Uncovering the emotional dimension of developing teaching practice through uncertainty: a multimodal methodology

ABSTRACT

This study explored how academics perceived the development of their practice during emergency remote teaching. It investigated how they approached the rapid upskilling required and what they found helpful and challenging. Interview findings are discussed in relation to a conceptual framework of professional development to reveal shifts in academics’ conceptions when faced with a highly disruptive environment. Findings highlight the importance of capturing non-verbal data to uncover the emotional dimension of teaching development through uncertainty. In addition to assisting reflection on the design of professional development during crises, the study underscores the value of multimodal methodologies in understanding academics’ professional development needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Business education
• emotion
• multimodal methodologies
• professional development
• remote teaching
• VUCA

Introduction

The idea of a VUCA world, that is, a world that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (Baran & Woznyj, 2021), has been referred to in the business, management, and leadership literature for 30 years. Faced with an increasing number of ‘acute’ crises (James & Wooten, 2022) such as bushfires, floods, and evolving COVID-19 variants (Huijser & Sim, 2022), as well as non-natural crises such as shifting market and organisational dynamics (Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2008), VUCA aptly describes the environment in which academics will continue to find themselves. While there are other concepts that describe uncertain environments, VUCA was chosen due to its alignment with the teaching, research, and discourse in the discipline in which the study was conducted. The use of VUCA as a framing concept also responds to the calls to broaden conversations about crises beyond COVID-19. Carmeli and Schaubroeck (2008) recognise that crises can quickly ‘shine the spotlight on any major problem in the design and activities of an organisational system’ (p. 178). The period of remote learning due to COVID-19 provides an opportunity to reflect on how academics developed their teaching practice when faced with uncertainty and reimagined approaches to professional development. By examining the experiences of academics at a Business School in a large Australian university, insights are gained into how to crisis-proof our teaching practice development approaches so we can quickly adapt and thrive in disruptive environments.

This study explores how academics perceived the development of their practice during emergency remote teaching (ERT). Through seven in-depth interviews, it investigates how academics approached the rapid upskilling required, what they found helpful, and their challenges. As highlighted by Wardak et al. (2023), there is limited research on professional development in business education, and professional development in the discipline requires epistemic and ontological change to align with the provision of an educational experience that is effective in developing future leaders. Less is known about how academics develop their practice in a VUCA environment. Hence, interview findings are discussed in relation to a recent conceptual framework of professional development that presents four qualitatively different conceptions of mindset: continual growth; student-centric; knowledge-sharing; and purpose-oriented. A fifth mindset present in the framework, described as a ‘dimension of variation’, is also considered. This ‘relevance mindset’ runs across the four mindsets of professional development. In the present study, these mindsets are used to consider how academics’ conceptions shift when faced with a highly disruptive environment. Our study provides a framework to assist in the design of professional development and support in times of crises.

This study begins with a review of the literature on addressing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on professional development in higher education. The multimodal methodology used, which incorporates the analysis of non-verbal data, is then outlined. Findings are presented according to four overarching categories and their sub-themes, and discussed in relation to an existing conceptual framework of professional development to consider shifts in academics’ conceptions when faced with a highly disruptive environment. Finally, the implications of the study are discussed in terms of approaches to the design of professional development in times of crises and appropriate methodologies for understanding academics’ professional development needs in higher education.

Literature review

Early in 2020, ERT (Hodges et al., 2020) created a need to promptly share research on how educators were approaching the challenges of teaching. This resulted in many studies utilising quick response research methods (Lockee, 2021), with a focus on immediate impact (Reynolds & Chu, 2020). The methods of research investigating learning and teaching through this period have since evolved, and literature addressing the implications and impact of COVID-19 on academic development relevant to the present study fall into four themes: shifts in the role of the academic developer; emotional impact of teaching during a crisis; holistic approaches to academic development, and frameworks for future practice.

