‘Development’ or ‘becoming’? Using a relational approach to reimagine the role of academic teaching development programs

Year: 2013

Author: McLean, Jan, Kligyte, Giedre

Type of paper: Abstract refereed

Abstract:
“The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities”
Deleuze and Guattari, (1980) A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Our paper uses a relational approach to explore a conceptualisation of teaching development programs in higher education This offers an alternative view of the role these programs play in the ‘development’ of academics from the prevailing one of improving teaching ‘capability’ that has emerged with the rise of managerial practices of quality assurance and enhancement in academic development.

Our paper has two aims. Firstly to argue that this current individualistic focus on ‘improving’ teaching around the measurable functions of ‘doing’ academic work limits our understanding of the learning that occurs in these programs.  Secondly we aim to explore a richer conceptualisation of these programs, using a case of a program from our institution. This conceptualisation considers selves-in-relation rather than individualised selves and frames learning more broadly as ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ an academic. The latter encompasses aspects such as growing awareness, confidence, autonomy, agency in and ownership of one’s teaching practice. To do this we draw together emerging research around learning and change by Barnett, Hager, and Hodkinson that considers learning as ‘becoming’ with research into ‘relationality’ that highlights the role of interconnections and intersubjectivities in this ‘becoming’. To explore ‘relationality’ we draw from scholars such as Buber who proposes a relational ontology, and Phillips and Taylor, and Noddings, who place a focus on ‘selves-in-relation’ and ‘fellow-feeling’ which they examine through the concepts of empathy, care, and kindness. We conclude by discussing the aspects of learning that are brought into view by this conceptualisation, highlighting the importance of relations in ‘becoming’ an academic.

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