Informal conversations about teaching and their relationship to a formal development program: learning opportunities for novice and mid-career academics

Abstract

Engaging in informal activities, like conversations with colleagues, is one way that professionals can learn within workplace contexts. Informal conversations present opportunities for academics to learn about teaching. The current study investigated academics’ experience of informal conversations, and their experience of the relations between conversations and one formal development program. Semi-structured interviews with 30 individual academics were conducted and the transcripts analysed using the constant comparative method associated with grounded theory. This analysis provided evidence that conversations play a developmental role in supporting academics to learn about teaching from colleagues, and these conversations can reinforce the learning from a formal development program. The results of this study suggest roles for academic developers in encouraging informal conversations about teaching, and building constructive relations between formal and informal development strategies.

Keywords:

• informal conversations
• structured and everyday learning
• grounded theory
• academic development
• mid-career academics

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Keith Trigwell, Simon Barrie and colleagues from the Institute for Teaching and Learning for their contributions to this article and faculty colleagues for their participation in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSW Institute for Education Research.