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Academic professional development as a space for inquiry

by Yaz Iyabo Osho

Academic professional development (APD) has a central role in supporting teaching and learning in higher education. Through development programmes, workshops, resources, professional networks, and opportunities to share practice, colleagues are supported in developing their knowledge, expertise, and ideas.

I have long been interested in another aspect of academic professional development: what it can help us understand about educational practice, student experience, and the particularities of higher education institutions. When universities encounter challenges relating to inclusion, belonging, student engagement, or educational outcomes, how do we determine what kind of development or support is needed? What critically informs those decisions? Whose knowledge and experiences are considered? And what can we learn from what happens afterwards?

These questions underpin an approach I am developing as ‘Research-Informed Academic Professional Development’ (Research-Informed APD). My interest is in how academic professional development can contribute not only to supporting practice, but also to generating and connecting knowledge that informs educational decision-making and institutional learning.

The foundations of my thinking

Although I am now giving this approach a name, its foundations have developed over several years of my research and professional practice. Earlier in my career, working in widening-participation higher education contexts, I became increasingly interested in how students’ experiences could inform our understanding of engagement, progression and success. In my earlier writing on widening participation and enterprise education (Osho, nd), I argued for greater attention to institutional practices and approaches to teaching and learning, rather than focusing on perceived deficiencies among students.

This thinking continued through collaborative research exploring the experiences behind ethnic minority students’ attainment (Seuwou et al, 2023), alongside my own work on racialised awarding gaps and inclusive curriculum practices. Several of my studies were subsequently referenced in the University of Westminster’s Access and Participation Plan (2025–2029), contributing to the institutional evidence base for understanding educational inequalities and informing approaches to curriculum development and inclusion. Later in my career, my responsibilities as an EDI Lead brought together research, colleague development, inclusive and anti-racist pedagogy, curriculum enhancement, and evaluation.

More recently, moving into an institution-wide academic professional development role allowed me to consider these questions across different disciplines, professional roles and institutional contexts at scale. It also made me think more about how knowledge can be generated through educational practice. Looking across my work, I can see a consistent interest in understanding educational questions before deciding how best to respond. Research-Informed APD is the name I am now giving to an approach that has developed through this research and practice over several years.

Building on established scholarship

The idea that academic professional development should extend beyond individual activities is not new. Educational developers and researchers have long explored professional learning, reflective practice, inquiry, and the relationship between development and educational change. For example, Amundsen and Wilson (2012) conducted a conceptual review of the literature on educational and academic development and identified different orientations to practice, including institutional development, skill development, action research and inquiry. Their work invites us to consider not only whether development is effective but also the assumptions that inform its design.

Similarly, King (2022) considers how academics develop their teaching expertise over time, drawing on evidence, reflection and their experiences of practice. She highlights the importance of curiosity, community, and care, as well as the role of academic development and institutional cultures in supporting continued professional learning.

This scholarship provides a useful foundation for my thinking. My particular interest, however, is in the academic professional development function itself, and how we understand its contribution to educational practice and wider institutional learning. I am interested in what academic professional development can help institutions understand about their educational practices, beyond the programmes, resources and support it provides.

Towards Research-Informed Academic Professional Development

Research-Informed APD is the name I am giving to an approach that has emerged through my research, professional practice and reflections on the purposes of academic professional development. I am developing this line of thinking further in a scholarly paper that will examine its conceptual foundations and implications for academic professional development. For now, my proposition is that academic professional development should be recognised not only for the activities it delivers or the practices it supports, but also for the knowledge it can generate and the institutional learning it can enable. This requires us to look beyond responding to immediate educational challenges and consider what we might learn through the process.

Dr Yaz Iyabo Osho is a Reader and Director of Academic Professional Development at the Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation, University of Westminster. Her research interests include inclusive and anti-racist pedagogy, academic professional development, CPD governance, belonging, and the experiences of Black students and academics in higher education. She is currently developing a scholarly framework for Research-Informed Academic Professional Development.


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Teaching in higher education: Connected practice for changing times?

by Karen Gravett and Simon Lygo-Baker

Why does teaching matter, and how might we understand what it means to teach in higher education, in contemporary times? This blog introduces our new book Reconceptualising teaching in higher education, published by Routledge. The book is created from our own reading, research, ideas, and practice as two academics working in the field of higher education, where we have been teaching for over twenty years in universities in the UK, America and Australia. It was inspired by our thoughts and discussions surrounding what it means to teach and the joys, pleasures and challenges that accompany our role.

At present there are many questions regarding higher education, its purpose and possible futures. For teachers too, questions remain regarding the necessity and shape of teachers’ contributions in a marketised sector mediated by artificial intelligence and pinched by precarity. And yet, this book is underpinned by our continued belief that teaching matters. We believe that meaningful teaching matters for our students, for our own development and experiences as educators, and for the futures of universities themselves. We argue that teaching provides opportunities for meaningful learning which matters for personal growth and for the development of knowledge. We believe that meaningful learning matters for the creation of new opportunities and possibilities. As bell hooks (1994) explains, fundamentally, education is about ‘the practice of freedom’. In a world where perhaps the experiences we have, the products we purchase, and the information we consume may not always seem meaningful, we believe that the connections that happen when we learn and when we teach have a power that should be harnessed and celebrated. Education matters, because not only does it open doors, but it allows us to recognise them and frame them for ourselves, offering the opportunity to challenge and evolve.

