Supporting academic workloads in online learning

Academic workloads in online learning are influenced by many variables, the complexity of which makes it difficult to measure academic workloads in isolation. While researching issues associated with academic workloads, professional development stood out as having a substantive impact on academic workloads. Many academics in applied health degrees commence their educational careers as specialists or experts within their profession, rather than as professional educators. New educators may have limited access to professional development when orientating to their new role. The available professional development focuses on technological and presentation aspects, rather than pedagogy in practice, increasing workloads and adding complexity without the understanding. This study argues that academics become empowered to better understand and manage their workloads through the implementation of targeted professional development, as well as the use of clear institutional frameworks for instructional design. A framework for course design (LATARE) is presented as part of this study.     

Academic identities and communities of practice in a professional discipline

This paper explores the dynamics surrounding the formation of academic identities in a context where the nature of academic work is contested both as a result of tensions within the discipline and in response to pressure from both the institution and the field of higher education. It is based on a case study which investigated the process of academic identity formation at the micro level of a department at a South African university. The study revealed a complex relationship between identity construction and participation within the particular configuration of teaching, professional and research communities of practice that defined the academic field in the department. Multiple identity trajectories were evident, indicating the role of individual agency, despite the dominance of a professional community of practice within the department. The arrival of new academics in the department without professional practice experience was found to have created the possibility of a changed notion of the academic within the discipline.     

Re-integrating academic development and academic language and learning: a call to reason

This paper argues for the re-integration of academic development (AD) and a academic language and learning (ALL) practitioners in Australian higher education. This argument is made as universities aim to develop internationally recognised, inter-disciplinary and standards-based curricula against the backdrop of international comparative education (e.g., Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), the Australian Qualifications Framework and a quality emphasis on English language standards (e.g., Tertiary Education Quality and Assessment Agency). Drawing on Rowland's argument that professional life in the academy has become fragmented across five fault lines ([2002]. Overcoming fragmentation in professional life: The challenge for academic development. Higher Education Quarterly, 56(1), 52–64), I propose a sixth: the pedagogical fault line between language and learning which I argue is institutionally manifest in the historical bifurcation of AD and ALL practitioners in the academy. This paper traces the historical separation of these two fields of practice in Australian higher education in order to disturb the present distinction and show how it is more an accident of history than the result of sound pedagogical decision-making. The paper argues that in the current educational context, it is timely to consider a re-integration of these two aspects of the academic field. It is suggested that such a move will create research and teaching connections that develop synergies in educational development that are able to work with language and learning simultaneously.     

Signifying authenticity in academic practice: a framework for better understanding and harnessing portfolio assessment

Portfolios are an assessment tool that help frame expectations of personal professional learning about teaching in higher education, a key dimension of academic practice. In this paper, we review our experiences in both supporting academic colleagues to develop a teaching portfolio, and in their assessment. We argue that the authenticity of the account offered is key: participants should aspire to render an authentic account of themselves, their context, actions and their professional stance. Likewise, assessors need to verify that an account is authentic. We posit five signifiers of authenticity: biographical/professional context; practice development and experience of practice; integration of core concepts and key ideas from the literature, especially evaluation and conceptions of teaching; purpose and values in continuing professional learning (CPL); coherence of writing, vocabulary used, writing style, etc. These are intended to help course leaders and conveners of CPL activities to articulate what it is that is being sought from participants, and hence clarify expectations for both participants doing the learning and for disciplinary colleagues assisting with the assessment.     

The academic career: contradiction as a key player in nursing education

ABSTRACT

Background: Within Europe, substantial changes in academia in recent years have transformed the work of academic nurses. The most important change has been a result of the Bologna Process, launched in 1999, as it has led to the implementation of significant reforms to higher education across participating European countries.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop a theoretical understanding of the effect of the Bologna Process on academic nurses’ professional development and explore academic nurses’ perceptions of the challenges and opportunities they encounter in the teaching and research arena.

Method: A qualitative study was conducted. The participants were eight academic nurses and data were collected through 24 in-depth, semi-structured weekly interviews. The analysis was performed using the constant comparative method, leading to the construction of categories based on the constant comparison of similarities and differences between the participants.

