Academic development as distributed cognition and practice

Like a tree, academic development keeps changing, developing, and growing in interaction with the academic environments it intends to cultivate. Since the International Consortium for Educational Development was established 30 years ago, academic development has changed as well as not changed. Although the changes are not ubiquitous across higher education institutions, there are matching patterns.

Ten years have passed since Graham Gibbs (2013) wrote his seminal piece in this journal describing the changing nature of academic development. In his article, he described the activities in which we engage as academic developers (ADs) to develop teaching and learning within universities, as well as visible trends of change. When reading the contributions in this issue, it is evident that they collectively reflect the movement described by Gibbs. None of the papers focus on activities Gibbs suggested we are engaging in less, such as individual teacher development, change of classroom practice, small scale tactics, and quality assurance. Instead, today’s academic development practice, as represented in the contributions to this issue, focuses on creating environments for learning, building communities of practice, developing change strategies to ensure quality enhancement, and understanding educational leaders. However, we see a new evolvement of academic development: academic development as distributed cognition and practice.

The idea of learning as an individual’s acquisition of a set of theories or tools has been questioned and discussed by many researchers. One of the most frequently referenced researchers on this topic is Anna Sfard and her article ‘On two metaphors for learning and the danger of choosing just one’ (Sfard, 1998). In this article she presents two metaphors for learning as guiding principles for learners, teachers, and researchers: the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor. By scrutinizing the theoretical underpinnings as well as the consequences of giving up one metaphor for the other, she argues for the existence of and need for both perspectives. Returning to Gibbs' description of the ways in which academic development had developed since the start of ICED in 1993, we see many similarities with Sfard’s two metaphors. Academic development trends seemed to transition from a metaphor of acquisition to one where participatory practices are favored in collaborations, negotiations, and environments. Heeding Sfard’s advice, however, we need to be mindful not to give up the first metaphor. We might therefore ask the following questions: What is the next step? Do these two metaphors capture all there is to know and do in academic development? After reading the contributions in this issue, we suggest that they do not – there are new trends and evolvements in academic development.

The concept of ‘distributed cognition’ as introduced by Hutchins (1991) offers a way to frame what we see in the contributions to this issue specifically, but also in our work as IJAD editors reading a large number of manuscripts. Distributed cognition acknowledges that thinking and learning are distributed among individuals; the physical and digital environment; and among the tools used in an organisation by individuals, including language. These can be physical tools, such as computers and their programs, as well as conceptual tools that people use to extend their capacities. Collaboration and communication are crucial in distributed cognition since we think in conjunction with our peers and with our ‘mediating tools’ – tools that mediate between things and people, between groups and individuals. If a system of distributed cognition is to function, communication is the dependent factor (Hutchins, 2020).

Distributed cognition is necessary in workplaces where what counts as knowledge is constantly changing and distributed. We believe many of us would agree that higher education institutions can be characterized as such workplaces. Learning to function as an academic in such a context therefore involves a continuous learning process where individuals need to be engaged in dialogue, collaboration, and use of different tools to develop knowledge and teaching practice. When we see academic development as processes of engaging in distributed cognition and practice, new approaches to our practice become visible. We exemplify some of these practices in the following approaches which are captured in the manuscripts in this issue.

The need to be flexible to create dialogue

Dialogue and conversation between academics have received overwhelming attention as successful approaches to academic development (Pleschová et al., 2021). When we assume cognition is distributed, we continuously need to invent new ways of communicating with the different parts of the system – in this case, the university and its collaborators. In some of the papers in this issue, we see examples of academic developers adopting flexibility to create dialogue which enables the advantages afforded by the cognitive potentials inherent in the full organisation. Accordingly, O’Brien et al. (2023) explore factors that impact engagement in academic development activities, suggesting that ‘there is a shift towards the adoption of more flexible, work-based, apprenticeship models, where experiential routes are increasingly valued’ (p. 240) in professional development models. In other words, the flexibility we see here includes other valued and valid forms of academic development. Very often, academic development is determined by the systems in place for accreditation, as highlighted in Raffoul et. al.’s (2023) piece where they conclude that the audit culture of universities impacts the work of ADs. The authors show that ADs – like all academics – are impacted by the accreditation systems in which we act. Importantly, Raffoul et al. (2023) suggest that ADs engage in a continual iterative process of shifting our role to contribute to and impact or question the audit culture in relation to teaching and learning. Christensen et al. (2023) offer an additional example of the way in which academic development can challenge educational systems. They propose a new model for providing multi-modal feedback, which challenges existing hierarchies of rights and duties in the processes of feedback. The proposal results in new positions regarding responsibilities for feedback for university teachers.

