Navigating the complexities of higher education: towards a more holistic, relational understanding of academic development work

From the very beginning, since the publication of our first volume, there have been calls in IJAD for a holistic approach to academic development. Back in 1996, Brew and Boud noted that ‘the necessary emphasis on teaching has distracted attention from the fact that university teachers are facing many other complex demands’ (p. 17). They highlighted diversity in the range of backgrounds of academics and their increasingly diverse range of roles, as well as the growth in the number of casual and contract staff. As a result, Brew and Boud (1996) called for new frameworks for academic development to emphasize negotiation and flexibility. More than twenty years later, Sutherland (2018) responded to what she terms the persistent calls for a more holistic approach to academic development echoing through the literature: an approach that would consider the whole of the academic role, the whole institution, and the whole person. Such a holistic understanding is also reflected in IJAD’s working definition of academic development (https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rija20#working).

The articles in the current issue all engage, whether explicitly or implicitly, with the complexities, challenges, and opportunities of a more holistic understanding of academic development work, one that is also more relational in character. Relationality is present in academic development practice, although rarely made explicit in role description. For example, when you meet an academic developer passionate about their work, it becomes clear that care, community, and quality are foundational to their philosophical and professional approach. Those drawn to the academic development profession are often individuals who experience the joys of teaching and serving their community by holding space for impactful conversations and experiences. Relational pedagogies drive academic development work, as confirmed by significant work in IJAD and in the field more broadly, including recent special issues on approaches to fostering communities of practice (Mårtensson & Roxå, 2015) and professional conversations (Pleschová et al., 2021). This work is underpinned by philosophies of care, with holistic, person-centred ontologies that inform academic developer work as ‘influencing agents’ (Debowski, 2014, p. 50) across capacity building, policy writing, and change enabling practices.

It also becomes clear just how complex our work is. While many, perhaps most, of us still work in centralized units that focus on professional development of teaching, a holistic approach to academic development also embraces those in positions that emphasise educational technology or researcher development. A range of development services that specialise in one domain, or stretches across several dimensions of teaching and research work, seeks greater alignment to support the complexities of faculty work that may include teaching and research roles. Adding to the complexity of academic development work, staff in higher education institutions are affected by the socio-political and economic structures contextualised within the neoliberal university. Neoliberalism is a discourse and ideology that is dominated by a managerial logic that emphasises the importance of individual agency and market-oriented reforms, while promoting competition rather than collaboration among academics and institutions (Manathunga & Bottrell, 2019). In the context of higher education, neoliberalism has influenced the way universities are funded, managed, and operated, creating tensions that impact on and challenge academic development work.

The autonomous, competitive and data-driven agenda of a neoliberalist organisation, can sit uncomfortably with the relational philosophies, priorities, and pedagogies of academic developers. Academic developers navigate a myriad of individual and organizational paradoxes in order to both operate within institutional parameters, while simultaneously upholding the care, creativity, and community required for academic development work. The papers in this issue explore the work of academic developers, the role of students, and the impact of institutional structural issues in order to achieve the universal goal of quality education. These papers highlight the tensions, the side steps, the advocacy and creative imagining of practices that are demonstrated in examples from around the world, in order to pursue and advocate for relational pedagogies.

We start this editorial with the final contribution to this issue, a reflection on practice by Su and Wood (2023) that in some ways sets the scene for the other papers. Their question is ‘what does relational pedagogy in higher education look like in practice, and how can we develop it?’ After providing a brief overview of what it is and why it matters – in particular, but not only, because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic – they argue that academic developers have an important role to play in supporting academics and students in developing and enacting relational pedagogy. This can be done in several ways, with Su and Wood focusing in particular on two of these: through communities of practice, and through ‘supporting academics to cultivate a ‘“relational pedagogy mindset”’ (Su & Wood, 2023, p. 3), for example by inviting academics to reflect on how relational aspects have shaped their own educational journeys. They emphasise, however, that developing and enacting relational pedagogy requires the right conditions at institutional level, over which academic developers often have little if any control.

In their contribution, McComb and Eather (2023) sketch some of the complexities of academic development work, highlighting in particular the tensions between a pervasive state of change or flux and the prevailing necessity to create spaces that enable growth in quality teaching. In this dynamic context, sessional teachers, those at the coalface who are increasingly responsible for the majority of institutional teaching loads, experience a mix of support from professionals offering educational development. Their paper presents findings from seven academic developers across Australian universities, and raises concerns with inconsistent recruitment, remuneration, record keeping and development practices that impact sessional staff. Limited access to training is exacerbated by a lack of resources and the constant changes imposed on academic development teams, resulting in a lack of support for sessional staff, often limited to online modules or invitations into existing programs. Academic developer voices echo disquietude, torn between supporting all staff and having to deprioritise sessional experiences in order to manage institutional priorities.

