Our academic development stories: exploring identities, complexities, and experiences

How can we best define ‘academic development’? This question continues to provoke ongoing discussion amongst the IJAD editors (Baume, 1996; Bolander Laksov & Huijser, 2020; Leibowitz, 2014; Sutherland, 2018; Zou & Felten, 2019) and has resulted in numerous articles in this journal over the last few decades (see, for example, Andresen, 1996; Debowski, 2014; Gibbs, 2013). This question raises numerous further queries about academic development: What identities have we constructed and re/(de)constructed as academic developers? Where do we find academic development being enacted? Who conducts academic development and for whom? Is ‘academic development’ solely about teaching development, or can it (should it) expand to work with the interconnected whole of academic life including, for example, research and public engagement? How do students, faculty members, and academic developers from different contexts, institutions, backgrounds, and nationalities enact academic development for themselves and for others? What major challenges are academic developers now facing? One point is abundantly clear: a single answer to any of these questions does not exist. Academic development encompasses complex, multi-faceted identities, processes, and experiences for all those who engage in it.

In 2021, the IJAD editorial team created a broad and dynamic working definition of academic development to describe our work across our institutions and around the world and that also reflects the breadth and depth of this work:

Academic development (also known as educational, faculty, or staff development), aims to enhance the practice, theory, creativity and/or quality of teaching and learning communities in higher or post-secondary education.

Our work as academic developers is oriented towards individuals, groups, or organizations and can take the form of both deliberate actions and informal initiatives, including those in partnership with academic colleagues and students. We focus on supporting the professional development of academics and/or senior administrators at any stage of their careers and in relation to such key dimensions of their academic roles as teaching, scholarship, service, and leadership. This work can inform context-specific institutional and organizational development, and thereby effect positive change. https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rija20#working

However, we wondered what this definition looked like on the ground, at the grassroots level, and whether it could be expanded to be more inclusive of a variety of experiences around the globe. We wanted to discover local features of academic development and explore interculturality as well as the idiosyncratic, day-to-day experiences of this work. We wanted to hear the voices of academic developers and researchers in this field directly and asked you to explore what it means and what it feels like to engage academic development work. As a result of a general call for contributions, we received an overwhelming number of ‘vignettes’, short stories from our readership that capture wide-ranging, lived experiences of academic development, as well as thoughts and feelings about academic development, ranging from passion to frustration to pragmatism. These vignettes span where we currently are, the struggles we now face, and the directions in which we believe we should next be going. In this issue we share twenty-four of these stories, all peer reviewed by the editorial team, and that collectively form a snapshot of academic development at this moment in time. They capture the spirit of our work across the globe from various cultural and national perspectives. They also capture the different positions we hold through our institutional practices and our personal and professional identities. This vignette format has enabled the telling of stories, providing a place for individual voices, perspectives, opinions, beliefs, values, and feelings. These individual stories provide opportunities for reflection – by authors and readers – to further inform our current practice and research.

This narrative approach to understanding our work creates rich primary sources collectively ‘illustrating the complexity of academic practice’ (O’Farrel & Fitzmaurice, 2013, p. 228) as well as its different contexts. As Anna Jones (2011) has noted,

The strength of narrative as a means of inquiry is not that it can provide objective or generalizable truths – it cannot. Its strength lies in its ability to present the human side of education to illuminate some of the intensely personal and individual stories that are, nonetheless, recognizable and hence the meanings revealed in the narratives are applicable to other places and other people. (pp. 115–116)

Each vignette in this issue represents a unique experience and perspective, yet each one is also generally ‘recognizable’. Collectively, the vignettes highlight some key themes about academic development that provide valuable insight into the lived experience of academic development. Our desire is to offer an inclusive perspective on academic development by offering a kaleidoscope of stories that help to overcome the feeling of belonging to a ‘family of strangers’ (Green & Little, 2016). Our intent is also to identify profiles as well as professional and personal identities of academic developers and academic development communities.

Sometimes through the use of metaphor, sometimes through an example of practice, and sometimes through a representative anecdote, the vignettes explore academic developer identities, what constitutes academic development work, what work still needs to be embraced, what meaning is attached to this work, and why the work matters so deeply to the development of academics and academic developers. Academic development work is being conducted by people who call themselves academic developers in a professional context, but also by individuals and groups of academics who have embraced the importance of academic development for themselves and their colleagues, and also by graduate and undergraduate students who have supported and engaged in this work. Academic development is being conducted in formal and informal ways, in disciplines, across disciplinary lines, and across institutional and national boundaries.

Many of the vignettes highlight the value of building academic communities, relationships, trust, and a sense of belonging through this work. Conversation appears key to exploring the complexities that exist. The vignette authors also argue for the advocacy, agency, and power that come with development work, but at the same time highlight where disempowerment, barriers, and boundaries have been encountered and confronted. In their vignette ‘Fences, dancing, and the spaces between academic development’, Wendy Taleo and Carmen Vallis note that ‘in the discordant mess of ill-defined teaching and learning challenges, a creative lens can help to find new dance steps. We encourage the flexibility of dance, the recognition of fence posts, and the possibility to make music in the defined spaces between’ (2022, p. 313)

The vignettes are stories narrated from a large variety of contexts, cultures, and perspectives, addressing different features, key elements, and challenges of academic development in the third millennium. We have grouped these rich stories into four themes that emerged from the dimensions addressed by the authors.

