Education Commons^™

Structured Professional Development For Academic Developers: A Collaborative Approach, Fiona O'Riordan, Íde O'Sullivan, Mary Fitzpatrick, Margaret Keane, Claire Mcavinia, Angelica Risquez

Articles

This paper shares the experience of a group of academic developers’ engagement in collaboratively working towards the completion of an online open-access professional development (PD) course designed to support higher education teachers to engage with a new professional development framework. Committee members of the Educational Developers in Ireland Network set out to complete the course as a demonstration of their commitment to their own PD and to experience the process with a view to becoming facilitators of the course. An auto-ethnographic approach was used to capture this experience, and findings demonstrate an inspiring alternative to PD that supports academic developers …

Supporting Professionalism In Educational Development In Irish Higher Education, Muireann Okeeffe

Articles

Higher education, in Ireland and globally, is undergoing profound change influenced by a variety of factors. In conjunction with these changes many initiatives to improve teaching and learning and the quality of graduates in higher education have been introduced in recent years. The changes and expansions in the sector has enabled growth of new roles in higher education described as ‘third space’ professionals by Whitchurch (2008).

This paper describes the struggle of those in third space professions, such as academic development, to establish a professional identity in higher education. The benefits of these contemporary roles to higher education are …