Findings: The coding process led to the identification and interpretation of the core category. This category, identified as ‘The academic career: Contradiction as a key player’, emerged as a result of analysis of the interaction of four categories: (1) opportunity for change, (2) unnecessary difficulties, (3) growth of the discipline and (4) institutional requirements. Findings indicated that the academic nurses in the study viewed the Bologna Process positively but noted several obstacles to its implementation. According to the participants, the changes also led to conflict in terms of their work–life balance.

Conclusions: This study is of relevance to nursing education and to clinical nursing practice. It suggests that the implementation of the Bologna Process in nursing studies has helped nurses to regard research as part of their autonomous professional role, and to be aware that research contributes to improve clinical practice, providing an evidence base on which to design and assess nursing interventions. However, the notion that academic nurses consider research within a contradiction paradigm is a potential barrier to the advancement of nursing science and evidence-based practice.     

The professional engagement model of academic induction into on-line teaching

Current developments in tertiary education settings are resulting in a second wave of academics using on-line technologies in their teaching, providing universities with a considerable professional staff development challenge. The case study presented here illustrates one way of responding to this challenge. Overall, the literature suggests that professional development that is discipline-specific and located in a community-of-practice is more likely to be relevant and productive than a centralized, decontextualized approach. We propose an alternative hybrid model of 'professional engagement' for on-line teaching that attempts to build on existing discipline-specific workplace structures. This includes recruiting academic on-line teaching advisers for each school in the faculty, showcasing existing exemplary practice, and setting up 'professional engagement groups' with a support team. The main advantages of the model are its responsiveness to patterns of academic work and to the immediate needs of academics, the way it enhances the visibility of exemplars of academic work, its cost-effectiveness and scalability, and the complementarity of local and centralized support systems. Limitations include the time needed to build up such staff engagement, an apparent lack of visibility, and difficulty in measuring outcomes.     

Facilitating democratic professional development: exploring the double role of being an academic action researcher

Abstract

This article focuses on the double role of the academic action researcher working as facilitator and researcher in democratic professional development projects. The inquiry is based on three partnership projects: ‘research circles’ in Sweden, ‘dialogue conferences’ in Norway and ‘tailored professional development’ in Finland. In a self-study and through the lens of practice architectures, we, as action researchers, explore how our practices are enabled and constrained in, as well as are enabling and constraining, professional development partnerships with teachers and educational leaders. A critical perspective is provided on how and what democratic practices evolve. The inquiry opens up understandings about how the academic action researcher’s practices entails multi-faceted ways of working to be able to accomplish different and somehow contradictory objectives, yet at the same time enacting democratic working methods. Furthermore, the act of recognition as a connecting aspect between prefiguring arrangements and evolving practices will be elaborated on to supplement perspectives offered by the theory of practice architectures.     

Academic practice as explanatory framework: reconceptualising international student academic engagement and university teaching

This paper joins growing interest in the concept of practice, and uses it to reconceptualise international student engagement with the demands of study at an Australian university. Practice foregrounds institutional structures and student agency and brings together psychologically- and socially-oriented perspectives on international student learning approaches. Utilising discourse theory, practice is defined as habitual and individual instances of socially-contextualised configurations of elements such as actions and interactions, roles and relations, identities, objects, values, and language. In the university context, academic practice highlights the institutionally-sanctioned ways of knowing, doing and being that constitute academic tasks. The concept is applied here to six international students' ‘readings’ of and strategic responses to academic work in a Master of Education course. It is argued that academic practice provides a comprehensive framework for explaining the interface between university academic requirements and international student learning, and the crucial role that teaching has in facilitating the experience.     

Structure and agency in learning: a critical realist theory of the development of capacity to reflect on academic practice

Theories of learning typically downplay the interplay between social structure and student agency. In this article, we adapt a causal hypothesis from realist social theory and draw on wider perspectives from critical realism to account for the development of capacity to engage in reflection on professional practice in academic roles. We thereby offer a theory of professional learning that explores how social and cultural structures and personal emergent powers combine to ensure variation in the emergence of such reflective capacity. The influence of these factors on professional learning is mediated through reflexive deliberation and social interaction, with the exercise of one's personal powers specifically identified as a stratum of social reality. We consider further the role of concerns, intention and attention in professional learning, drawing together issues that are rarely considered within the same theory. We thus offer a comprehensive account of professional learning, showing how a focus on structure and agency increases the explanatory power of learning theory.     

