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Abstract
The field of educational development has a 40-year history of providing continuing education or professional development for academic staff, particularly focusing on improving teaching and learning. However, little has yet been written on the historical origins and development of this field, apart from content analyses of some key journals and books conducted recently. This article asks critical questions about the emergence and evolution of educational development, focusing particularly on Australia. It traces the genealogies of some of its dominant positionings and demonstrates, through historical textual analysis, how some topics, themes and methods have retained their dominance over this 40-year period, while others continue to remain marginal. Finally, it argues for further historical research, particularly employing genealogical historical methodologies, as a means of enabling the field to recover from historical amnesia, develop more critical means of interrogating its underlying epistemologies and creating the possibility for broader, contested futures.
Acknowledgments
Substantial parts of this paper were first presented as a keynote address to the Postgraduate and New Researchers Conference of the SRHE Conference in Newport, Wales in December 2009. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the Critical History of Academic Development group (Alison Lee, Peter Kandlbinder, Margaret Hicks, Sue Clegg, David Gosling, Barbara Grant, Mark Barrow and Ian Brailsford) who have influenced my thinking about the histories of educational development in ways that go beyond the joint publications that I have referenced here.