Shifts in the role of the academic developer

Numerous authors highlight a shift in the role and perception of academic developers during the pivot to remote teaching and learning (Compton & Gilmour, 2022; Huijser & Sim, 2022; Lundberg & Stigmar, 2022; O’Toole et al., 2022; Stanton & Young, 2022; Watermeyer et al., 2022). In addition to the mobilisation needed to meet the upskilling requirements of academics (particularly around support for technology), research highlights how academic development, which has historically lived on the margins of academic life, was pulled front and centre during the pandemic (Watermeyer et al., 2022). Academics became more aware of the expertise of learning technologists and academic developers. They were no longer seen purely as ‘techies’, but went from ‘nice to know to “newfound popularity”’ (O’Toole et al., 2022, p. 207).

Emotional impact

Numerous studies explore the emotional impact of remote teaching and need for emotional connection during this time (Compton & Gilmour, 2022; Cunningham & Cunningham, 2022; Koris & McKinnon, 2021; Lundberg & Stigmar, 2022; Manley, 2022; Taylor et al., 2022). They find that academics experienced grief, loss, and frustration during ERT due to lack of student connection, intensified demands from leadership, and reduced self-efficacy. Taylor et al. (2022) investigates this using Kubler-Ross’s grief model which highlighted how academics’ need for trust and emotional connection are linked to well-being which, in turn, is connected to overall educator effectiveness (Naylor & Nyanjom, 2021; Trigwell, 2012). Compton and Gilmore, as well as Cunningham and Cunningham, discuss how foregrounding a ‘pedagogy of kindness’ can support such connection. While a variety of methodologies are used in these studies to explore the emotional dimension of remote teaching, none employ a multimodal approach incorporating non-verbal analysis.

Holistic academic development

Sutherland (2018) argues for a broader conception of academic development that encompasses the whole academic role, the whole institution, and the whole person. In response to COVID-19, some researchers have foregrounded the value of holistic approaches for addressing teaching development during uncertainty due to the flexibility and adaptability required during such periods. Holistic approaches tend to offer a variety of activities and consider teachers’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs, well-being, and personal and professional goals. Koris and McKinnon (2022) and Cunningham and Cunningham (2022) emphasise that holistic approaches cater to the fact that many academics prefer to learn from colleagues or their friends through informal conversations because they provide both emotional support and support for functioning in a new environment. Manley (2022) and Lundberg and Stigmar (2022) also support holistic approaches, highlighting the critical importance of taking the entire academic role into consideration.

Frameworks for future practice

A number of studies focus on the positive outcomes of the remote teaching period and offer a future focus for professional development. Lundberg and Stigmar (2022) suggest that the experience has resulted in more reflective practitioners, and Cunningham and Cunningham (2022) note that the remote teaching period demonstrated that, despite the environment, academic developers care and are committed to improving learning and teaching and have a learning orientation. Given the likelihood of future periods of uncertainty, the authors emphasise the importance of these qualities. James and Wooten (2022) highlights reasons why we need to gain deeper insights into effective strategies for academic development in times of crises, such as the anticipated labour shortage and shift in market dynamics of fewer students attending tertiary institutions.

Methodology

Aims and research questions

This study aims to explore academics’ experiences of professional development during the COVID-19 crisis. Specifically, it addresses the following research questions: How did academics perceive the development of their practice during remote teaching? And more specifically, how did they approach the rapid upskilling required, and what did they find helpful and challenging? In answering these questions, the study intends to provide insights into how academics developed their teaching practice when faced with uncertainty and to reimagine approaches to professional development to prepare more effectively for future crises.

Participants

Participants in an Australian Business School were invited to participate in the study using a two-tier sampling approach (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Neuman, 2014). The population was defined as the 198 coordinators of courses in the School who were permanently or casually employed during ERT. In the context of the institution associated with the study, a coordinator is someone who leads the teaching team and oversees a subject as a whole (that is, a single course or unit of study). An email seeking expressions of interest (EOI) to take part was sent to the population. To understand participants’ experiences of professional development during ERT, participants needed to have engaged in various institutional professional development activities. These included online resources created within and outside the institution, institution-led professional development discussions and training sessions, peer interactions and other participant-defined activities such as discipline-based communities of practice. Therefore, the EOI email included a self-report survey asking participants to indicate the type of development in which they had engaged.

