Are Academic Development and Educational Development really the same thing? And does it matter? Tom Cunningham

Are Academic Development and Educational Development really the same thing? And does it matter? Tom Cunningham

1. Dr Tom Cunningham Glasgow Caledonian University [email protected] Are Academic Development and Educational Development really the same thing? And does it matter?

2. Overview Are Academic Development and Educational Development really the same thing? Aim: Although closely related and overlapping, these are different concepts. Moreover, one is not simply a subset of the other. Does it matter? Aim: A qualified ‘yes’, in terms of your point of view and the questions this conceptual analysis might lead to.

3. Educational / Academic Development? The literature often takes Educational Development and Academic Development to mean the same thing. E.g. Fraser & Ling (2014, p.239) argue that ‘ the terms ‘education development’, ‘academic development’ and ‘faculty development’ are used to describe this work.’ The terms are often used interchangeably: At a time when questions are being asked about the identity and purpose of academic development, this paper seeks to address these questions within the context of one country in which educational development has been actively supported. (Gosling 2009, p.5) Indeed, the call for papers for this SEDA Spring Conference on the changing face of educational development asks for the perspectives of ‘educational / academic developers.’

4. What is Educational Development [ED]? POD Network (USA): [The] enhancement of the work of colleges and universities, often with a focus on teaching and learning. The POD Network prefers the term “educational development” […] because […] it better “encompasses the breadth of work we do,” including levels (individual, program, and institutional) and key audiences (graduate students, faculty, postdoctoral scholars, administrators, organizations) served. https://podnetwork.org/about/what-is-educational-development /

5. What is Academic Development [AD]? My own sense is that ‘academic development’ is about the creation of conditions supportive of teaching and learning, in the broadest sense. This would include the provision of the support, as well as the generation of conditions that are supportive. For me, ‘teaching and learning’ itself would also include the teaching and learning of academics as well as students. We learn partly by teaching, and vice versa. Similarly, we learn by conducting research, and our research, including research on teaching, should enhance teaching. This is the nexus of ‘academic development’. (Leibowitz 2014, p. 359)

6. Some divergence then…? ED has a focus on breadth of roles, different audiences. AD focuses on ‘academics’ or the ‘academic role’ specifically… AD emphasises the importance of research, including our own research… Both ED and AD have a focus on supporting learning and teaching. But recent literature in AD has sought to widen that perspective.

7. Academic Development as a subset of Educational Development? Recent literature challenges this: “We could broaden our focus beyond learning and teaching to consider the whole of the academic role.” (Sutherland 2018, p.261) So, this would involve supporting academic practice not just in learning and teaching but also in research, service, leadership, management. I have always considered it axiomatic that, since academic work involves so much more than teaching, then so too should academic development. (Evans 2023, p,3) We should be ‘holistic’ in our understanding, about the academic community and about working at institutional levels. This takes the scope of AD beyond that of ED. Question: ok, but how far can the boundaries of AD be extended? Educational Development Academic Development

8. Educational Development as a subset of Academic Development? This would enable us to take on board the ‘new wave’ of AD literature, suggesting that ED is but just a part of this wider project. But we need to recognise the scope of ED: ‘ graduate students, faculty, postdoctoral scholars, administrators, organizations.’ The new PSF 2023 has a focus on all those who teach and/or support student learning. This has increasingly seen us work with professional services staff and other, ‘non-traditional’ roles. That takes the scope of ED beyond that of AD. Question: Where would Learning Technologist or Learning Design roles fit here? Are they part of ED? Educational Development Academic Development

9. Overlapping yet different? If this is right… then you end up with AD and ED as overlapping concepts, both pertaining to the support of learning and teaching in HE, but with different boundaries and focus. Fraser (2001) was the only place I could find something similar… although different conceptualization. Educational Development Academic Development

10. So what? Does this matter?

11. Some grounding points… It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I’m not trying to change titles or departments. What we do is more important that what our centre is called or what our job title is… My focus is on the concepts not the people: so individuals may well be doing both AD and ED (and flipping between them) as I’ve characterised it… So why should you care?

12. Internal debates Academic Development ‘coming of age’ as a discipline or field. Evans (2023) argues that the scholarship of AD is at a crossroads, between what she calls the ‘critical’ and the ‘mainstream’ understandings of the field: “As occurs with all fields of scholarship” (p.5). Call to be more scholarly about our own practice / role: What is educational development? What knowledge does it create and how does it understand that knowledge? Scholarship seeking to articulate, critique, and theorize who we are as a field might be termed scholarship of critical educational development . (Cruz et al. 2021, p.51) The need for a more ‘academic’ approach to AD (Strum 2022), that the field itself is under- theorised (Cunningham 2022). Asking about the differences between AD and ED opens some of these questions. Do we want this, though? (Are we happy being a ‘family of strangers’? (Harland & Staniforth , 2008))

13. External standpoints We have been at the forefront of changes, debates, discussions about learning and teaching over the past few years (Cunningham et al. 2021, Cunningham & Cunningham 2022). A visibility that was (perhaps) not there before. Significant challenges already faced in terms of Covid and Generative AI, to name but two. Bass (2022) argues we will be asked to confront increasingly complex and wicked problems in the years ahead. Being critical about the scope, scale and influence of our work, and who we are, is (perhaps?) going to be important as we move forward.

14. References Randall Bass (2022). Coda: A wicked problems mindset for educational development. To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development. 41(1). doi : https://doi.org/10.3998/tia.2373 Laura Cruz, Elizabeth Dickens, Anna L. Bostwick Flaming & Lindsay B. Wheeler (2022) Embracing complexity: an inclusive framework for the scholarship of educational development, International Journal for Academic Development, 27:1, 45-57, DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2021.1901102 Catriona Cunningham & Tom Cunningham (2022). ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’: reflecting on, and refracting through, academic development in a pandemic year.  International Journal for Academic Development ,  27 (2), 191–202. https:// doi.org /10.1080/1360144X.2022.2082439 Cunningham, T., Cunningham, C., & Boyd, V. (2021). Academic development through and beyond the pandemic: a staged approach.  Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice ,  9 (2), 101-108. https:// doi.org /10.14297/jpaap.v9i2.482 Tom Cunningham (2022) Parallels between philosophy and academic development: under-labourers, critics, or leaders?, International Journal for Academic Development, DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2022.2137513 Linda Evans (2023): What is academic development? Contributing a frontier-extending conceptual analysis to the field’s epistemic development, Oxford Review of Education, DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2023.2236932 Kym Fraser (2001) Australasian academic developers' conceptions of the profession, International Journal for Academic Development, 6:1, 54-64, DOI: 10.1080/13601440110033706 Kym Fraser & Peter Ling (2014) How academic is academic development?, International Journal for Academic Development, 19:3, 226-241, DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2013.837827 David Gosling (2009) Educational development in the UK: a complex and contradictory reality, International Journal for Academic Development, 14:1, 5-18, DOI: 10.1080/13601440802659122 Tony Harland & David Staniforth (2008) A family of strangers: the fragmented nature of academic development, Teaching in Higher Education, 13:6, 669-678, DOI: 10.1080/13562510802452392 Sean Sturm (2022) What hope for  academic  academic development?, International Journal for Academic Development, 27:4, 341-342, DOI:  10.1080/1360144X.2022.2140343 Sutherland, K. (2018). Holistic academic development: Is it time to think more broadly about the academic development project? International Journal for Academic Development, 23(4), 261–273. https:// doi.org /10.1080/1360144X.2018.1524571