Academic development: Autonomy pathways towards gaining legitimacy
- Authors: Vorster, Jo-Anne A
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445759 , vital:74427 , ISBN 9781003028215 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003028215-16/academic-development-jo-anne-vorster
- Description: Despite playing a critical role in universities grappling with change, practitioners working in the field of academic staff development often struggle with legitimacy. Being a relatively young field in higher education, the challenges faced by these actors are largely un-theorized and under-researched. This chapter explores how academic staff development practitioners at eight universities seek (and gain) legitimacy amongst disciplinary academic peers. Drawing on LCT concepts of ‘autonomy codes’, it analyses practices in terms of the fields from which they come and the purpose to which they are directed. Data include publications by academic developers and interviews with academic developers, academics and senior managers of the eight institutions. The chapter demonstrates how academic developers often struggle to gain legitimacy as they occupy a liminal position between academic or administrative positions in relation to the disciplinary experts they work with. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the most successful academic development work occurs when disciplinary staff view academic development as enabling them to become better teachers. The chapter reveals how legitimacy may be more successfully enabled in the field of academic staff development.
- Full Text:
SoTL: A mechanism for understanding and finding solutions to teaching and learning challenges
- Authors: Vorster, Jo-Anne A
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445727 , vital:74419 , https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v4i2.149
- Description: The paper argues that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a necessary strategy for mitigating the many teaching and learning challenges in South African higher education that prevent a large proportion of students from achieving academic success. Research suggests that well-structured and coordinated educational practices that are valued and supported by institutions are crucial for student success. While there exists a very useful body of scholarship on teaching and learning in higher education in South Africa, the persistently high levels of student failure and dropout across the system points to the need for more research into teaching and learning dilemmas in diverse institutional, disciplinary and classroom contexts. I argue that if more academics are to conduct SoTL, it has to be valued and supported by institutions and academic leaders. Even though more SoTL is needed to contribute to solving the many pedagogic dilemmas South African academics encounter, it is counter-productive to expect all academics to conduct SoTL. Rigorous SoTL requires immersion in educational ideas, concepts, theories and research processes. Many academics may not have the time or inclination to work in the area of SoTL, but I suggest that all must be scholarly teachers of their disciplines.
- Full Text: false