2025) explores the “theory of action”, which distinguishes between what people or organisations say they do (for example in mission statements or policies; “espoused theory”) and what they actually do (not explicitly stated, but deduced from their actions; “theory-in-use”).

What I find especially interesting is how conflicts between what the organisation does and what they claimed to value can lead to defensive routines that make it impossible to discuss certain topics. This can lead to “doom loops”, where mistakes get repeated over and over again, since nobody can talk about them so nobody can learn from them, either.

Loughlin (2025) interviewed decision makers at 16 different UK universities and looked through policy documents, and it became clear that building lecture theatres was not aligned with the values the universities claimed to hold. Loughlin (2025) found three main themes in this conflict:

• “post-pandemic and the creation of the sticky campus“: With an observed decline in student attendance after the pandemic, universities want to make it attractive again to physically be on campus. This is important for financial reasons (the fear that students would not enrol if they don’t get a vibrant student life) but also for social learning (but interestingly, there is little discussion of making learning experiences themselves more engaging)
• “the administrative tail wagging the pedagogic dog“: Here, considerations of being able to use spaces also as concert/graduation halls, and being able to deal with future larger student cohorts while avoiding double teaching, but again, with little consideration of the actual learning experience
• “pedagogy, pragmatism, and the student experience“: Again, it seems important to have students meet in person, but there isn’t a lot of thought about what is actually happening when they meet and how it contributes to their learning

In the discussion, Loughlin (2025) write “Most HEIs espoused theories of education and their theories-in-use do not match. They cannot publicly discuss the educational and logistical issues associated with large-class lectures, because then they would have to acknowledge their existence, explain the paradox, and defend their inclusion in the curriculum. Large-class lectures then become undiscussable, and to a large extent hidden. […] some innovative and research informed practice takes place, but very much more transmissive teacher-centred practice is undocumented and invisible.“

I find this super interesting. So if we took, for example, an organisation that claimed to value sustainability highly, but this was not reflected in the decisions they made, the rules they enforced, the funding they allocated; sustainability and the mismatch might become more and more difficult to discuss?

I am also still thinking about the Sundström & Holmberg (2018) article I read recently about alignment between an insitution’s primary goal, its policies, and the actual tasks people work on. So is active learning, like sustainability, an example of something that is in policies but not sufficiently aligned with the primary vision of the institutions to actually be widely implemented in work tasks?

I will take the “espoused theory” vs “theory-in-use” thoughts with me, maybe this can be helpful both when it comes to more action for sustainability and to creating better spaces for learning!

Loughlin, C. (2025). Building higher education: the tension between espoused educational values and physical infrastructure. Higher Education, 1-18.

What I say I value are observing disciplinary concepts in everyday life. What I do waaay too seldomly: Actually observing. But here I did: This is ice on top of a barrel acting as bar table at a hotel in Oslo, and fresh snow flakes falling on top. In the featured image, there is even a (plastic) leave frozen into the ice, and, sadly, cigarette ash (or at least that is what I am guessing that is).