PTAS Learning and Teaching Forum June 10th 2014

Internal Secondments to Academic Development Units

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22240293@N05/8267789645/

For the next 45 minutes…..

• Some definitions• Pre-flection• Investigating internal secondments to ADUs• 3 ways of making sense of secondments

- Academic work as social practice

- Shifting paradigm

- Spaces for disruption• Meeting some secondees• So what does all this mean for you?

Internal secondment to Academic Development Units (ADUs)

Internal secondment

when staff in one part of a university re-locate to work on a fractional or short-term basis in another part.

ADUs

centres, units, institutes or teams within universities with a strategic mission to enable the enhancement of academic practice.

Pre-flection

If you could move to another part of your University, half-time for a year…

• Where would you go?• What could you do?• What would be the benefits and • challenges?

http://pixabay.com/en/running-shoes-sport-shoes-sole-49580/

Investigating internal secondments to ADUs

• Sector-wide survey of Scottish HEIs• 2 universities• In-depth interviews with

– 4 secondees – 4 line managers– 4 senior managers https://www.flickr.com/photos/42353480@N02/5768808772/

• Conversations with conference delegates

Academic work as social practice

• a complex entity • interrelated sayings, doings, relationships,

meanings, artefacts and emotions • cannot be broken down into packages of

decontextualized skills and knowledge

Boud and Brew (2013)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PS2-complex.png

Shifting paradigm

ADUs worldwide are becoming more:• strategic in their mission• collegial and informal in their approach • scholarly in their pedagogic practice• contextual in their activities • proactive in their work• ambitious in aiming to transform - rather than to

merely fine-tune - academic practice

Gibbs (2013)

Spaces for disruption

“adopting a stance of questioning, challenging and critiquing taken-for–granted ways of doing things in higher education.”

Quinn et al. (2011)

Quinn et al (2011)

• Boud and Brew (2013)Reconceptualising academic work as professional practice: implications for professional development International Journal for Academic Development 18(3)

• Gibbs, G. (2013) Reflections on the changing nature of educational development International Journal for Academic Development 18(1) 4-14

• Quinn, L. (2011) ed Re-imagining academic staff development: spaces for disruption Stellenbosch: Sun Press

References