This paper outlines the impact of phenomenography on higher education research and academic development. Interest in phenomenography as an educational research methodology continues to grow, but with interest growing faster than the number of experienced researchers, some misunderstandings of the approach have arisen and been circulating in…

For educational developers (also called academic or faculty developers) to facilitate change toward effective teaching and learning practices at any level, they must build trust and communicate credible expertise, often while conveying 'second-hand' educational knowledge to academics who then act on that knowledge in their own work. In this…

Academic developers enter the field of academic development (AD) from various disciplines and at different stages of their careers. They bring with them their academic experiences, home disciplinary culture and presumptions about what AD is. These circumstances inform the initial professional identity for those working in what has been described…

The global pandemic prompted universities to rethink how assessment might be reconfigured to better support student learning across different modes of delivery resulting in unprecedented, large-scale, and rapid institutional change. Significantly, there has been a dearth of empirical studies examining the nuances of staff experiences of how they…

To enhance the quality of higher education in Afghanistan, the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) adapted quality assurance and accreditation (QAA) policies developed in other countries to the Afghan context. Perspectives on the effectiveness of the new QAA policy have been mixed. On the one hand, the MoHE believes the QAA policy has…

Digital education, now common in higher education, is particularly evident in the expansion of blended and fully online offerings at universities. Central to this expansion are educational developers, staff who support teaching and learning improvement in courses they do not themselves teach. Working closely with staff, students, and the…

This article draws on Raewyn Connell's "Southern theory" and other related scholarship to undertake an analysis of scholarly literature relating to academic governance, highlighting the dominance of theoretical models by researchers from the global North. The article also draws on publicly available data from the United States (US),…

Academic development (AD) is increasingly being oriented towards an integrated approach to academic practice (AP), given arguments for the importance of integrating research, learning, and teaching. Given the complex and evolving character of AD as a profession, it is important to understand the conceptions of AD held by academic developers, who…

Policy texts are representations of practice that both reflect and shape the world around them. There is, however, little higher education research that critically analyses the impact of higher education policy on educational developers and educational development practice. Extending methods from critical discourse analysis by combining textual…

Concerns have been expressed that the engagement shown by committed individuals is not fully utilized by their organizations while there is insufficient knowledge of which conditions facilitate teaching collaboration and lead to improvements in university education. Portfolios of 43 life science academics applying to enter to the University of…

This article investigates students' understanding and students' experiences of access and success at a Higher Education Institution. There is a growing discourse around how students at Higher Education Institutions experience access and success. These discussions are imperative so that educational practices, university systems and processes as…

This paper explores the notion of impact in the context of academic development programs and considers how it can be described and understood. We argue that impact has a range of meanings and academic development programs such as graduate certificates have a broad group of stakeholders and hence the impact is different for each group depending on…

Globally, universities show an outward strength partly built upon imported and exported commonalities that are measurable and therefore accountable, rankable and marketable. While there are advantages to this, it can create a barrier within each institution to acknowledging and valuing indigeneity, local flavour or special character. Such a…

Higher education institutions are under increasing pressure to offer interdisciplinary education programmes; however, their implementation is not uncomplicated. Particularly where parts of a programme are delivered by different departments, academic development activities to change practices and develop a coherent interdisciplinary programme are…

In recent years there have been calls both for building the knowledge base of academic development (AD) and for systematic induction of newcomers to the field if AD is to advance as a professional and an academic field. Despite the importance and complexity of AD, induction of novice academic developers remains mostly informal and predominantly…