Responsibility for staff development

This paper distinguishes and evaluates the claims implicit in three models of staff development responsibility (management, shop-floor and partnership), and introduces a variant of the partnership model, a decentralisation model. The findings of a case study conducted into staff development at Birmingham Polytechnic to illuminate the claims made for the respective models are reported. The paper identifies several questions which the decentralised model has yet to answer satisfactorily if it is to commend itself as an improvement upon the partnership model. Conclusions are drawn about the relative advantages and disadvantages which arise from institutional reliance upon the respective models.