Reflections on the State of the Scholarship of Educational Development

As our scholarly journal, To Improve the Academy, transitions to an online format with this inaugural issue, it promises to make our scholarship increasingly visible and accessible in and beyond North America. This transition, along with the new subtitle for the journal, A Journal of Educational Development, signals another phase in the professionalization of our field. If educational development is now, after several decades of serious work and scholarship, finally “coming of age,” as Clegg argues (2009, p. 404), then it seems timely to pause and reflect on the state of our scholarship and to consider a few key questions in order to establish a shared understanding of—or, at least, frame more explicitly the conversation about—who we are as educational developers and what kinds of scholarship we pursue. In this essay I focus on some of these key questions, namely: What do we mean by educational development? Who are we as a field, broadly speaking? Why does this matter? How does this influence the scholarship of educational development? What is or could be our particular contribution as a field of practice?

I use the term “educational development” to describe our field deliberately and inclusively, agreeing with TIA editors and others around the globe (see, for example, D’Andrea & Gosling, 2001; Felten, Kalish, Pingree, & Plank, 2007; Taylor & Rege Colet, 2010) that this phrase encompasses the breadth of work we do as part time/full time, short term/long term/career faculty, staff, and administrators who come from a wide range of disciplines and professions and who work on individual, program, and institutional levels in face to face and online environments on issues of student development, faculty development, and organizational leadership, among others. Felten et al. (2007) offer a helpful working definition of educational development as “the profession dedicated to helping colleges and universities function effectively as teaching and learning communities” (p. 93). This definition implies that educational development facilitates learning, builds community, and supports as well as influences both individuals and institutions; “helping colleges and universities to function effectively” includes helping determine and share what “effectiveness” means, including advocating for quality teaching and learning environments and supporting scholarship on teaching and learning. As Debowski (2011) argues, it also means evaluating and communicating the purpose and goals of educational development “to encourage stronger and more capable academics who can face complex challenges with confidence and courage across all areas of our work” (p. 320). Further, she insists, “We need to be the learning partners of choice in this ongoing process” (p. 320).

Understanding educational development—the way we frame our work, the way we measure and account for it, the research questions we ask of and with it—has implications not only for our field but also for higher education more broadly. The mission of To Improve the Academy is to advance excellence in research and practice in educational development. To be seen as “learning partners of choice,” part of our work as developers should be better articulating what we contribute to higher education teaching and learning communities, including what evidence informs our work and what evidence we have of the impact of our work. This is not a new charge, but it continues to be an important one.

Who are we, as a field of practitioners?

Our origin narrative in the U.S. is fairly well established (Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy, & Beach, 2006): Educational development emerged formally as Centers for Teaching and Learning were established in the 1960s and 70s in response to perceived crises, including the increase in graduate teaching assistants in undergraduate classrooms, changing numbers and demographics of students (and faculty), and a growing awareness of the need to support faculty, graduate instructors, and institutions as they faced both new challenges and new opportunities for teaching and learning inquiry. More recently this focus on individual teachers, students, and classrooms has expanded into a focus on organizational and leadership development (Gibbs, 2013; Debowski, 2011; Schroeder & Associates, 2011) and a parallel shift “towards an emphasis on evidence and large scale transformation” (Clegg, 2009, p. 408). Though this expansion is largely seen as a beneficial, even necessary, widening of scope to move “out of the margins” (Schroeder & Associates, 2011), there are some detractors, like Clegg (2009), who question whether these new emphases diminish a historic and holistic focus on individuals and relationships (p. 408). Scanning the tables of contents of recent SoED journals suggest that this critique may be overstated, but it is an important caution to heed as we consider our future practice and scholarship.

Educational developers have long held commitments to promoting and supporting change and “development” (the term itself denotes growth, a gradual advancement, or evolution). In his study of developers, Land (2004) argues that despite variations in orientation toward their work, “one defining attribute of educational development practice is the practitioners’ stance in regard to change” (p. 129), namely a commitment to innovation and improvement. We have also, however, frequently been hesitant to claim leadership roles as we promote and collaborate on institutional projects (Schroeder& Associates, 2011), preferring often to cultivate change quietly, indirectly, or in partnership.

This could be due, in part, to the fact that as a field, educational development seems to suffer from a perpetual identity crisis—Are we a discipline or a field? What should our name be? Are we one thing or many? How do we demonstrate the outcomes and impact of our work in meaningful ways to varied audiences?

