The development of research higher degree supervisors is a relatively recent phenomenon. In most cases, supervisor development continues within the traditional workshop mode and remains firmly located within what Bob Smith calls the "administrative framing" of supervision. This framing ensures that a liberal and policy-orientated discourse retains…

Language can provide an entree into an academic discipline, but can also serve as a barrier to exclude newcomers. How does this apply to academic developers trying to promote teaching and learning on their campuses? Using an online survey, academics at two institutions in the UK and USA were asked to describe their typical and ideal reading in…

In the UK, most initial nurse and teacher education is provided by university departments working in partnership with local health trusts and schools. New university lecturers in these professional fields are generally selected due to their successful performance as practitioners, as nurses or school teachers, rather than on more traditional…

This study describes a collaborative initiative with doctoral students to create an academic climate more conducive to fostering interaction across disciplinary groups in a faculty of education in North America. The project attempted to ensure that these students had a voice in creating practices, structures, and policies in the faculty that would…

This paper presents findings from a collaborative evaluation project within a masters programme in professional education. The project aimed to increase knowledge of research methodologies and methods through authentic learning where participants worked in partnership with the tutor to evaluate the module which they were studying. The project…

This article reveals how a university-wide decision to implement flexible delivery at an Australian regional university stimulated academics' praxis in the form of committed, collaborative inquiry into teaching practice and students' learning. This inquiry took the form of deliberately developed conversations amongst academics about their teaching…

This study focuses on an examination of mentoring SoTL research from the 10-year implementation of an 8-month mixed-mode international faculty certificate program on SoTL leadership at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Data suggest that faculty members, especially those unfamiliar with social science methodologies, experienced…

In the context of the fast changing university, how are academics to grow the capacity to cope with continual change and what can academic/faculty developers do to assist them? The paper first establishes the context of higher education as a challenging environment. It then reviews ideas about scholarship and explores the application of these…

This article argues that the theory of cognitive apprenticeship could inform those who teach and work with doctoral students in ways that enable them to provide students with more systematic preparation, more focused guidance and scaffolding, more explicit feedback, and enhanced preparation for participating in a collaborative way in communities…

In this study, we investigate the interplay between context and agency for three early-career academics as they seek to develop their teaching. Our analysis is conducted in light of Archer's realist social theory, framed by critical realism. We argue that it is possible to see ways in which Archer's account of the interplay between structure and…

The quality of PhD training can be conceived of as being dependent on the learning environment provided by the scholarly community. Our paper explores PhD students' ideas about themselves as a part of this community, and their perceptions of their learning environment in the context of the University of Helsinki, Finland. The study is a part of a…

The claim by universities to be "international" has spread world-wide over the last two decades and this has been largely interpreted to mean the recruitment and support of international students. Little attention has been paid to what this means for curriculum development. This study was carried out to explore disciplinary understandings of the…

Research supervision development often focuses on improving the quality of researcher/student interactions and outcomes. Hence, academic development activity is usually oriented towards the development of individual capacities and practices. More recently, however, the focus has changed to the research enhancement needs of twenty-first century…

People use souvenirs as an aide-memoire of their holiday experiences, much in the same way as the postcards were used to remind participants of the event they attended. But many people also use souvenirs as a catalyst to share their holiday experiences with others. In this article, the authors explore the role of souvenirs in academic development.…

Modern universities achieve institutional goals when faculty members are able to fulfil diverse roles. Faculty development must therefore employ pedagogical principles while guided by institutional needs. Systematic evaluation of such programmes has not been done in developing countries. This paper examines faculty development in Iran, where…