ICED2008abstracts

Let's put our paper abstracts here (generally alpha order -- I took McShane to be "first author" on the group of 4 authors though) to facilitate the beginnings of a new Special Issue of some journal or another...

1. Clifford, Valerie (will this go with # 6 and #7 as a combined piece? just wondering) 2. Holmes/Sutherland "Creativity Unbound? Rethinking 'Constructive Alignment' as paradigm and practice."  3. Jones, Anna //"//Presention of Self as Academic Developer" 4. Kandlbinder, Peter 5. McShane/Manathunga/Wilson/Green "Educational Development as a Global 'Trading Zone': tales, issues and possibilities" 6. Peseta, Tai 7. Wilcox, Susan 8. Wuetherick, Brad (Brad and Peter's papers are very different, but I think your question above under Valerie's name is still unanswered I believe)

Abstracts:

1. Clifford, Valerie

2. Holmes/Sutherland. //Creativity Unbound? Rethinking "Constructive Alignment" as Paradigm and Method//. Few educational developers would dispute the utility of John Biggs’ (1996) notion of "constructive alignment" for improving university teaching and learning. Notwithstanding the concept's wide adoption around the world, including in our own practices, we offer various critiques and creative encounters with it and encourage participants to draw their own conclusions. Working through role play, metaphor, and critical theory, the presenters and participants will explore the limits of constructive alignment for program, curriculum and course design.
 * Abstract**

Few educational developers and/or scholars of tertiary teaching and learning would dispute the utility of John Biggs’ (1996) notion of "constructive alignment" for improving university teaching and learning. It is one of those unique terms that, more than a decade after it is coined, marks our field: many educational developers recognize the term immediately, having perhaps even been schooled in it; it provides practical guidance to colleagues seeking a coherent approach to the organization of their curricula, courses, and teaching; and it can act as a mechanism that informs institutional quality assurance processes. It is also a term that has been taken up in a range of both disciplinary and curriculum contexts. In many cases, the principle of constructive alignment structures the conceptual architecture of teaching and learning development programs so that the ideal or proper curriculum is one where the learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment are all in line. When all those elements of a system sustain each other, students have the best chance of learning in active and collaborative ways.
 * Description**

Notwithstanding the concept's adoption within our own practice as educational developers, at least in the presenters' Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand contexts, constructive alignment remains a concept that troubles us deeply. In this Concurrent Session, we share and explore the nature of that dissonance. In the tradition of cultural studies scholarship, we undertake a number of interventions that support us as we think through and sometimes against constructive alignment. We offer metaphorical thinking, political or philosophical critiques, and dramatizations. Working in this way reminds us that we also have a responsibility as developers to tease out aspects of the teaching and learning encounter that constructive alignment works to conceal. These interventions are in the main, theoretical ones, but we are interested in how they have implications for our daily experiences with individual professors and academic departments. We draw on contemporary theorizing of risk, recent articles critical of alignment or of curricular improvement more generally, and an interactive approach to presenting these ideas.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to identify at least two ways to critique the concept of constructive alignment, apply the concept to their own curricular and teaching improvement work at their home institutions, and propose a new metaphor or provisional concept to incorporate into their own practices at their home institutions.

Teaching and learning activities will include: attending to an argument presented in traditional lecture format but interspersed with polyvocal, staged scenes from everyday educational development practice; engaging in paired or small group discussion about the differences between the theory and the practice staged by the presenters; developing a new metaphor or concept to bring back to their own home institutions.