Shaping a culture: oral histories of academic development in Australian universities

Academic development has had an approximately forty‐year history within Australian higher education, paralleling the major expansions and changes in the sector, both nationally and internationally. Its principal concerns have been the improvement of teaching and the professional development of the academics who teach. The history of academic development has gone largely undocumented and unexamined at a national level, in Australia and elsewhere. However, as university teaching has increasingly become important in relation to quality in higher education, academic development has become a central player in the work of universities. It becomes of particular importance at this time to garner a more thorough understanding of the continuities as well as the discontinuities in the meanings and practices of university teaching and in the work of those whose role has been to support its development. This article presents a discussion of two key themes identified from a set of oral history interviews conducted with early leaders in academic development in Australia. These themes offer different insights into issues and understandings of academic development in today’s university. The first concerns a perennial issue in academic development – the struggle to define academic development’s emerging ethos in relation to research and service to the broader university’s endeavour. The second theme represents an issue that has been forgotten or marginalised in the official accounts of academic development but which lives on in the ‘lore’ of the field – the role of activism in the shaping of university teaching and academic development.     

武警指挥院校进行创新教学的研究与实践

借鉴国内外创新教学的研究成果,结合武警指挥院校的实际,进行创新教学的研究与实践,使得武警指挥院校培养的学员能够很好的平衡学习专业知识与满足"第一任职需要"的需求,为学员在以后的工作和生活中能可持续发展奠定良好基础。     

The benefits and challenges of academic writing retreats: an integrative review

The immediate drivers to increase publication outputs in higher education are government and research funding, organisational status, performance expectations and personal career aspirations. Writing retreats are one of a range of strategies used by universities to boost publication output. The aims of this integrative review were to synthesise the available evidence, identify the attributes, benefits and challenges of academic writing retreats and examine the components that facilitate publication output. The review was based on a systematic search of six electronic databases. Of the 296 articles identified, 11 primary research papers met the inclusion criteria. Thematic analysis of the data highlighted a raft of personal, professional and organisational benefits of writing retreats. The five key elements of writing retreats conducive to increasing publication output were protected time and space; community of practice; development of academic writing competence; intra-personal benefits and organisational investment. Participants involved achieved greater publication outputs, particularly when provided ongoing support. Further research is required to examine more substantively the feasibility of writing retreats, their cost-effectiveness and the features that increase publication outcomes.     

The imagined and the real: identifying the tensions for academic identity

Changes within the higher education sector have had significant effects on the identity of the individual academic. As institutions transform in response to government‐driven policy and funding directives, there is a subsequent impact upon the roles and responsibilities of those employed as educational professionals. Academic practices are changing as multiple roles emerge from the reshaping of academic work. Institutional pressures to produce specific research outputs at the same time as teaching and undertaking managerial/administrative responsibilities are creating tension between what academics perceive as their professional identity and that prescribed by their employing organisation. Reconciling this disconnect is part of the challenge for academics, who are now seeking to understand and manage their changing identity. Narratives obtained from research in a university with a polytechnic background and an institute of technology (aspiring to be a university), provide some subjective reflections for examining this issue.     

Communities of practice in higher education: professional learning in an academic career

This article focuses on the life history of a university academic, and the ways in which he learned in different communities of practice during his career. This account raises questions about the applicability of situated learning theory to a knowledge-based organisation, and argues that both the external context and the individuals within the community impinge on learning. It suggests that the role of academic staff developers may vary depending on the CoP and should include developing networks, facilitation, providing relevant expertise, improving harmony within CoPs and harnessing the benefits of internationally dispersed CoPs.     