The first theme is ‘Conceptualizing Academic Development Approaches’. This section includes vignettes which focus on values and frameworks for academic development, where authors share their perspectives and paradigmatic standpoints on defining academic development across a multilevel and changing field.

The second theme is ‘Becoming an Academic Developer’. These vignettes include discussions about possible transitions and boundaries from and to academic development, connecting, for example, to the research, professional, and clinical worlds. Holistic academic development implies the interconnection and growth of multiple academic identities as well as the complex work of building bridges across different areas towards systemic educational change.

The third theme is ‘Building Academic Development Communities and Structures’. Here the vignettes’ authors focus their stories on the importance and possibilities of building structures and strategies for academic development, but also consider ownership and a sense of belonging to a community. This section speaks about academic developers’ agency as individuals, but also as a group to scaffold and reinforce the discourse on this topic within and across institutions.

The fourth theme is ‘Working in Academic Development Partnerships’. The vignettes in this section speak to the concept of ‘partnership’ that is well known in higher education. They highlight the importance of a dialogical approach to academic development that includes the multiple stakeholders involved in academic development work, academics, managers, and students, identifying possible ways to implement effective pedagogical leadership.

The ‘dance’ invoked by Taleo and Vallis (2022) continues as the vignettes shared in this issue have been paired with three research articles that also explore, in different ways, the meaning and nature of academic development work. These articles complement the vignettes by drawing attention to similar key foci including professional identity, holistic academic development, and the evaluation of academic development practice outcomes. However, most importantly, like the vignettes, the articles highlight the complex nature of academic development work, academic developers’ identities, and the ability of this work to bring about change.

Mori et al. (2022) explore academic developers’ professional identity through a thematic literature review from 1996–2020. They note that as a fairly new and ‘vulnerable profession that is not well understood’ (p. 360), issues of identity have been repeatedly and variously discussed. The four major themes captured by the 24 articles included in the review reflect similar themes to those arising in the vignettes including migration, liminality, agency, and community. These themes raise questions about entry into the profession and the adjustments needed to make that transition. Simultaneously, academic developers experience both ‘an unstable state’ (p. 363) of their professional identity and yet the freedom of agency in determining their identity. Nonetheless, the authors do argue that to establish a collective professional identity, academic developers must ‘build their own language as a community’ (p. 366). These on-going tensions highlighted in Mori et al. are similarly reflected in the vignettes.

Kiruthika Ragupathi (2022) explores the question, ‘What work do academic developers do as they create holistic professional development opportunities for academics?’. She notes that continuing professional development comes in many forms, formal and informal, and can be offered to students, faculty members, and staff about university teaching, learning, and research ‘thereby focusing on the whole institution’ (p. 375). Through interviews with academic development staff at one institution, this article explores the purpose, focus, and desired characteristics of this professional development arguing that ‘it is imperative for CPD to go beyond teaching and learning by connecting with research, student learning, communities, and the world, to foster sustained engagement communities’ (p. 380). The vignettes in this special issue reflect just how holistic academic development can be, considering who does academic development work, what work they do, in what areas, with whom, and to what extent.

Finally, Miller-Young and Poth (2022) tackle the ‘elephant in the room’ questions of academic development: ‘How do we know it works, what is the impact, and does it bring about change?’. They introduce the need for evaluating the complex outcomes of academic development with complexity principles and offer an iterative process for implementing such an evaluation framework. They ask how we can overcome the challenges of individual differences, the significant resources needed to collect the data for assessment of impact, and ‘attend to possible ripple effects that defy simplistic analyses of cause and effect’ (p. 389). Miller-Young and Poth (2022) argue that the ‘[b]enefits of engaging in the development theory of change models include articulating assumptions of intended pathways and providing a mechanism for discussions of additional pathways’ (p. 391). The vignettes speak to the complexity and interconnections that these authors are trying to grasp and assess for impact.

This special issue is not exhaustive in exploring every possible aspect of academic development. Our goal, though, is to offer food for thought and openings for future questions, reflections, and directions. Some aspects of our work are now consolidated throughout the world. Some other aspects are emerging as new directions for practice, research, and scholarship. We hope that you will find a comfortable chair and sit with these vignettes and accompanying articles to reflect on your own academic development practice regardless of the identities you hold and the context(s) in which you practice this work. We invite you to take the time to meander through these shared thoughts and experiences about our academic development work. What resonates with you? What do you want to learn more about? What new ideas and approaches can you take up and explore in your own work? As Tracey Bailey says in her vignette, ‘There is still much to do. The work of an academic developer has no end. It evolves with time and the needs of students, staff and the wider world’ (2022, p. 320). One of our goals for this special issue was to include more voices to ensure the sharing of a multitude of ideas about academic development. And yet we are sure we are only just beginning to scratch the surface of our deep and multi-faceted ways of being through this work.