Positioned in the broader socio-political context of the neoliberalist university, Gurney and Grossi (2023), explore manifestations of entrepreneurialism in the role of an academic language and learning advisor. This case study presents ‘contours’ of an entrepreneurial self, to unpack a myriad of practices as the advisor negotiates the various tensions that are inherent in the role. Their findings underscore that building relationships with students is essential to the work, yet are contrasted with the need to advocate for and promote the visibility and importance of this work within the institution. The authors highlight the dilemma that where individual and agile efforts are needed for fostering student learning, often managerial structures reward broader, demonstrable contributions to institutional agendas.

Mercer-Mapstone et al. (2023) argue for the crucial role of academic developers to influence change within the context of a restrictive and non-representational science curriculum. Their paper presents an effective program of curriculum transformation when adopting a faculty-based approach, empowering students as authentic partners and prioritising an inclusive curriculum. The student-staff partnership process uses a ‘pedagogy of the privileged’ model (Curry-Stevens, 2007) to survey staff and student experiences. Findings revealed participants’ insights on their own biases and promoted a sense of belonging, yet also presented struggles working within systems of oppression as well as institutional, structural barriers. The authors intend this work as an ‘opening’ for further research, and are clear on the imperative of what they consider to be authentic student partnership.

Further advocating for the central importance of student voice in teaching and learning matters, Ahmadi (2023) brings us a researcher-teacher study exploring student curriculum co-design in an Asian context. Located in Iran, this study brings contextual and cultural features to an action research project analysing students journals, teachers field notes, class recordings, and survey responses. The study reports that students offered mixed attitudes towards a prescribed syllabus, effectiveness of teaching, and approaches to learning. This paper offers multiple, diverse students’ voices and demonstrations of teacher reflexivity based on this feedback. Ahmadi (2023) surmises that student feedback on teaching is culturally and contextually sensitive, and invites educators to reflect on cultural norms in their own teaching practice.

Callahan’s (2023) paper returns to science education in reflecting on a study of a student success initiative that consisted of a yearlong faculty learning community (FLC). More particularly, the focus of this community of practice was on building a sense of caring among the faculty, using a ‘propagation’ approach as a change strategy through developing reflective practitioners. The study investigated which aspects of instructional and student learning considerations were the focus of faculty reflections as they revised their undergraduate mathematics and science courses. While there was evidence that the learning community supported faculty in designing and implementing instructional innovations, Callahan’s study raises questions about the impact it had on ‘how faculty think about teaching and learning over time’ (Callahan, 2023, p. 10). The results have interesting implications for academic developers who seek to establish and sustain faculty learning communities.

Elturki and Hellmann (2023) studied the experiences of faculty teaching in linguistically and culturally diverse (LCD) contexts in the United States. The increasing internationalization of higher education has brought various challenges for which neither institutions nor faculty are sometimes well-prepared. Accordingly, Elturki and Hellmann (2023) considered faculty perceptions of LCD students, their instructional practices to adapt to increasingly diverse classrooms, and the support they need for effective teaching in such challenging settings. They find that there is ‘a significant amount of variance in pedagogical underpinnings related to LCD settings’ (p.9) and they make several suggestions for addressing the situation. Of note is their call (2023, p.10) for what one might term a ‘joined-up approach’ at the institutional level (see Trowler & Bamber, 2005) involving administrators, faculty, academic developers, and student support staff. This would offer not only programmes for faculty, but would enable on-going and accessible support through creating relevant resources and communities of practice.

Turning to researcher development in the context of academic development work in Ecuador, Rodas and colleagues’ (2023) paper focuses on what can be gathered from three faculty writing groups (FWGs). Their point of departure in this study is the need for a more holistic approach to academic development, given the pressure on academics to publish. They consider factors that could influence the implementation and sustainability of FWGs, with the main focus of the study being members’ ‘talk’ during FWG sessions. Their analysis of these data identified four categories, with the overwhelming majority involving discussion of the texts being reviewed and comments provided by participants. All participants appeared to value group members’ disciplinary diversity, as this provided an outsider’s perspective on their topics, though as they remark, members of the groups they studied were mainly in the hard sciences, so disciplinary distance arguably was not too large. The writing group coordinator, in this case an academic developer, played a leadership role in facilitating processes that were key in creating a rhythm and accountability for the group.

Finally, Khoo’s (2023) paper describes her researcher development unit’s efforts to develop a research culture, in particular through building professional social media literacy and digital identities. In providing an overview of the work her unit does, she argues for a community of practice approach to building an institutional research culture. She suggests that academics can be supported to build community as researchers in ways that go beyond attending conferences and visiting other institutions; researcher development should support academics’ engaging in social media. Khoo ends by listing various examples of social media activity by researchers, and notes some of the benefits and problems attached to it.

The new insights and developments highlighted in this issue demonstrate progress towards a more holistic account of academic development work, where negotiation and flexibility are essential. What is clear from the stories, findings, examples, and arguments presented here is that relational pedagogies underpin academic development as it is conducted in varied contexts among a multitude of tensions and challenges. Looking ahead, we encourage greater exploration and empirical evidence on the impact on staff and student outcomes of relational pedagogies that take account of the whole academic role, the whole institution, and the whole person.