What’s next? Experiences of a formal course for academic developers

A growing impetus for disciplinary status for academic development has prompted efforts to construct a principled knowledge base in this emerging field. This paper considers the impact of academic developers’ access to structured knowledge through a systematic process. In 2011, the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University implemented a postgraduate qualification for academic developers. This paper documents the experiences of two cohorts by exploring routes into and expectations of the course, value attached to its knowledge base and impact on identity formation (coming to be) through an encounter with knowledge (coming to know). This study explores participant experiences through identifying key insights following their introduction to new conceptual and theoretical notions by considering four knowledge domains in the course. General assertions are drawn from participant responses to inform ongoing development of the course. The course is examined as a potential mechanism for academic developers to construct an academic developer identity via an encounter with knowledge. It is anticipated that this encounter enables knowledge-based responses to complex questions.     

School violence,school differences and school discourses

This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violence‐resilient school. In six inner‐city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of association between the patterns of behaviour and school practices was found: schools with a wider range of well‐connected practices seemed to have less difficult behaviour. Interviews also showed that the different schools had different organisational discourses for construing school violence, its possible causes and the possible solutions. Differences in practices are best understood in connection with differences in these discourses. Some of the features of school discourses are outlined, including their range, their core metaphor and their silences. The authors suggest that organisational discourse is an important concept in explaining school effects and school differences, and that improvement attempts could have clearer regard to this concept.