3. Jones, Anna Louise. //Presention of Self as Academic Developer//

The work of academic developers is about highly complex performances which operate at a number of levels. This paper uses Goffman’s (1959) notions of dramaturgy as a framework for examining the work of academic developers and the formation of their identity. This presentation examines notions of the front, the team and the stage to explore the interactions of academic developers. Much of Goffman’s work and those who followed him has been with groups with an established identity. In the case of academic developers, the use of Goffman’s dramaturgical model provides a new perspective on a profession that is still in the process of establishing an identity. The academic developer is cast in a number of different roles (Land, 2004) which involve offering credible advice about teaching and learning in higher education. This role can range from ‘quick fix’ teaching tips to teacher education, scholarship of teaching, to policy advice. The position of academic developers in higher education is not an automatic entitlement. This paper examines the ways in which academic developers establish their claims as credible. The role of the academic developer is a highly contested one both within the profession and outside it. Even the absence of a single title (academic developer, educational developer, staff developer, professional developer being just some of the titles used). Moreover, while academic developers are managing their own performance, they are also advising academic staff in a role that can often be ambiguous (mentor, colleague, educator, or ‘teaching police’). Furthermore it is an area that is establishing a body of scholarship and a research tradition and managing an identity as an academic discipline and a profession. In short, it is a profession and a research area that is still in its early stages of formation. There is a great deal of ‘backstage’ interest and even angst (Grant, 2007; Peseta, 2007) around the role of academic developers, as a quick look through some of the latest volumes of IJAD would reveal. Hence Goffman’s stage metaphor raises a number of questions about what academic developers do, how they present themselves and how they are perceived by others. This paper outlines ways in which these critiques can be used to enrich an understanding of academic development. This theoretical metaphor, while it has some obvious limitations, illuminates a number of aspects of the academic development identity such as the establishment of credibility, the presentation of ‘expert’ knowledge and the ways in which public or ‘frontstage’ performances such as workshops and seminars are organised. It provides a means for investigating the system by which developers can establish their authority through social interaction, and examining the underpinnings of academic development performances.
 * Abstract**

4. Kandlbinder, Peter Love speaks for itself: A dialogue with Stephen Rowland

Abstract

Stephen Rowland argues that love is still a driving force for education. The goal of teaching for many, according to Rowland, is to stir in others the same love the teacher feels for the subject matter. In order to write more realistically about teaching and learning, Rowland wants to reclaim a language of love for learning that he sees has become diminished due to the dominance of technique. However, the example Rowland takes as his definition of love, is “eros”, the sensual love that in its literary form becomes “erotica”. This applies to any work of art, literature, painting, photography or moving imagery that deals with sexually arousing descriptions.

In this paper I will argue that Rowland’s analysis of love confuses first-order experience with the second-order process of writing about experience. In wanting students to write about the emotional aspect of learning rather than its purely practical aspects, Rowland mistakes his own distinction between writing of the love of learning and writing from the love of learning. To discover how we write creatively from the love of learning this paper will review what academics do when they write about teaching and learning and what emotions are represented in various forms of educational writing.

5. McShane/Manathunga/Wilson/Green. //Educational Development as a Global ‘Trading Zone’: tales, issues and possibilities.//

Educational development has the potential to offer academics the intellectual space to debate and exchange ideas about pedagogy. This space has been characterized variously as a “critical interdisciplinary space” (Rowland, 2003), a “contact zone” (Manathunga, 2006) and a “trading zone” (Mills & Taylor Huber, 2005). In this session, with presenters and participants from diverse global contexts, we will explore through readers’ theatre and a trading activity, the possibilities and limits of the educational “trading zone” metaphor for educational development.
 * Concurrent Session Abstract**

We will ask participants to bring a teaching/learning gift from their original academic discipline (ie. not educational development). Their gift might be a statement of pedagogical wisdom that is valuable in their disciplinary context, or it could take a symbolic or material form. 
 * Session Description**

Mills and Taylor Huber (2005) suggest three possible reasons for the limited development of educational “trading zones” in learning and teaching in universities: the perceived low status of education as a discipline; the tight fit between disciplinary pedagogy, identity and practice; and the strategic resistance of many academics to engage with new visions of teaching professionalism, as offered and promoted by central educational development units.