A modified convenience sampling method (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Neuman, 2014) was utilised for second-tier sampling. Twelve academics responded to the EOI, all meeting the participation criteria. Four were unavailable for an interview, resulting in a total of seven participants and an additional participant for the pilot. Interviews were conducted via Zoom during February-March 2021, and approval for the study was granted by the University Ethics Committee (Project No. 2020/501).

Tertiary teaching experience of participants ranged from one to over 30 years. There was significant variation in the size of the courses taught by participants, from 40 to over 1000 students. Participants included four females and three males and represented five of the eight sub-disciplines in the School: Marketing; Accounting; Work and Organisational Studies; Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and Business Law. Six had taught undergraduate and postgraduate students, while one had taught postgraduates only. Participants included academics who were solely responsible for teaching and coordinating a unit, and those working with teams of up to 17 tutors. Two of the seven had formal teaching qualifications at graduate certificate level or above.

Unlike conventional studies where interactions between researcher and participant typically only run for the duration of the study, the first author was intrinsically embedded in the study population, as she is both an academic in the School and an experienced coordinator. While not coordinating during ERT, her role included providing advice and support for some coordinators. The researcher was viewed as close enough to the situation to be respected but not too close to influence outcomes (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).

Data collection

Data were collected in one-hour semi-structured online recorded interviews (via Zoom). An interactional narrative approach was adopted (Riessman, 2005), where the narrative is co-constructed between ‘teller and listener’ in the interview process, therefore creating collaborative meaning. This approach was chosen due to the first authors’ unique role in the School during ERT.

At the commencement of the study, there were few examples of established research tools to draw from in the ERT context, and they tended to be from the non-tertiary environment (Green, 2020; OECD TALIS, 2015). As such, they were used only as a starting point. In addition to gathering information about participants’ teaching context and how they developed their teaching prior to COVID-19, interview questions in the present study asked how they approached the rapid upskilling required during ERT, what professional development opportunities and support they utilised, and what they found most helpful and challenging. They were also asked to describe what their ideal professional development environment would have looked like.

Three data sources were analysed: verbal data (transcripts), non-verbal data (observable data from videos notated on transcripts), and interviewer/researcher reflective notes (captured immediately after each interview). This multimodal approach to data analysis recognises that emotion is expressed in both verbal and non-verbal ways, and that capturing the emotional dimension of academics’ perceptions and experiences is particularly important in the study context. The utilisation of three data points allowed for triangulation (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). A modified conversational analysis tool was used to map observable (non-verbal) communication against the verbal transcripts to confirm, validate, or note contradictions between participants’ verbal responses and their non-verbal actions (Allen, 2017, Heritage, 1985; Denham & Onwuegbuzie, 2013). These notations were superimposed onto transcripts to augment the participants’ written transcript and capture participants’ responses in a more descriptive way. The observable data were analysed against the verbal written data and incorporated into the transcripts, then further analysed concurrently with the written verbal data. A cross-check between non-verbal and verbal data supports a richly integrated case study description and increases study validity. It can also pick up on contradictions that may be caused by social desirability bias (Grimm, 2010).

Data analysis

The study utilised an adaptive exploratory approach to coding. A broad preliminary thematic analysis (Riessman, 2005) of the reflective notes was completed prior to any other analysis to unearth preliminary orienting devices and guide subsequent stages (Layder, 2013). These preliminary orienting devices were developed to further inform the codes that evolved during the analysis of interview transcripts (using NVivo). The two researchers coded the first transcript independently, then came together to compare and discuss codes before proceeding with the remaining analyses.

Results

Four overarching categories and several sub-themes were identified through the analysis. Categories included personal factors (teaching and learning preferences; emotional impacts), impetus to develop teaching practice, sources of information and support (structured activities and resources; self-initiated development and incidental learning), and the impact of organisational culture. All categories describe factors that impacted on academics’ approaches to, and experiences of, professional development during ERT. Where quotes are used in the presentation of results, participants are labelled P1–P7.

