Tracing a developer’s development: a self-study in teaching

Abstract

In this article, I trace how my teaching has changed as I have become increasingly involved in educational development. I divide my career into three phases (pre-educational development, part-time educational development, and full-time educational development) and analyze qualitative and quantitative data from multiple sources of evidence in each phase: teaching statements, syllabi, and student evaluations of teaching. This self-study reveals specific, primarily positive ways my teaching has changed. The results suggest that educational development may not only improve the teaching of its intended recipients, but also those responsible for supporting them. Implications for the field of educational development are explored.

Keywords:

• Educational development
• teaching
• self-study

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Lindsay Bernhagen, Adriana Streifer, and Carol Subiño Sullivan, for reviewing my teaching materials and for having critical conversations with me about the data; Jessica Tamayo, for providing much of the foundational literature for this piece through her diligent research and collection of scholarly materials; Steve Harper and Ed Brantmeier, for their help in thinking through the conceptual grounding of the piece; and the two anonymous IJAD reviewers, for challenging me to provide greater theoretical clarity and practical implications.