Abstract
Academic (or educational) development is a relatively recent project in universities. In Aotearoa New Zealand there were two waves of foundation for academic development, separated by almost 20 years, during which time much in national and international higher education had changed. This article draws on empirical and archival data to propose that shifts between the two waves give insight into the changing mechanisms of governmentality at work for academic staff in higher education. In a particular case, the emergence and consolidation of a culture of student evaluation of teaching is used to illustrate how academic development has been implicated in those shifts. In the earlier period, from a marginal location, a more pastoral mode of power relations between the academic developer as an institutional change agent and the academic staff they worked with is evident, with an emphasis on voluntary participation from the latter. By contrast, in the later period, academic development has moved closer to the institutional centre and is participating in more disciplinary forms of power relations in its efforts to shape academic conduct towards certain ends. In this shift, a technology that was initially created and implemented by academic development for one purpose was ultimately taken up by the institution for quite another: it became part of the audit machine. While our data come from a particular case of practice within local national context, the cautionary tale offered here has salience for other academic development practices and other countries where academic development has had a similar story.
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Notes
There are many different names attached to this class of workers: for example, they might be called staff or educational developers, or (in the USA) faculty developers. They are also variously referred to as advisors, officers, consultants and so on. We use the term “academic development” to describe the general field of practice, “academic developers” for the personnel involved and “academic development directors” for those appointed to oversee the practice in particular institutions. We note, though, that none our interviewees were referred to as “academic development directors” or “academic developers” in the beginning.
Lincoln University, originally an autonomous college governed by the University of Canterbury, became a stand-alone institution in 1990, making the national total of universities seven.
The NZ case is notably different to the situation in other jurisdictions (e.g. Australia and the UK) where the equivalent agencies are government bodies.
An eighth university (Auckland University of Technology) was created in 2000 out of what had previously been NZ’s largest institute of technology and with long-established academic development structures in place.
Since its inception, AAU (now the Academic Quality Agency for New Zealand Universities) has completed four audit cycles of all NZ universities. Reports of four University of Auckland audits—either whole of institution (conducted in 1997 and 2009) or of teaching quality (2004, 2014)—are considered.
The other was the establishment of the first student learning centre.
Over time, national systems of SET have emerged (for example, the Australian Course Experience Questionnaire, the Australian Survey of Student Engagement and the UK National Student Satisfaction Survey), which have enabled comparisons among teaching institutions within, and across, national borders.
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Barrow, M., Grant, B.M. Changing mechanisms of governmentality? Academic development in New Zealand and student evaluations of teaching. High Educ 72, 589–601 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9965-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9965-8