Conceptualizing impact in academic development: finding a way through

This paper explores the notion of impact in the context of academic development programs and considers how it can be described and understood. We argue that impact has a range of meanings and academic development programs such as graduate certificates have a broad group of stakeholders and hence the impact is different for each group depending on how the program aims and objectives are defined and understood. In finding a way through the difficulties of evaluating impact in academic development we point to the importance of clearly conceptualizing the notion of impact, a careful identification of the assumptions underpinning any program and an understanding of who academic development will benefit and how. We suggest that impact in academic development cannot be understood without taking account of the range of possible impacts and the difficulty of attributing simple cause and effect to a complex environment.     

Conceptualizing educational leadership in an academic development program

Promoting the development of educational leadership in higher education is essential for strengthening the quality of teaching and learning. Additional research is needed to conceptualize educational leadership, especially within informal roles. We analysed how faculty members in an academic development program conceptualized educational leadership. Five key characteristics emerged that inform the development of educational leadership capacity in postsecondary contexts: affective qualities, mentoring and empowering, action-orientation, teaching excellence, and research and scholarship. Three characteristics of academic programs aimed at developing educational leadership were also identified: funding and resources to implement a change initiative, building interdisciplinary communities, and embracing identity.     

Collaborative course design: changing the process,acknowledging the context,and implications for academic development

This research study describes the experiences and perceptions of an instructor and an instructional design specialist who collaborated on the design and implementation of a university course using a new course design process. Findings uncovered differences between an informal collaboration process and the adaptation of that process for implementation in a classroom setting. Recommendations support the concepts of a long‐term collaboration, consideration of classroom constraints, and the importance of course participant voices and perspectives. Thoughtful consideration of the interaction of the design and implementation processes and commitment to continual course design collaboration can have positive implications for academic development.

Cette étude décrit les expériences et perceptions d’un enseignant et d’un spécialiste du design pédagogique ayant collaboré au design et à la mise en ?uvre d’un cours universitaire à l’aide d’un nouveau processus de développement de cours. L’étude a permis de mettre en lumière les différences entre un processus informel de collaboration et l’adaptation de ce processus de façon à le mettre en ?uvre dans le contexte d’une classe. Les recommandations présentées soutiennent les concepts de collaboration à long terme, la considération des contraintes de classe, et l’importance de la voix et de la perspective des participants au cours. Une réflexion approfondie de l’interaction entre les processus de design et de mise en ?uvre, de même qu’un engagement à l’égard d’une collaboration continue en matière de design pédagogique peuvent avoir des implications positives sur les expériences de développement pédagogique.     

Professional development for teachers: a world of change

As the industrialised world shifted to an interdependent and global society, formal schooling was quickly recognised as a major factor in achieving a knowledge society of lifelong learners capable of transforming and revitalising organisations. Teachers were encouraged to engage in learning together to improve teaching and, by extension, improve learning for the children in their care. This article identifies three emerging trends intended to broaden teachers' learning and enhance their practices through continuous professional development: glocalisation, mentoring, and re‐thinking teacher evaluation. The body of the article indicates how these three trends are unfolding in Australia, England, Latvia, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Taiwan, and the USA.

However, teachers cannot bring about necessary changes without organisational and systemic change; namely, collaboration with governmental agencies and other institutions. The authors suggest that transforming schooling in the twenty‐first century depends on education policies being supported by expanded teacher participation in education policy‐making, more coherent governmental policies across agencies, and collaborative, differentiated models for career‐long continuing professional development.     

Reconceptualising academic work as professional practice: implications for academic development

Despite increasing research and scholarship in the area of academic development in recent years, it remains an under-theorised field of endeavour. The paper proposes that academic developers take a view on what constitutes academic work and see it as a form of professional practice. It discusses the features of practice theory that illuminate professional practice and identifies three foci for the application of these ideas within academic development: practice development, fostering learning-conducive work and deliberately locating activity within practice. It also suggests that academic development be viewed as a practice and points to features within its own traditions on which to build.     

Lessons learned: towards a framework for integration of theory and practice in academic development

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I describe an approach to the integration of theory and practice at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational levels. The results of the research projects in which I have been involved over the last ten years are used to illustrate how these three levels have facilitated the identification of three tensions. These tensions together create a framework that can help academic developers better understand how to approach the challenges of advocating for the integration of higher education theory with academic practice in their own institutional environments, and how this integration is linked to existing higher education literature.     

