Informed by Constructive Developmental Theory and the Threshold Concepts Framework, we interviewed retired academic developers from four continents and asked them to describe their processes of learning from perceived failures and how they see the role of academic developers in supporting academics through failures. Findings regarding…

In this article, 10 award-winning post-secondary instructors use narrative inquiry to explore failure individually by reflecting on their own definition and framework of failure, by giving examples of their experience with failure, and by elaborating how they deal with and learn from failure. The outcome of this collective exploration is an…

Universities are facing challenges not seen before. Academic development is expected to address many of these challenges, creating conditions supportive of teaching and learning. However, increasing managerialism, measurement, and risk-aversion make this difficult as the emphasis shifts from supporting individuals towards delivering institutional…

There is a gap in research exploring stress, burnout, and well-being within the context of educational development. The purpose of this study was to examine the concepts of burnout and workplace well-being among educational developers across the international landscape. Thematic analysis from the survey responses (n = 210) revealed characteristics…

A growing body of literature on students as partners in learning and teaching offers evidence on which academic developers can draw when supporting, advocating for, or engaging in partnerships. We extend a previous systematic review of the partnership literature by presenting an analysis and discussion of the positive and negative outcomes of…

Promoting the development of educational leadership in higher education is essential for strengthening the quality of teaching and learning. Additional research is needed to conceptualize educational leadership, especially within informal roles. We analysed how faculty members in an academic development program conceptualized educational…

This paper explores the experiences of a group of academic developers who support educational development work as Faculty Liaisons at a large, research-intensive university. These academic developers inhabit complex 'third spaces', providing support through an embedded partnership relationship that requires lateral movement across functional and…

Written submissions are traditionally used in the assessment of applications for Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, with dialogue offering an alternative approach. Quite why individuals elect for dialogue has received little attention. Using a mixed methods approach, data were gathered from two Universities offering dialogic and written…

The mobility of academic staff to South Africa is expected to benefit higher education institutions through teaching-research collaboration and capacity building. However, South African institutions do not always have the adequate organisational processes to facilitate host and international staff collaboration. Drawing on individual interviews…

Australia has 42 universities. In 2015/16, 30 of 40 universities reviewed provided one or more days of teaching induction for their staff, while 10 did not. Twenty-six of the 30 teaching induction program directors were surveyed and 24 of those were interviewed to provide a snapshot of professional development for new teaching staff in Australian…

Postdoctoral scholars are important members of the research community who make substantial contributions to research productivity. Three postdoctoral scholars at a Teaching and Learning Institute in Canada engaged in collaborative self-study to explore our initial experiences as postdoctoral scholars in the emerging fields of academic development…

This article is situated in the context of an intensified discourse within which academic developers are being asked to provide evidence of impact, and argues that theoretical models currently used are imprecise and fail to capture the variation in outcomes from professional development activities. Through reference to previous research on how…

This article explores the experience of 10 graduate interns employed in an academic development team at a modern British university. The interns came from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds with no previous experience of academic development. We worked intensively with them to build their research and professional capabilities. They learnt to…

Using participatory research strategies we critically reflect on how, in a formal course for academic developers, feedback supports the induction of participants into the field. We investigated how feedback processes contribute to participants' explorations of new ways of knowing, being, and acting as academic developers in their contexts. The…

In this paper, I describe an approach to the integration of theory and practice at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational levels. The results of the research projects in which I have been involved over the last ten years are used to illustrate how these three levels have facilitated the identification of three tensions. These…