The results of the study are presented below according to the four mindsets of academic development: continual growth, student-centric, knowledge sharing, and purpose-oriented (Wardak et al., 2023) to consider their prevalence in the VUCA environment. Some of the categories identified in the study align with a particular mindset, while others are interspersed across mindsets.

The continual growth mindset

The continual growth mindset is ‘conceptualised as a process of continual growth and learning throughout one’s career’ (Wardak et al., 2023, p. 7). Participants in the present study reflected this mindset across the various categories, for example, when describing personal factors, such as their learning and teaching preferences and the impetus for seeking professional development. They also described sources of information and support, for example, how they engaged with different activities and resources to support their development.

Personal factors: teaching and learning preferences

When referring to the period before COVID-19, participants described themselves variously as teachers who ‘applied’ the theory, as ‘pracademics’ and ‘experiential’, or as ‘immersive’ teachers who utilised student-centred strategies such as student discussions and authentic case studies. They described themselves as active learners who like to ‘bounce ideas’ (P6) around and discuss their thinking with others, ‘gather ideas’ and then make connections through reflection (P2). Some described that they liked reading first, then discussing ideas with others to refine understanding and turn theoretical ideas into practical approaches.

However, findings reveal that participants’ ability to engage in reflective practice, which they saw as tied to continual growth, was significantly compromised during ERT. A key factor was that their reliance on student feedback in class (both verbal and non-verbal) as a source of reflection was not something they felt they could access effectively in the remote environment.

Impetus to develop teaching practice

Participants described what prompted them to seek out opportunities to develop their teaching practice in pre-COVID-19 and ERT environments. Impetus was both externally motivated (driven by organisational prompts) and internally motivated (driven by participants’ tendency towards reflective practice).

Participants noted that School-run student surveys provided some impetus to seek out professional development, as the surveys were used by management as an indicator of effective teaching and learning. However, some questioned the value of using the surveys as a measure of effective teaching and the basis for development requirements.

All participants emphasised the importance of informal student feedback as an impetus for developing teaching practice. They mentioned several methods they used pre-COVID-19 for gathering student feedback. For example, one participant noted, ‘Each semester I run student focus groups and interviews with the teaching team, directly after the exams … far quicker, more specific to my unit and actually actionable’ (P5). Participants noted the importance of being able to observe non-verbal student feedback in the classroom, as it helped them to refine their practice on-the-spot through their ability to read the room: ‘You know you look around the classroom … eyeball them … You know if they are getting it or not … You know if you need to change things up’ (P1). Participants described a process of gathering and reflecting on input from their students to support continual improvement. For example, one noted, ‘My preferred teaching refinement is really reflection, conceptualization, implementation and then immersion in the feedback. So, what are the students telling us? You know sort of understanding the need to be better, to continually improve’ (P7).

As the emotional intensity associated with ERT increased, along with concern for students’ well-being, participants indicated they were less likely to rely on their reflective practice approach to improving teaching. One of the reasons was that reflection relies on various forms of student feedback (verbal and non-verbal) that was limited in the ERT environment, an environment felt to create barriers to human connection. As a result, participants’ self-efficacy waivered and they sought more direct support to gain the skills they needed.

Sources of information and support: structured activities and teaching resources

Participants described the formal professional development activities and resources they engaged with to support the shift to remote teaching. While they acknowledged that these activities included valuable content, they noted frustrations with information overload and the oversharing of information that was not relevant to their context, with comments such as: ‘But I have found that every training you went on they would just present you with ten different tools [arm waving] you could use, and it would become overwhelming… ’ (P1).

Some participants reported that this information overload led them to seek ‘at-elbow-support’ from individual academic developers, not just for the purpose of solving specific issues they were facing, but to help them consolidate and articulate the problem relevant to their own context. Participants reported that while this support offered technical and pedagogical solutions, they were still often unsure about how to implement the advice in the context of their course. To combat this gap in contextual understanding, participants reported clinging to ‘friends’ to help them navigate the uncertainty: ‘The best support were my friends at work … [who] were going through the same thing. I don’t know if I would have survived without them [laugh and relief]’(P1).

