2008poster


 * The point of this bit is to have a shot at reducing the amount of text to the main points we want to make, and perhaps adding visual elements other than the two pictures (and feel free to suggest other strategies than these pictures)**

The actual poster is here:

__**Challenging Academic Development: International Writing Collective Theorizes a Field**__ The Challenging Academic Development Collective

The CAD (Challenging Academic Development) Collective comprises academic developers interested in making theoretical interventions, or developing new theoretical frameworks for the contexts, activities and tasks of the scholarship of academic development. The CAD Collective is involved in theorising the ideas that define the possibilities and limits of the scholarship of academic development as both a field and a set of practices.
 * Who are we?**

We question how academic development constructs itself as a a set of practices, strategies, and technologies. How does it narrate itself or offer itself up to be thought through and engaged with?

The Collective also examines how academic development critiques itself and the ways in which these critiques are both concealed and made transparent within its scholarship. We ask how these critiques manifest in the conversations, programs, workshops, and strategic projects we are involved in locally and institutionally.

The CAD Collective emerged from “Identity, Liminality, Hybridity,” a symposium at the 2004 ICED Conference in Ottawa, Canada. While several senior colleagues were on a panel about the future of academic development, future CAD members were performing a readers’ theatre piece that drew on the very discourses circulating at the conference, and indeed in all our various institutions. Using drama to highlight issues of identity, four academic developers also presented current work in the field. Video of the event is available on the Institute for the Advancement of Teaching in Higher Education (IATHE) website:
 * A brief history…**


 * http://www.iathe.org/eng/mediasphere.asp**

Since then, various projects have emerged from post-conference writing retreats or individual efforts. See the handout for details.

Although we bring to academic development a great deal of expertise in various disciplines, theories, and methodologies, we are dissatisfied with the way in which our field is being shaped by neoliberal discourses of individual possessivism, global consumerism, and performance-based ideology. Our goal is to experiment as a group with/in textual and non-textual forms to bring about changes in what can count as reason, knowledge, and power in academic development. Tai Peseta asks one of the founding question of our work together: “Why doesn’t the academic development literature feel the way the work feels?”
 * Why do we do this critical work?**

It’s one thing to list a bibliography of members’ works; it’s another entirely to understand how these works came about. The key is collaboration. Writing retreats, readers’ theatre, wikis or blogs, workshops as happenings… we would love to add your own creativity and expertise to the mix! Join the list: http://mailman.ucc.usyd.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/itl-cad (Author details and other listings, including upcoming and recent papers, on handout)
 * How do we do our work?**
 * Sample Presentations and Publications**

//Symposia: “Conceptual transgressions: Furtive explorations in the scholarship of academic development.” HERDSA 2005.

Research Note: (2005). “The Challenging Academic Development (CAD) Collective.” International Journal for Academic Development, 10(1), 59-61.

Collaborative Reports on Conferences (2006). “Light a Candle or Curse the Darkness?” Report on ICED 2006

(2005). “The Participants’ Tales: On being at the CAD Symposium.”

ICED 2008 Papers and Workshops “A lover's guide to university teaching: Love in academic development”

"Educational development as a trading zone: tales, issues and possibilities”

“Creativity Unbound? Rethinking ‘Constructive Alignment’ as Paradigm and Method” . IJAD Special Issue 12:1 (2007) “Thinking Otherwise in Academic Development.” Features essays begun at collaborative writing retreat post-HERDSA 2005.

PhD / EdD Theses (unpublished) (2008) Positioning the professional practice of academic development: an institutional case study. University of South Australia

(2007). Seeking authentic educational development practice: A spiritual and philosophical journey. Concordia University

(2006) Technologies transforming academics: Academic identity and online teaching. University of Technology, Sydney.//

Currently there over 100 people subscribed from at least 7 countries…

Australia: 54 Canada: 20 United Kingdom: 17 New Zealand: 6 United States: 5 South Africa: 3 Hong Kong: 1