Collaboration to enact and create change agency

It also becomes clear that ADs fulfill an important role as change agents and in creating change agency when they collaborate, connect, and network with teachers of different disciplinary and professional communities. For example, ADs may help faculty move beyond content-centered, lecture-based approaches to teaching, as raised in Tobiason’s article (2023) where peer observation models were explored. Study findings suggest that ADs can play an important role in collaborating with teachers regarding the design of peer observation models to promote success in fostering change from a student-centred perspective. As emphasized in Dean’s reflection on practice (2023), knowledge and practice are closely linked, and teachers need guidance on making their practice explicit to develop agency for change. One way of doing this is through the development of a teaching portfolio, and Dean (2023) provides guidance on this for both ADs and teachers. Yet, it is worth noting what Fossland and Sandvoll (2023) identify: ADs’ influence is dependent on how educational leaders perceive educational change and position developer roles and responsibilities in relation to change. Educational leaders and ADs thus need to collaborate in an atmosphere where educational leaders acknowledge ADs’ expertise to establish their change agency.

Tools to generate reflection

In a system of distributed cognition, ADs need to acknowledge and make use of different tools to generate (critical) reflection for learning. Incentives and award schemes for teaching competence are increasingly common in universities worldwide. This is particularly true in countries like the UK, where Higher Education Academy Fellowships attract applications from numerous academics. Cathcart et al. (2023) suggest that engaging in developing a fellowship application is a reflective act which has the potential to shape the student learning experience, even while the applicants may be frustrated and disillusioned by their experience. Cuenca-Carlino et al. (2023) offer another tool, ‘The Framework for Inclusive Teaching Excellence’, which can inform the assessment and value of teaching and learning through its integration across many aspects of academic development. Similarly, conversations have gradually become a tool in academic development to generate iterative reflections among academics. Koris and McKinnon (2023) found that academics who had been involved in online conversations with international colleagues through an academic development course had developed their identities, now seeing themselves as innovators with influence on teaching practice at their institutions. Similarly, Webb and Welsh (2023) analyze their recurring conversations about teaching, revealing the need for boundary crossing when engaging in SoTL work. At the theoretical level, there are several tools that can generate reflection. One example is Activity Theory and the Change Laboratory, which is presented by Garraway et al. (2023) as a semi-formal, yet flexible approach to generate transformative agency.

To sum up, academic development today seems to have evolved as distributed cognition and practice in several ways. It requires flexibility in our interactions with individuals as well as with the systems inherent in higher education. We need to adapt to a certain degree and obtain legitimacy in the organisation (Bolander Laksov, 2019) to develop trustful relationships from which we can create dialogue regarding existing systems of, for example, audit and feedback. We also engage in many collaborations with different communities of teachers and educational leaders and generate collaborative practice between teachers through, for example, observation programmes. Finally, ADs use a plethora of tools to generate reflection within formalized contexts locally and internationally through fellowship schemes, frameworks for excellence, and through purposeful reflection on conversations over time.

In alignment with these constant evolvements of academic development as distributed cognition and practice, IJAD is also under constant development. One example is IJAD volume 27(4), where a narrative approach to understanding academic development work was presented through 24 ‘vignettes’. We need such explorations to move our field forward in order to capture academic development narratives that represent distributed cognition and practice. But we also need to view things from a distance to get an overview of the kind of research and scholarship being carried out and the conclusions we can draw from them. Therefore, IJAD is introducing a new paper format: the Review. Reviews can be longer than an ordinary research article, 9000 words, and we encourage authors to identify important areas of knowledge where, as a community, we need to learn from a vast number of publications. Read more under ‘Instructions for authors’ on the IJAD website.

In conclusion, with the evolving cultural-historical aspect of higher education, academic development has grown beyond the acquisition and participation metaphors into distributed cognition and practice. Hence, ADs must constantly explore approaches to distributed cognition and practice by creating dialogue, being change agents, and developing tools to generate iterative reflection. Academic development is therefore an ongoing pursuit and evolvement.