The student-centric mindset

The student-centric mindset is conceptualised as ‘something that would help them become better educators’ (Wardak et al., 2023, p. 8), with the objective of enhancing student learning. This mindset was evident in the findings of the present study, particularly in participants’ descriptions of personal factors relating to the emotional landscape during ERT. Their concern for student well-being during ERT, and the desire to maintain a positive learning experience for students, brought this conception of professional development to the fore.

Personal factors: emotional impact

When Australia’s lockdown commenced, academics in the School had three days to pivot from an adequately resourced and supported campus to teaching completely online from their often inadequately resourced homes. Participants expressed a sense of feeling intensely lost, and they likened this to their early teaching career experiences: ‘Where do I go next? It’s like wandering around in the dark … It’s like look, I just have 10 minutes, 15 minutes, [to] understand’ (P6). Participants expressed their concern not just from an education perspective but also from one of general safety, expressing intensified emotion caused by their sense of responsibility and pastoral care: ‘ … Well you know you keep talking to the students about the heavy [things]… There were people dying … I had all these overseas students. How could I help them?’ (P7).

Non-verbal data reinforced the high emotion experienced by participants when recalling this time. Coupled with participants’ comments, gestures were often used to convey panic, isolation, stress, confusion, and distress. Although initially concerned and anxious about their own competency and the reliability of the technology, participants acknowledged surprise that these concerns were rapidly addressed: ‘I was most worried about, “Would the technology work?”, and “Would it be stable?”, and “Will it continue to work?” Surprisingly, yeah, it did’ (P2). They reported being worried about students adapting to the new environment and technology, but this also diminished over time.

All participants expressed frustration at their inability to emotionally connect (academic-to-student) in the online environment, including the academics who identified themselves as technically proficient: ‘…What I felt was the biggest thing I didn’t know how to do was how to connect with students online … ’ (P7). Nearly all participants also expressed frustration at their lack of understanding about how to manage and support student-to-student connections: ‘And even though they’re all from the same country [China] … they didn’t know each other, and they weren’t familiar with each other’ (P3). All participants expressed frustrations about the limitations of no longer being able to use their ‘read the room’ abilities, resulting in reduced non-verbal student feedback in the Zoom environment:

So, in a classroom, I can [connect] … I can pick it all up. I can tell if someone, I can see because I’ve got the writing on the whiteboard trying to work out whether they were learning or not learning [illustrating with hands]. It was very, very challenging [deflated body language]. I didn’t know what to do about it [hands in a shrug]. (P1)

While preliminary issues with technology (such as Zoom failing) impacted participants’ self-efficacy, it was the loss of human connection that had the greatest impact. While they continued to adopt a student-centric mindset, and made great efforts to provide an effective and positive experience for students, this was hindered by the challenges related to connecting with students online.

The knowledge-sharing mindset

The knowledge-sharing mindset refers to sharing knowledge and ideas with others through ‘networking, talking, and discussing’ (Wardak et al., 2023, p. 8). While this knowledge-sharing may happen through formal activities such as conferences and workshops, it is often associated with informal interactions. It was evident in the findings of the present study that the knowledge-sharing mindset also came to fore for participants during ERT. While academics with established peer networks were able to continue their knowledge-sharing practices to support their development during ERT, those who were new to the School, or to a course coordination role, felt significantly compromised.

Sources of information and support: self-initiated development and incidental learning

Findings suggested that participants frequently engaged in self-initiated development alongside formal development opportunities during ERT. For example, several participants self-sourced and accessed resources from other institutions. A few found it useful to be able to ‘cherry-pick’ resources. Informal peer sharing and collaboration appeared to continue to be participants’ preferred approach to learning during this period, however, it was only the participants with larger established teaching teams and trusted peer-sharing relationships that were able to draw on this as a resource. They reported minimal collaborative engagement across courses and the broader discipline or School, and referred to these divisions as ‘silos’.

