Family portrait: a profile of educational developers around the world

Abstract

Educational development (also called academic or faculty development) has been described as fragmented, disconnected, and a ‘family of strangers,’ due mostly to the different academic backgrounds of its members. In this paper, the authors report on a survey of over 1000 educational developers from 38 countries on six continents. To help the field gain a clearer picture of itself at the international level, the authors provide a profile of developers’ demography, institutional locations, academic backgrounds, and current roles, and discuss the implications for educational development as a field and developers as a community.

Keywords:

• Academic disciplines
• demographics
• educational development
• faculty development
• international comparisons
• role

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank members of ICED Council and friends and colleagues in educational development around the world who distributed our participation request to their formal and informal networks. We also thank Colette Hoption and Elise Murowchick for their advice and guidance on data analysis.

Disclosure statement

The authors reported no potential conflict of interest.