Visualizing strategic change in an educational development centre with product-based analysis

Product-based analysis (PBA) is a new way of modelling the strategic direction of an educational development centre (EDC). It was developed within an English EDC to complement other strategic techniques, providing a means of visualizing the overall strategy. This critique of PBA is set in the context of global university reforms, restructurings and economic constraints that EDCs mirror in miniature. The case for PBA is demonstrated through two exemplars, one retrospective, the other applied to the same group, now dispersed several years on, as it sets out a collaborative strategy to address the future uncertainties shared by many EDCs.     

Evaluating teaching effectiveness and teaching improvement: A language for institutional policies and academic development practices

Demands for institutional accountability in higher education have been increasing and have led to greater attention to the evaluation of teaching, the assumption being that improved teaching will result in enhanced learning. In our work as academic developers, we are increasingly helping academic managers make explicit teaching policies and practices that seem fair and equitable. To help us in this work, we have developed a framework for evaluating the practice of teaching. What is unique about this framework is the language it provides to differentiate aspects of teaching. For instance, it provides a basis for differentiating and linking criteria to standards, i.e. the level of achievement desired or expected. Standards are critical if the evaluation of teaching is to be seen as fair and equitable, yet they are often unexamined in other representations of the evaluation of teaching. Although the original intent of our efforts was to provide a framework for academic managers, we have come to find it useful in our own work as university teachers and as academic developers. Examples of all three uses are provided in the paper.     

Design and effects of an academic development programme on leadership for educational change

For 40 years, the ‘staff teaching seminar’ has aimed to prepare academics to meet the complex demands of university teaching. In Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ), as elsewhere, the seminar emerged in the late 1960s–early 1970s, and preceded centrally funded academic development (AD) centres. Targeting new academics, the programme typically focused on core activities of university teaching and blended presentations by experienced academics from various disciplines with group activities and plenary discussions. Several decades on, this pedagogical space is plainly recognisable as a core site of AD in NZ today. In order to problematise AD’s ambitions for this site and others like it, this essay refracts past and present versions through the prism of heterotopia. In so doing, we sound a warning about AD’s implication in the inexorable rise of governmentality in our institutions. We also, though, recognise the ways in which the staff teaching seminar eludes such forces.     

The impacts of district policy and school context on teacher professional development

Teacher professional development has become one of the most important policy issues in the context of standards-based reform in U.S. However, our understanding of the contexts that influence teacher professional development remains limited. Using a series of 3-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM/3L) statistical analyses of a large nationally representative dataset, this article examines the impacts of multi-nested district and school contexts on teacher professional development. This article suggests that diverse and complex relationships among contextual factors at the district- and school-level encourage or limit time for teacher professional development. Finally, some implications are presented for school leaders and educational policy makers in attempting to broaden and enhance teacher professional development.     

Assessing the contribution of collections of case studies to academic development in higher education

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical review of the motivating factors, processes and outcomes pertaining to learning‐centred curriculum reform in higher education. A case study example is provided from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Although academic units on university campuses tend to present many unique contextual challenges, and are at different stages in curriculum re‐design, useful lessons can be learned across settings without “re‐inventing the wheel,” or falling into similar implementation problems. A flexible framework, guiding principles and strategic approach to developing and implementing learning‐centred curricula are provided to assist academic developers. Curricular reform has implications for learning communities, planning, assessment and programming in higher education.     

The development of early childhood education in rural areas in China

Early childhood education has developed greatly in rural areas in China since the 1980s. Recognising the status of early childhood education as ‘the foundation of basic education’, the authorities in China have set up challenging objectives for rural areas. However, the development of early childhood education in these areas has been facing tremendous difficulties and challenges. This paper provides an overview of such development in the past 25 years. Issues of policies, funding, curriculum and the status of rural teachers will be addressed. Further, a case study of early childhood provision in Northwest China, Gao Village (Gao Cun), will be presented as an example of the development and challenges in a typical remote rural village in China.     

