Learning Developers as scholars: raising our voice

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi32.1417

Keywords:

scholarship, professional development, third-space professionals, academic literacies

Abstract

This mini-keynote encouraged attendees to consider their stance towards LD scholarship, including current enablers and barriers to engagement. Like many other third space professionals, learning developers’ participation in scholarship is somewhat constrained, due to the lack of contractual requirements to engage in such endeavours. Despite this, we view the development of LD’s pedagogical and theoretical knowledge base as a vehicle which will allow LD to disseminate its values and principles, beyond the confines of learning developers’ individual practice. Thus, this mini-keynote drew on key principles from the LD Scholarship Manifesto recently published (Bishopp-Martin and Johnson, 2023), a manifesto which has captured the voices of the LD community. The following questions acted as provocations for participants to consider what encourages or prevents them from joining the call to expand this growing field’s knowledge base:

  1. As learning developers, we are committed to student education and disseminating best practice beyond our field. How can scholarship support this commitment?
  2. Engagement with scholarship is endemic to the ALDinHE values, which have come to help us identify as a professional group. Thus, do you believe that practising according to those values, including an on-going commitment to our professional development is essential? If so, what may be holding you back?
  3. If Learning developers sit alongside students and other HE colleagues invested in academic literacies development, arguably our praxis can only be truly enacted if we are ourselves immersed in such development. To what extent is LD scholarship rooted in Academic Literacies? If not, what else underpins it and why?

Author Biographies

Ian Johnson, University of Portsmouth

Ian Johnson has been a Learning Developer at University of Portsmouth since 2015 and is now a Teaching Fellow in LD. Ian recently completed his Professional Doctorate on the framing and value of LD in British Higher Education and has research interests in how embedded and individualised LD practices contribute to students’ learning. He has led ALDinHE’s Research and Scholarship Development Working Group since August 2023, having previously established and led the Research Community of Practice from 2020-2023. He is also an ALDinHE Steering Group member.

Silvina Bishopp-Martin, Canterbury Christ Church University

Silvina Bishopp-Martin has been a Learning Developer at Canterbury Christ Church University since 2012. She is currently aligned to the education courses of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Education. Her research interests include professional identity, critical discourse studies, critical pedagogies and academic literacies. She is an ALDinHE Certified Leading Practitioner and an Advance HE Fellow. She has been the vice-chair of the ALDinHE’s Research and Scholarship Development Working Group since August 2023.

References

Bishopp-Martin, S. and Johnson, I. (2023) ‘Research and Scholarship in Learning Development’, in A. Syska and C. Buckley (eds.) How to be a learning developer in higher education. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 155-163.

Bishopp-Martin, S. and Johnson, I. (2024, forthcoming) ‘From “no space” to “scholarly space”: a reflection on the place of scholarship in the third space’, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education – Third Space special issue.

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Published

31-10-2024

How to Cite

Johnson, I. and Bishopp-Martin, S. (2024) “Learning Developers as scholars: raising our voice”, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (32). doi: 10.47408/jldhe.vi32.1417.