ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some ideas about promoting and supporting educational ecology within a university. Many of the recurrent practices of teaching in higher education merit closer scrutiny and most are open to improvement. But habits can be hard to unsettle and some university work takes on the appearance of ritual: part of what holds the educational apparatus together and makes it recognisable and navigable, but not necessarily fit for its avowed purpose. Valuable work on educational problems (and their solution) can be done by ‘outsiders’. External consultants can be valuable, particularly if they spot things that have been taken for granted for so long that they have become invisible, or if they can import valuable knowledge gained in other places. There has been a steady stream of work on soft systems methodology for more than 50 years; it is hardly a new field.
