Educational Development: Discourse, Identity and Practice

Citation

Flood, A. (2006), "Educational Development: Discourse, Identity and Practice", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 88-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880610643638

At the outset in Educational Development, Ray Land tells us that educational development remains a little understood activity, and that this book arose in response to the need to for educational developers to be recognized as a professional group working within the higher education sector.

In this discussion, he seeks to clarify what educational developers see their role to be (p. 191). While exploring the educational developer's role, he also identifies clearly that educational development is a diverse and fractured (community of) practice (p. 194). The three subheadings chosen in his title: “Discourse”, “Identity” and “Practice” are significant and fundamental elements in the role of an educational developer. Educational developers engage in a discourse or common language that is used in development, the idea of identity entails both the identity of the educational developer and the academic or unit that receives input, and finally their practice is the medium through which both the educational developer and the academic(s) engage and evolve.

Land has taken the voices of 35 educational developers and using their narratives, has allowed their words and beliefs to exist in the text. In doing so, he has made clear their discourse and understanding to support and illustrate his typology of practices and stances within the educational development landscape.

The typology developed in Section 1, “Orientations to educational development” contains clearly defined categories of practice and quotes from the respondents not only support each category, but they also help provide further understanding of how the educational developer can identify and articulate his or her own role as a change agent.

For example, within the discussion relating to “managerial orientation” practice, Land observes the following:

Some developers of a managerial orientation ally themselves fairly firmly with aspects of the institutional mission, almost to the point of devising institutional systems that will render the process teacher‐proof (p. 19).

He then provides the following example, from respondent 27, to illustrate such managerial positioning:

Teachers have an obligation to teach well. Institutions have an obligation to make it possible for teachers to teach well … they actually have an obligation to make it difficult or impossible, in the medium term, for teachers to teach badly. And staff developers have the role of helping all this good stuff to happen. And that's where I locate myself in the grand scheme of things (p. 9).

By providing this observation, Land reveals a particular way of being for this educational developer, while at the same time it provides a place for identification or comparison for the reader. “Orientation to educational development” provides the reader with a typology of 12 orientations that Land suggests are variations on educational development practice. He indicates that they are not to be seen as definitive but rather they may be identified as co‐existing within an individual and/or team's practice.

Indeed, as I read this chapter, I can readily identify characteristics of my own practice that I employ in differing situations and with particular individuals. It provides me with the opportunity to consider my own practice and the practice of those with whom I interact. The multiple voices of other educational developers thus provide me with both mirrors and windows through which I can examine and further understand educational development practice.

While the research is positioned within the UK context, the words of the educational developers and the issues raised are pertinent to a more universal application. At a time when the face of higher education is changing in Australia (and elsewhere) to meet externally driven sets of imperatives with accountability based on prescriptive outcomes, Land explores the “complex tapestry of interwoven developments” (p. 1) that has seen the growth of educational development since the 1970s. He highlights that educational development has come into being during a radical change in modes of governance in higher education.

Land provides a clear and concise description of how and why such changes emerged, and points out the importance of: the dynamism of technological change, the increased entry of nontraditional students into higher education, a changing pedagogical position from propositional knowledge to procedural knowledge (p. 9) and the new systems of quality assurance requiring institutions to meet standards that have become more and more related to competition‐based marketisation, as factors leading to this new employability focused higher education sector.

Land tells us that “developers again find themselves caught in competing discourses … .and are again called upon as translators to manage often difficult meaning across boundaries” (p. 11).

In Section 2, “Stances on change”, Land turns his attention to ways in which developers position themselves with regard to change. He suggests that all educational developers have an identification with the notion of change (p. 129), and draws on significant literature to develop his ideas when discussing developers' alignment with the new. In doing this, he provides the reader with a wide variety of ideas that present opportunities to analyse and discuss aspects of change. Again, the words of his respondents provide the reader with “real world” experiences with which they can identify that both reflect and reinforce the theoretical positions presented.

“Strategic terrain”, Section 3, provides the reader with ideas about the differing organizational structures that educational developers need to understand and recognize in order to negotiate and conduct their practice. If these terrains are understood, Land suggests, then we will be in a position to relate them to the orientations of development. He provides matrices and an ecological paradigm of educational change to provide “illuminative simplification” of how developers may orient themselves within identifiable organisational structures, while at the same time cautioning the reader that we should take into account the “multiple cultural configurations” when interpreting such diagrams.

It is apparent within the text, and in the words of the developers themselves, that educational developers seek formal recognition and the feelings of a coherent community of practice that are found within disciplines in academia. It becomes clear that these feelings of cohesion are missing from educational developers' own fractured community of practice. Land concludes by telling us that educational developers are part of a growing community that remains paradoxically “vulnerable and marginal” (p. 191).

Educational Development is a valuable text for all educationalists to read. In particular it provides insights into educational developers' practices and provides opportunities for readers to reflect on their own practice as educational developers. Given that much of an educational development advisor's work is done through slow and almost imperceptible change at times, it is comforting to read the words of others who are also engaged in effecting change within institutional constructs. Educational Development also provides an excellent resource for anyone who wants to investigate ideas of change and organizational management within the higher education sector.

I will conclude with a participant's observation of why they work in the field of educational development. It reflects, as Land points out, that educational development is “inextricably linked not just with organizational context but with personal values, beliefs and professional and academic identity” (p. 127).

Respondent 13, (p. 127) states:

Educational development isn't just about training for skills; it's about unlocking people to be able to achieve what they want to …

This book will provide great support and direction for those who are interested in the processes and have the desire to effect change within the fast changing world of Higher Education.