Educational development, which the authors use to refer to the field of professional and strategic development associated with university and college learning and teaching, can be described in many ways by referring to its different aspects. In this article the authors endeavor to categorize many of the models that have been used to describe educational development over the last thirty-five years. In doing so, they have chosen to situate them within a framework that consists of three broad approaches to educational development: (1) Educational development focused on the individual staff member; (2) Educational development focused on the institution; and (3) Educational development focused on the sector. These three approaches appear to be most useful for categorizing often disparate models of educational development and have elements in common with the work of researchers on several continents. It is likely that many if not most educational development units carry out work in both of the first two approaches, individual and institutional, with many developers switching between the two approaches depending on the context in which they are working; the approaches are not exclusive of one another. The third approach to educational development is a more recent development.