教育均衡发展:理论、指标和测算方法

Educational balance refers to the ideal that educational organizations and people who receive education enjoy equal treatment in educational activities under the thought of fair education and principle of educational equity, and the educational policy as well as legal system that guarantee its actual operations. The essence of balanced education development is to pursue educational equity and realize fair education. In terms of macroanalysis, it is the balance of educational supply and demand. In terms of mesoanalysis, it is the balance of educational resource disposition. In terms of microanalysis, it is the balance of school teaching processes, including the balance of the internal curriculum teaching resource disposition, and the balance of educational results as well as educational evaluation. Balanced education development is a historical category, which can be divided into four stages according to its achievement level. It is of great actual significance to establish the balancing index of fundamental educational development, especially the compulsory educational development, which is suitable for our national conditions and realities, to scientifically select the elements and to clarify the target of fundamental balanced education development. The data analysis indicates that the balancing index of our fundamental education in China is approaching this balance. __________ Translated from Jiaoyu Yanjiu 教育研究 (Educational Research), 2006, (6): 16–28     

现代教育技术的发展与成人高等教育的变革

现代教育技术的发展给我国传统成人高等教育带来了全面、深刻的影响。它不仅更新了教学方法和手段 ,更重要的是对传统成人高等教育的教育观念、教育模式、教育制度等带来整体性和根本性的变革 ,从而为实现我们长期以来所追求的开放式教育、自主性学习的教育思想 ,提供了坚实的物质基础和技术支撑。     

Enhancing outcomes and reducing inhibitors to the engagement of students and staff in learning and teaching partnerships: implications for academic development

A growing body of literature on students as partners in learning and teaching offers evidence on which academic developers can draw when supporting, advocating for, or engaging in partnerships. We extend a previous systematic review of the partnership literature by presenting an analysis and discussion of the positive and negative outcomes of partnership, and the inhibitors to partnership. Implications include the importance of academic developers supporting: the relational processes of partnership; institutional or structural change to address resistance; and the potential of partnership to make institutions more equitable and empowering spaces.     

Researcher-led academic development

In this study, members of a higher education department explore their research activity and how it influences their practice as academic developers in a research-led institution. While the research activities of the team members appear diverse, they are all underpinned by a shared set of professional values to provide an anchor for these activities. Research-as-pedagogy and the relationship between the discourses of research and teaching are explored using Bernstein’s knowledge structures. The authors conclude that differences in research focus (horizontal discourse) provide dynamism across a department and that stability is provided through the underpinning core values inherent in the vertical discourse.     

The development of competence and its social context

Several recent interpretations of the nature and development of competence are discussed, focusing on Gelman's proposal to view the development of concepts as the product of the interaction of conceptual, procedural, and utilization competences. In so doing, she proposes a solution to the dilemma (which many other theories could not avoid) of emphasizing either the construction of knowledge or the influence of experience in the development of understanding. However, Gelman does not consider the basically social nature of the development of competence. In this essay, it is argued that adults transmit perspectives on reality to children and in this way introduce them to what is considered worth knowing in the culture. Because a child's present abilities are integrated into such perspectives, these abilities are, at the same time, both utilized and modified. It is, therefore, implausible to ascribe the availability of general principles to very young children, as Gelman does in her theory of numerical competence. Two rival experiments on the development of numerical concepts are discussed. It is argued that the solution the children construct in these experiments is dependent on the perspective transmitted to them by the experimenter. Some educational consequences of a social context view on competence are presented.     

Trust,time and collective-individual priorities for educational development in marginalised communities

This article captures educational development from the perspective of those living on the social margins in South Africa, whose collective-individual priorities resulted in education for the community. The data were fugitive, in the minds of people for the most part, a small sample of key informants being selected by deliberate decision for in-depth interview to probe and uncover their perspective. These data were supplemented with observations of planning meetings, site visits and archival records of meetings, over several years. The data indicate that the development of education is grounded in trust and trust-building, and takes time. The process is described, which suggests, amongst others, an experience more typical to East Asia than Africa, an important temporal dimension in such provision and a mechanism assisting them alleviate their condition through education.     

Institutional habitus in context: implementation,development and impacts in two compulsory secondary schools in Barcelona

This article aims to revisit the relationship between school-level variables and students’ educational opportunities through the lens of institutional habitus. This approach is particularly well suited to explore the notion of school culture because it brings to the forefront the impact of social context, avoiding some of the limitations typically associated with the long-dominant perspective of school effectiveness research. Drawing on an ethnographic approach, the article explores how institutional habitus unfolds in two urban public secondary schools in the city of Barcelona. Breaking the notion down into three main components (educational status, organizational practices and expressive order), the analysis identifies two main types of institutional habitus – one based on action and inclusion, and another based on reaction and expulsion. Ultimately, these results give insight into the complex interplay of these three components, as well as on their combined impact on students’ educational opportunities.     

如何用科学发展观指导教育改革发展中的问题

在科学发展观的指导下,教育改革与发展要以学生、教师为本,尊重教育的内在规律,做好教育宏观调控,做好五个统筹,以实现教育促进人的全面发展的目标。