Within the past decade alone, a number of developers outside the U.S. have considered these questions in editorials, articles, and books that question, justify (Bath & Smith, 2004), categorize, or map the field (see the literature review in Lee and McWilliam, 2008). Internationally, educational development has been characterized as being fragmented, or “a family of strangers” (Harland & Staniforth, 2008, p. 669), because of the breadth of focus as well as the epistemological differences sparked by the various disciplines we come from. Clegg (2009) argues that this ongoing conversation about who we are as educational developers represents “the struggle for legitimacy for the particular social project” (p. 409) we are engaged in— specifically, a struggle for moral and intellectual legitimacy for a project founded on supporting teaching and learning communities, while also using our knowledge to evaluate those communities and to foster positive changes that help them function effectively.

Why does the conversation about who we are, what exactly we do, or what we call ourselves matter? The simplest answer to this question: We are many and varied, and this offers both opportunities and challenges for our field and for our scholarship in the field. Educational development is broad and diverse. As a field of practice, but not currently a formal, stand alone, field of study in North America, it is composed of practitioners from a wide range of academic disciplines and professions. This diversity of role, context, expertise, and purpose is both a potential tension and a potential strength for the practice and scholarship of educational development.

How do we negotiate disciplinary differences in a shared space?

Educational developers bring a wide array of disciplinary identities to the field of educational development. Surveys of POD members in 1996 and 2010 reveal that developers in the U.S., like those in other countries, come from a wide variety of disciplinary or professional backgrounds; we are, in a sense, largely migrants (Green & Little, 2013) from various disciplines or “academic tribes” (Becher & Trowler, 2001). These disciplinary tribes are distinguishable by their “traditions, customs and practices, transmitted knowledge, beliefs, morals, and rules of conduct, as well as their linguistic and symbolic forms of communication and meanings they share” (p. 24). These varied disciplinary identities both enrich and complicate our work because they mean we bring to educational development different perspectives, different methods, and even different vocabularies for describing similar phenomenon.

Not only do educational developers come from various disciplines, but their primary professional identity may even align as much or more with their original discipline than with educational development. Granted, disciplinary identity is not unitary or simple: Kreber (2009b) reminds us that disciplines “are organic entities and defining their commonalities and differences appears to be at best challenging and at worst impossible” (p. 23). However, the shared language and texts of disciplinary groups help establish cultural identity, and “the method by which knowledge is arrived at in a discipline, the process of knowledge validation, and the truth criteria employed in that process are essential” (Donald, 2002, p. 6). These shared assumptions are essential because they allow us to problem solve within the specific domains our disciplines work within; as biologists or literary scholars or educational psychologists, we come to rely on these lenses, or “truth criteria,” to assess novel problems, understand the type of knowledge needed (Kreber, 2013), determine acceptable evidence or modes of inquiry, and choose methods of analysis. As we enter educational development, then, we bring with us different tacit assumptions about how knowledge, evidence, and practice “should” work— whether, for example, inductive or deductive approaches to a research question are “better,” or whether solely qualitative (or quantitative) data “can be trusted.” At best, the disciplinary assumptions we bring into educational development can enrich our field; at worst, they can cause us to view work drawn from other disciplines in a more critical or negative light.

Some, like Rowland (2003) argue that we should envision educational development as a “critical interdisciplinarity” (p. 17), that is, where we are not only making explicit our different disciplinary assumptions about what counts as evidence or which research methods are “true” or valid, but where we also engage with “the critique which emerges as different disciplines contest each other’s theoretical frameworks, perspectives and practices” (p. 17). Developers bring to the field different tacit knowledge of cognitive and social processes that we internalized from a variety of disciplines, making the need to uncover and articulate these assumptions even more important. Whether we frame educational development as an inter , multi or transdisciplinary space (Poole, 2013), we must consider the ways the proliferation of academic disciplines within the field can be an asset or an obstacle, depending on how we recognize, call on, and value the contributions of each to our shared knowledge base—contributions that can collectively help us respond to the complexity and uncertainty we encounter in higher education and the world more broadly. How then do we negotiate this aspect of our diversity in productive ways? Can we agree on a shared language, texts and standards of quality for our research and practice in educational development? How do we determine what different contributions these various disciplines make to our shared field so that it is a trading zone (Huber & Morreale, 2002) where we can collaborate, barter methods, and exchange ideas across disciplinary cultures in ways that we recognize as rigorous and productive?