Where there were established relationships, participants utilised a range of self-initiated development strategies. These included using brainstorming sessions and ‘divide and conquer’ techniques: ‘I’d go to one session, and the others would go to other sessions and then we’d come together and teach the others the good bits’ (P2). Further, they established that information sharing with trusted colleagues was critical in the days leading up to the commencement of ERT:

We just got to make the decision, so it was the corridor chats where we were screaming at each other across the corridor saying,… ‘How do we do this?’ And it was how the problem was solved, so I think it was a collection of ideas …. (P1)

However, participants who were new and/or coordinating courses alone did not have well-established peer relationships, resulting in a sense of isolation. While some participants with established relationships continued to utilise peer sharing and collaboration during ERT via digital means, several participants described this as challenging and not time efficient. In short, access to trusted peers was limited, at least in part, for all participants.

Participants frequently reported incidental learning (Marsick & Watkins, 2001) by observing their family. Five participants who were parents with children learning remotely reported observing and reflecting on their children’s remote learning experiences:

In parallel with what I was doing, [my daughter] was having the student experience at a different university and I was really interested in … what was she seeing on the student side, and what did she feel worked well and what didn’t work well? …And that was really informative for me, because it was my little kind of user experience. (P6)

Organisational culture

Participants described various ways in which the culture of the organisation impacted their teaching development in both the pre-COVID and ERT environments. Themes included the value of ‘local’ discipline support, built-in peer networks, communication methods, and silos.

Pre-COVID-19, participants felt that the responsibility for teaching quality in the School belonged to senior management. During ERT, some participants felt this was better managed at the ‘coal-face’, with responsibility shifting to the Head of Discipline (HoD) to deal with context-specific challenges: ‘We were fortunate … weekly meetings with the HoD actively involved, because they were teaching too … [This] really helped’ (P1).

Courses involving large teaching teams and with more than one coordinator were seen as beneficial, because they contained built-in peer networks that offered support when needed. While the provision of ‘at-elbow’ support was limited during ERT due to resourcing, participants felt that more one-to-one support would have been helpful for targeted support and more relevant to their immediate teaching context, particularly if the support considered participants’ preferred learning and development approach.

As noted, participants described the amount of information about development opportunities and resources as ‘overwhelming’. They noted that anonymous communication received from central email systems were unhelpful as they exacerbated a sense of human disconnection. Several participants identified that they would have benefited from a more hands-on approach from management in terms of communication: ‘But you were kind of left, really, to work stuff out for yourself, which is good, at times, but I think it wouldn’t hurt to have a little bit more of an active checking on, “Hey how are you going?”’ (P1).

Participants commented on the impact of ‘siloing’ across the School, which created barriers to sharing and connection and contributed to a sense of isolation. Several participants suggested a centrally developed ‘teaching capabilities map’ that could act as a directory to help identify who to contact when facing difficulties.

The purpose-oriented mindset

The final mindset, the purpose-oriented mindset, focuses on aims other than improving student learning, such as establishing oneself, improving leadership skills, or ‘satisfying formal requirements for career progression or for accreditations’ (Wardak et al., 2023, p. 9). While this mindset was reflected in participants’ comments when describing their experience pre-COVID-19, it receded into the background during ERT due to emotional and time pressures.

Discussion

This study set out to explore how academics perceived the development of their teaching practice during remote teaching. Four categories were identified: personal factors, impetus to develop teaching practice, sources of information and support, and the impact of organisational culture. These categories describe factors that impacted on academics’ approach to, and experience of, professional development during ERT. As shown in the presentation of results above, these categories are linked to one or more of the four mindsets of academic development by Wardak et al. (2023).

In the present study, participants foregrounded the student-centric and knowledge-sharing mindsets, while the continual growth and purpose-oriented mindsets were impeded. These findings suggest that in a VUCA environment, institutions need to go beyond considerations of which professional development activities they should offer and consider the broader ecosystem required to support rapid upskilling and professional development. In particular, institutions need to consider support that enables and facilitates knowledge-sharing processes that meet academics’ needs to adequately support the experience, learning, and well-being of students during a crisis. Framing this study in relation to the VUCA environment is important as it responds to the call to broaden conversations about crises and their impact on academic development (Huijser & Sim, 2022).

