Histories and institutional change: understanding academic development practices in the global ‘north’ and ‘south’

Abstract

Academic development has played a significant role in creating university ‘learning and teaching’ as an object of policy scrutiny and intervention. While academic development is a new field, its practices have been productive of new learning and teaching regimes in both the global ‘north’ and ‘south’. This paper explores the emergence of academic development as a practice and the agentic understandings of its actors in creating the academic development project in the face of global unevenness. The paper offers a critical account of the emergence of academic development practice in both the global ‘north’, drawing on the intertwined histories of the UK and Australia, and in the global ‘south’, drawing on the example of South Africa. In looking at the ongoing debates about academic development the paper argues that in constituting teaching and learning as its object, other more radical, feminist and critical pedagogies, which are capable of dealing with the power and curricula, were marginalised.

Keywords:

• Academic development
• learning and teaching strategy
• academic identity
• corporate agents

Notes

1. I am indebted to Brenda Leibowitz for bringing this to my attention. I am not the person to write this history, but it is important in understanding the different trajectories and concerns of South African Academic Development.