Other scholars have pointed out that not only are discussions in educational development similar to the ongoing debates in the scholarship of teaching and learning (see for example, Felten et al., 2007; Hutchings, Huber & Ciccone, 2011; Potter, 2011), but also that we can look to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) for models of how to navigate these tensions in ways that strengthen the scholarship of educational development (SoED). Both SoTL and SoED rely on Boyer’s (1990) foundational reconsideration of what scholarship means, what purposes it might fruitfully serve, and what range of work should count as scholarly. In both fields, moving outside disciplinary comfort zones also requires one “to question existing frames of reference” and “engage in serious critique and negotiation of their underlying assumptions” (Kreber, 2009a, p. 16). In both, disciplinary allegiances can cause some to disdain unfamiliar modes of scholarly inquiry, thus reinforcing epistemological hierarchies between disciplines (see Poole, 2013 for an excellent discussion of the complexity of defining research in a multidisciplinary context). Lastly, in both, the scholarship individual faculty or developers want to pursue is often a departure from their traditional mode of research, which can seem disorienting. Understanding what disciplinary perspectives and assumptions we bring to our practice, and how these perspectives supplement or conflict with those who come from other disciplines, is an important first step in strengthening the scholarship of educational development. Building deliberately transdisciplinary scholarly collaboration is another.

How does this shape our scholarship?

Another recurring debate about the SoED is whether our scholarly projects are more “useful” or descriptive than scholarly or rigorous. On the one hand, educational developers are sometimes depicted as being involved in a generic, under theorized, or even non academic field (Rowland, 2003; or see, unfortunately, examples of such claims in most comment threads following any article on educational development in The Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Education). On the other, educational development practice and publications with a more pragmatic focus tend to be valued more by other faculty than ones that are more theoretical (Bath & Smith, 2004). Navigating this tension is key to solving complex problems as well as to convincing our audiences of the value of our contributions; Shay (2012) reminds us, “the stronger our knowledge foundations—the conceptual or theoretical basis underpinning our practice— the more likely we are to understand and resolve the seemingly intractable problems facing us in higher education. To put it more bluntly, without the strengthening of our knowledge base we will not emerge as a professional field able to engage rigorously and systematically with these problems” (p. 312). In short, we need to continue to seek ways to make our scholarly projects more useful and our useful projects more scholarly.

Belcher (2009) points out: “Research articles get published because they say something new about something old” (p. 49). New, she argues, does not necessarily mean “original”; it could be new evidence approached in an old way, old evidence approached in a new way, or even old evidence paired with old approaches in a new way. Currently in higher education, there is a lot that we don’t know, as well as much that we do. When we research and publish the scholarship of educational development we need to keep asking: What knowledge bases do we build on and add to? What new things are we saying about something old? What old approaches might productively help explain new evidence? More broadly: What topic areas do we want to explore and what research questions do they pose? How many different approaches and methods can we use to create the fullest possible picture of that topic? What possibilities are we overlooking?

Two typologies seem particularly relevant as we continue to strengthen our knowledge base in SoED—Potter’s (2011) typology of SoED projects, adapted from one used to categorize SoTL work, and Lattuca’s (2001) typology of interdisciplinarity, which categorizes the degree of disciplinary overlap in interdisciplinary projects and provides a helpful framework for considering what kinds of questions we are asking and answering. Potter’s typology focuses on the types of scholarship being published in U.S. SoED journals, such as To Improve the Academy, and demonstrates that publications range from descriptions of or reflections on practice to synthetic pieces focused on larger contexts or themes (which include critical, theoretical, or instrumental perspectives) and even further to experimental projects and meta studies. This typology can help us to evaluate what types of SoED projects we are reading, to consider what types of projects would better contribute to our knowledge as a field, and, finally, to determine what type of research project we are undertaking and why. Alongside the widening focus in our field—from supporting scholarly competence and teaching effectiveness to focusing on the learner, and now to balancing each of those with a broader focus on institutional issues (Sorcinelli et al., 2006)—SoED has seen a parallel broadening in scholarship. From early publications that were largely descriptions of practice, SoED has moved to include more systematic inquiry (Felten et al., 2007; Potter, 2011). This systematic study, whether synthetic, experimental, or meta studies, can start with familiar methods, but may require theoretical perspectives, methods, or means of collecting data that originate in different disciplines.