The findings therefore support holistic approaches to academic development that tend to offer a variety of activities and consider teachers’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs, well-being, and personal and professional goals. Such approaches accommodate academics’ preferences to learn from colleagues or friends through informal conversations to provide the emotional support needed when functioning in a different environment (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2022; Koris & McKinnon, 2022).

While this study focused on academic development, specifically in relation to the development of teaching practice, Sutherland’s (2018) broader conception of academic development has relevance to the findings. Addressing academic development needs during uncertainty requires an understanding of the whole of the academic role (for example to understand competing demands), the whole institution (to understand the broader ecology) and the whole person (acknowledging dimensions such as identity and care). The findings reinforced the literature that has reported on the emotional impact of remote teaching and the need for emotional connection during times of uncertainty (Compton & Gilmour, 2022; Cunningham & Cunningham, 2022; Koris & McKinnon, 2021; Lundberg & Stigmar, 2022; Manley, 2022; Taylor et al., 2022).

In addition to the four mindsets, Wardak et al. (2023, p. 7) describe a further ‘dimension of variation’ that emerged from their research. Labelled a ‘relevance mindset’, it relates to the circumstances under which the interviewed academics engaged in professional development and is seen to run through the four mindsets. This dimension of variation was crucial in the context of ERT as the frequency and intensity of academics’ need for professional development escalated. However, during this period, the evaluation of their professional development needs (their assessment of relevance) was not linked to an objective of continual improvement or satisfying formal requirements for career progression. Rather, the focus was on what they needed to do to ‘better equip’ (Wardak et al., 2023, p. 10) themselves to teach and meet the immediate needs of their students, and they relied on knowledge sharing to achieve this.

Conclusion

We conclude that the multimodal methodology used in this study was key to understanding academics’ perceptions and experiences of teaching and developing their practice in the VUCA environment. We consider this one of the main contributions of the study. The inclusion of the analysis of non-verbal communication becomes particularly important in this context due to the heightened emotional dimension, and the fact that professional development is personal (involving the whole person). We suggest that attunement to non-verbal aspects of communication has an important impact on the sense-making process and, therefore, should be integrated more intentionally into research on the professional development of teachers in higher education.

There are several factors to consider in relation to the low sample size in this study. In line with the goals of the research, the study aimed to present an in-depth understanding and rich descriptions of the participants’ experience, rather than broad insights (Boddy, 2016). The participants interviewed were considered diverse in terms of their teaching experiences and, therefore, contributed different backgrounds and perspectives. However, while the researchers felt that a reasonable level of saturation was reached amongst the study’s participants (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), it is possible that a greater number of interviews may have provided new information and insights.

The study connects the findings to the five mindsets of academic development (Wardak et al., 2023) and reveals that participants emphasised the student-centric and knowledge-sharing mindsets. This suggests that institutions need to consider these mindsets and adapt professional development strategies accordingly. Implications of the study revolve around the need for institutions to adopt holistic approaches to academic development and acknowledge particular mindsets in a time of crisis. Further research might explore whether academics’ perception of the weaknesses of certain professional development approaches could be explained, in part, by the lack of recognition of the emotional aspects of teaching and learning how to teach in this environment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robyn Martin

Robyn Martin is a Lecturer in Academic Development and Leadership with the Educational Innovation unit at The University of Sydney. She is a Senior Fellow (SFHEA) of Advance HE (UK) and has an interdisciplinary background in academic development, business, marketing, science, and the arts.

Stephanie Wilson

Stephanie Wilson is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of Business Co-Design (BCD) at The University of Sydney Business School. She is a Senior Fellow (SFHEA) of Advance HE (UK) and her research interests include co-design processes in higher education, networked learning, postdigital education, sonic pedagogies, design patterns, academic development and the designed environment in higher education.