By extending the “trading zone” metaphor to educational development, this session aims to explore the following issues: · the ideal climates and conditions for interdisciplinary trade; · how developers and development units help establish and sustain the conditions for giving and receiving that distinguish the trading zone; · who prospers in the trading zone; colonizing forces; mutual benefit and unfair trade; · the work of interpretation, mediation and management required of developers in the trading zone; · the implications of the shift to disciplinary pedagogical knowledge for the trading zone work of centralized developers · the limits of the trading zone metaphor for the work of educational development · Why value interdisciplinary exchange and trade? · Are interdisciplinary exchange and collaboration best left to chance; not forced? · other metaphors to describe the interdisciplinary work of educational development that might better embody the dialogue, collaboration and longer-term commitment to benefit all disciplines; · how developers and development units help establish and sustain the conditions for the operation of other metaphors that describe scholarly interdisciplinary interaction.

The session will engage participants in the following interactive trading process in order to investigate these issues.

1. Participants who come to this session will be invited into an actual global trading zone, and our business will begin with an initial exploration, via stories, images and artefacts, of some of the older, indigenous “trading zones” of Sydney and Brisbane, Australia.

2. A readers’ theatre scenario will then extend the “trading zones” metaphor into the contexts of university educational development, and unsettle some of the assumptions of our work by introducing critical matters of trade: the language of exchange, “eduspeak” and interpretative acts, the cultural “styles” of disciplines, the trinkets and commodities of exchange, the recognition of worth and rejection, and the negotiation of value and values.

3. __Jig-saw, Step 1__: We will invite participants to organize themselves into distinctive cultural groups, by disciplinary affiliation. Members discuss the shared pedagogical values of their disciplinary culture, and consider the symbolic gifts of pedagogical wisdom that they have and are willing to share.

4. __Jig-saw Step 2__: Intercultural Exchange. Trading groups meet and exchange their gifts of wisdom, along with a rationale/reason for giving for that gift.

5. __Jig-saw Step 3__: Disciplinary cultural groups reconvene for reflection and reporting back on what was said, and how gifts were received. Guided discussion topics will be provided.

6. Individuals will return to neutral zones for whole group reflection and debate.

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Valerie Clifford, Oxford Brookes University, UK; Peter Kandlbinder, University of Technology Sydney, AU; Tai Peseta, University of Sydney, AU; Susan Wilcox, Queen's University, CA; Brad Wuetherick, University of Alberta, CA ======

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Love, desire and pleasure are not words usually associated with student learning. Yet Rowland (1997) argues that love of the subject is a fundamental educational aim for many university teachers. This observation challenges the instrumental orientations of some forms of academic development. It raises questions about ‘the subject’ of academic development and what it might mean for those whom we work with to ‘love’ teaching. This interactive concurrent session explores the theme of love and academic development first raised by Rowland’s article “A Lover’s Guide to University Teaching?”. These contributions will embrace the challenge of reclaiming the love of/in learning.======

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Love, desire and pleasure are not words usually associated with student learning. Yet Rowland argues that love of the subject is a fundamental educational aim for many university teachers. This observation has profound implications for academic developers. It challenges the instrumental and managerialist orientations of some forms of academic development that urge us to become more strategic in our relations with our academic colleagues. It also brings into sharper focus a set of questions about ‘the subject’ of academic development and our own desires about what it might mean for those whom we work with to ‘love’ teaching. That ‘love’ rarely travels a rational course tells us something about both its persistence and elusiveness in learning.======

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While Rowland focuses largely on the language used in reflective writing, the centrality of love of the subject provides fertile ground for questioning what we value in academic development. This interactive, discussion-focused session consists of a range of contributions that are meditations on the theme of love and academic development – a subject first raised by Stephen Rowland in his 1997 article “A Lover’s Guide to University Teaching?”. These contributions will bring a variety of research traditions to the challenge of reclaiming the love of/in learning to locate what pleasures and troubles us about academic development.======