International handbook of education for the changing world of work: bridging academic and vocational learning,vol. 2 of 6

This article presents one approach to assessing the impact of an online professional practice doctorate in education on participants' work environments. It is unique in that it explored impact during the doctoral program, before participants began their dissertation research, and it focused on how participants apply learning from the program within their practice and how they grow professionally in ways that make contributions to their organizations and their profession. The data are based on participant interviews, participants' curriculum vitae submitted during qualifying exams, and professional websites. The findings indicate that an online professional program embedded in practice can have powerful impact within a short period of time on students' own practice, their local organizations, and their colleagues at regional, state, and national levels and spur their professional momentum.     

Rethinking our underlying assumptions about what we do and why we do it: academic development as a case

In this paper, academic developers from universities in three countries explore underlying assumptions about what we as developers do and why we do it in relation to evaluating development programs. Through addressing three questions, key ideas emerge that highlight what is often overlooked in day-to-day practice: the fact that academic development has a ‘signature pedagogy’ defined by the ‘learning paradigm’; the potential role of different stakeholders in setting criteria for evaluation; and the inclusion of non-traditional academic development literatures (e.g., adult education, educational change, organizational development) to avoid perpetuating established practices. Our intent is to intellectually challenge ourselves and others to move beyond sharing program and evaluation activities to explore ideas and literature not often considered in our day-to-day work. While the context is academic development, we believe the questions and the answers that emerged are of value to all involved in staff and professional development.     

Learning in academia is more than academic learning: action research in academic practice for and with medical academics

Academic learning traditionally involves research, and the production of journal papers, books, etc. ‘Learning in academia’ refers to academics becoming more skilful in what they do. It is what legal or medical clinicians would refer to as continuing professional education (or development) (CPE/D) which, by analogy, invokes the notion of CPE in academic practice. Action research and reflective practice through action learning processes in a graduate programme in higher education are used to promote such learning. Participants are mid‐career medics.

Five themes stand out: mapping the terrain to be addressed; creating the required ‘space for learning’; keeping projects confined in scope; assessment and the shift in emphasis from ‘content’ to ‘process’; and, achieving a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Many attributes of threshold concepts are evident, but conceiving of learning as progress along a continuum rather than crossing a singular threshold is favoured. Issues to do with promulgating CPE/D in academia, identity construction, rethinking learning, and universities are briefly addressed.     

The impact of intensive ‘value for money’ performance auditing in educational systems

The starting point for this article is the authors' ongoing collaborative enquiry into professional practice, which primarily aims to improve and develop our roles in Staff and Educational Development in Higher Education (HE). Part of this action research cycle includes an empirical study carried out in the authors' institution to find out how academic colleagues view their work practices. They identify the major difficulties faced in supporting the professional development of these staff and argue that to be effective within a culture that encourages individualism, and that is driven by a disciplinary-research agenda, those who have responsibility for academic professional development should promote the idea of teachers as researchers. They argue that a research approach to development, centred on individual practice and learning, should be considered by those who engage in professional learning. Beyond these issues, the study also provides a snapshot of academic values in a research-led Higher Education Institution in Britain in the late 1990s.     

Positioning adult educators in discourses of professional development

This article explores the discursive work done by different notions of professional development in adult education. In particular we outline the ways in which the discourses of technical expertise, competence and reflective practice are deployed to mobilise professional practices and identities in particular ways and position certain practices and dispositions as specifically professional. We suggest that these discourses help to shape the negotiations between economies of performance and ecologies of practice within which professionals operate. We argue that much of this work is implicit in the pedagogies and curriculum of programmes for adult educators and that there is a need for detailed empirical research on the pedagogies of professional development and practice in adult education. With moves in Europe to develop professional standards for adult educators we suggest that studying the rhetoric of professional development provides an opportunity to open some existing diverse practices to new forms of scrutiny.     

农村特级教师专业成长历程的调查与分析

对福建省120名农村特级教师进行专业成长历程问卷调查,发现福建省农村特级教师入职学历普遍较低,目前多数处于职业生涯的巅峰状态,具有强烈的职业认同感;农村特级教师专业成长存在关键期、关键人物和关键事件,特级教师的成长需要长时间的积累和磨练。