Experienced academics’ pedagogical development in higher education: time, technologies, and conversations

Abstract

This paper focuses on extending our limited understanding of how the teaching and assessment practices of experienced academics develop. The development of academics as teachers is increasingly seen as a key focus but much of the research in this area has focused on formal educational development initiatives. The analysis presented here investigates how experienced academics describe what has shaped their emerging pedagogical practices over time. The emphasis is on participants’ informal experiences. Three foci were identified as the most important for these participants’ developing practice: the choices participants made about using time in pressured contexts; the interplay between digital technologies and participants’ practice; and the conversations which participants had about their teaching and assessment. The implications presented for future research and development work emphasise influencing the institutional policy context and the value of working creatively with the complexities of emerging academic practices.

Keywords:

• Higher education
• educational development
• teaching
• digital technologies
• time
• conversations

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues Dr Hazel Christie and Dr Daphne Loads for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the paper.