I reflect on the significance of trust in Academic Development (AD) and outline strategies for cultivating it with other academics. Within many higher education institutions, the inherent uncertainty of the AD role necessitates intentional trust-building efforts. In this regard, conversations have been encouraged as trust-building tools. However,…

At Villanova University, with approximately 11,000 students enrolled across six colleges and a law school, generating ways to engage faculty in assessment professional development can be challenging, particularly for an institution with a decentralized assessment system. During faculty interactions, it is often heard that faculty dislike attending…

This article assesses the basis of trust in academic development as it relates to the current standing of academic development as a profession against established, distinguishing criteria of professions. These are: (1) possession of an inwardly-defined, esoteric, and specialized body of knowledge and skills; (2) collective autonomy over the…

Purpose: There is a lack of clarity about how lecturer collaboration in light of learning and (professional) development fits within the framework of a quality culture in higher education institutions (HEIs). More specifically, it is unclear how collaboration is present or stimulated in the organisational context, triggering working mechanisms…

This report is based on qualitative research conducted between October and November 2024 under the Erasmus+-funded project "Staff development in teaching at European universities" (STAFF-DEV). Four focus groups were organised involving 16 higher education staff representing 16 different Higher education Institutions and 10 different…

Higher education institutions are struggling to elevate the value and status of academic teaching. In this endeavour, rewards for excellence in teaching are becoming a common measure. This study reports on the experience of the first academic teachers who were given the status as rewarded teachers in new reward systems. We explore rewarded…

Initiatives for teachers' professional development should rely on the epistemology of practice, that is, be founded on the premise that reflective teachers construct professional knowledge and develop professional skills through practice and through planning, observing or analysing practice. Reflection about teaching action and reflection in…

Collective teacher efficacy has gained growing attention in the field of teacher education due to its potential to enhance student experiences and life chances, as well as foster positive teaching practices and dispositions. It is believed that an inquiry-based learning community provides a promising environment for the development of collective…

This study explored how members of a community of practice of teacher educators from a diversity of institutions across one state engaged in and expressed (dis)comfort during a two-day workshop on anti-bias teacher education. Using a qualitative, single-case embedded design, we found that there was a range of engagement with the workshop content…

This self-reflective study investigated lecturers' perspectives on and adaptability to co-teaching in teacher education in South Africa. The purpose of the study was to examine lecturers' personal experiences with collaborative co-teaching and to identify the changes that are required to make co-teaching effective. A sample of teacher education…

The benefits of service-learning have been well documented in the literature in terms of student outcomes (i.e., increasing retention rates). The purpose of this article was to gather the experiences of faculty who participated in the Service-Learning Faculty Scholars program, a faculty development program designed to infuse service-learning into…

In this study of trust in academic development, we propose a framework to build trust between developers and faculty. This framework was conceptualized while reflecting on a teaching and learning programme and analysing the strategies for building trust that were apparent in its design. Our findings reveal that trust is built and sustained by…

In order to achieve educational changes, professional development initiatives are needed. Recently more emphasis is placed on methods in which teachers are engaged in collaborative discourse. One potential strategy for this is the use of Teacher redesign Teams (TrDT), in which the support of an academic developer is imperative for its…

The expansion of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Cameroon, and the continuous change in the curriculum to meet national and global needs, calls for a need for continuous professional development of teachers to handle these challenges. This study examined peer coaching and reflective teaching as strategies for improving teachers'…

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that online teaching in higher education became the default. Educators were, and often now continue to be, required to pivot to online teaching, necessitating them to adapt their teaching delivery, effectively engage students online, and apply existing skills to new and unfamiliar pedagogical contexts.…