As we imagine new possibilities for SoED projects, Lattuca’s (2001) typology offers helpful ways to consider what kinds of questions we are asking, what relationships between different methodologies we are putting into play, and how any given project situates any one disciplinary lens vis–á–vis another. From a study of interdisciplinary scholars, Lattuca categorized four distinct types of interdisciplinary work: informed disciplinarity, synthetic interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and conceptual interdisciplinarity (see McKinney, 2013, p. 5–7 for a discussion of what this typology might look like in a SoTL landscape). According to Lattuca’s (2001) typology:

• A project demonstrating informed disciplinarity may ask questions that borrow from other disciplines without integrating or drawing insights from them.

  • This might look like, for example, a SoED project analyzing the rhetorical appeals employed in a set of engineering syllabi, but is limited to one tool, without drawing on broader rhetorical frameworks.

• One that moves beyond to synthetic interdisciplinarity focuses on questions that “bridge disciplines” or ones that “cannot be answered completely by a single discipline” (p. 112), which might also be “questions found in the intersections of disciplines, as well as on questions found in the gaps among disciplines” (p. 115).

  • A synthetic project might include, for example, a team of biologists working with a linguist to analyze how students and faculty talk about key learning moments in their classes to better understand obstacles to learning biological thinking, synthesizing linguistic analysis with biological content knowledge.

• SoED projects approaching transdisciplinarity would consider questions applicable across disciplines, which “therefore transcend a single disciplinary identity,” (p. 112) without necessarily critiquing or contesting any disciplinary theoretical framework, perspective or practice.

  • This type of project might be a mixed methods approach to almost any aspect of educational development but which includes collaborators, frameworks, and/or analytical tools from multiple disciplines.

• And projects that pushed further to “purposefully challenge the disciplinary foundations of knowledge” (p. 117), providing research without a compelling disciplinary bias, would demonstrate conceptual interdisciplinarity —true or full disciplinary integration, where “the question is central and disciplines are important insofar as they serve to answer the question” (p. 117).

  • A conceptually interdisciplinary project, for example, might be even broader in scale, such as one involving an interdisciplinary, multi institutional team investigating which factors contribute to help new faculty acclimate and thrive in new roles in different institutional and departmental contexts.

Concluding thoughts

Whether we as educational developers are working on projects that are primarily informed by one discipline or are conceptually interdisciplinary, as we attempt to solve the messy, complicated, and intriguing problems we find, we should keep the following in mind:

• We need to build better, shared definitions of what SoED research means, articulating the “common language” and guiding principles of our work while still paying attention to the diversity of our field and its audiences.

• We need to communicate the ways our work is evidence informed and scholarly, and can draw on contributions from and collaborations between a range of disciplinary perspectives in order to do so.

• We need to continue building on and extending our knowledge bases without reverting to a one approach fits all model, continuing to ask—What approaches are we privileging and why? What methods would best help us answer this question?

• We need to think of ways to scale up, branch out, and find collaborators in both logical and unexpected places to help us further increase our knowledge, enrich our scholarship and expand our vision of what is possible.

The future of SoED depends on us, as scholars and developers, undertaking scholarly projects without losing the focus on learning in higher education at the core of our work. This means working together to figure out ways to include different levels of evidence—both the large scale and context specific—to broaden and deepen our scholarship. It also means being attentive to context and variability without reducing those to “generalizable simplicity” (see Poole, 2013, p. 141). In short, our scholarship, like our daily work as developers, should demonstrate a willingness to grapple with complexity and uncertainty, as a way of valuing educational development, similar to the way Weimer describes effective pedagogical scholarship as “a way of valuing teaching” or “a way of coming to respect its difficulty and complexity, a way of discovering how much there is yet to learn” (Weimer, 2006, pp. 196–97). While there is much we know about how “to help colleges and universities function effectively as teaching and learning communities,” (Felten et al., 2007, p. 93) there is much more yet to discover. It will take our combined efforts and expertise to engage systematically and creatively with the complex problems and opportunities that we face in higher education. And it is vital that we do.

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