The book is designed for anyone seeking to develop their role as teachers in contemporary universities. This includes new teachers as well as those of us who still have questions and are still keen to develop and respond to our changing times. Specifically, it asks us to rethink our role and the directions we typically follow and suggests the need to disrupt these and to rethink our role as teachers, to take a different path, talk to someone new, or see things a different way. Viewing higher education from new positions can help us to reimagine our role and discover or reclaim the pleasure of teaching. 

To do this, our book challenges the traditional view of teaching as an individual act. Instead, it frames teaching as a relational and situated practice, built on connections with others. Secondly, we explore teaching as an affirmative and emotional endeavour that can inspire others and lead to joyful and generative moments of connection. Lastly, the book positions teaching as a critical practice, where educators are encouraged to embrace uncertainty, question assumptions, and let their approaches evolve. These ideas are all interwoven with practical insights into contemporary areas of practice, including assessment, learning spaces, feedback, digital education, artificial intelligence, learning design, belonging and inclusion, to develop ethical and relational pedagogic approaches. Specifically, the last chapter examines a wide range of key issues, for example feedback frustrations or student engagement, in order to examine how as a reader you might be able to develop approaches and ideas that work for you in responding to some of these challenges. We hope that readers will find the book useful and look forward to continuing conversations around what it means to teach in changing times.

References

Gravett, K and Lygo-Baker, S (2026) Reconceptualising teaching in higher education: Connected practice for changing times Routledge

hooks, b (1994) Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom Routledge

Dr Karen Gravett is Associate Professor of Higher Education, and Head of the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory-practice of higher education. She is Executive Editor for the journal Teaching in Higher Education, and a member of the editorial board for Learning, Media and Technology. Karen’s latest books are: Gravett, K and Lygo-Baker, S (2026). Reconceptualising teaching in higher education: Connected practice for changing times, Gravett, K (2025) Critical Practice in Higher Education, and Gravett, K (2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and Mattering in Higher Education.

Simon Lygo-Baker works as a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Education at King’s College London and has previously worked in the University of Wisconsin, USA and the University of Surrey, UK. He has previously worked on developing curricula with refugees, asylum seekers and other socially excluded groups, as well as working for a number of years in academic development.

Brenda Leibowitz


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Brenda Leibowitz 1957 – 2018

It is with much sadness that the SRHE community notes the passing of Brenda Leibowitz, a South African scholar in academic development and higher education. Her recent work on academic staff development features twice in the SRHE/Routledge book series; first, a chapter in the edited 2016 book “Researching Higher Education: International perspectives on theory, policy and practice”, and then, with Vivienne Bozalek and Peter Kahn, a 2017 book “Theorising learning to teach in higher education”. She also presented her work at the SRHE annual conference and will be known to many in the community for her engagement across a wide range of higher education conferences in South Africa and abroad.

Brenda’s engaged scholarship over nearly 30 years was strongly rooted in her activist commitment to recognizing a democratic and transformed South Africa through education and higher education. She began teaching in secondary schools designated for ‘coloured’ pupils and this sharpened sense both of the inequities of apartheid and the possibilities in education led to a most formative stint in the Academic Development Centre at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), where her practice and emerging scholarship focused on language issues in the university. She followed this with a period of curriculum work as a Director in the national Department of Education, completing a PhD from the University of Sheffield, and moved from here to nearly a decade directing the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Stellenbosch University. Here her work moved from a focus on student development to staff development, bringing with it a critical edge and an exceptionally strong commitment to collaboration and empowerment. In 2014 her scholarship was noted with the appointment to a chair in Teaching and Learning at the University of Johannesburg (and more recently, with the award of an National Research Foundation (NRF) funded South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) position on Post School Education and Training).

Brenda was one of the Principal Investigators on an ESRC Newton/NRF funded project entitled “Southern African Rurality in Higher Education” (SARiHE), which began in 2016 and will complete work in 2019. Brenda’s long-term interest in social justice in higher education especially for students from rural backgrounds in South Africa helped to secure funding for this project. The Southern African University Learning and Teaching (SAULT) forum, which she helped to build, has also been important in this project and has facilitated the involvement of academics and academic developers from across nine Southern African countries.

Brenda was absolutely prolific in her deep scholarship, and pulled many others along in her wake. She published across national and international journals, book chapters and books. A flavour of the evolution of her distinctive scholarship can be seen in the perusal of some of her article titles that drew on direct quotes from her research participants:

* “Why now after all these years you want to listen to me?” Using journals in teaching history at a South African university. The History Teacher, 1996 

* “Communities isn’t just about trees and shops”: Students from two South African universities engage in dialogue about ‘community’ and ‘community work’. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 2008 

* What’s Inside the Suitcases? An investigation into the powerful resources students and lecturers bring to teaching and learning. Higher Education Research and Development, 2009 

* “Ah, but the whiteys love to talk about themselves”: Discomfort as a pedagogy for change. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 2010 

* “It’s been a wonderful life”: Accounts of the interplay between structure and agency by “good” university teachers. Higher Education, 2012 

The title of her most recent paper, with colleague Vivienne Bozalek, ‘Toward a Slow scholarship of teaching and learning in the South’ is also revealing. ‘Slow scholarship’ foregrounds qualities such as thoughtfulness, attentiveness, the valuing of relationships, creativity, and depth of engagement – qualities that embody so well Brenda’s own scholarship and her way of being in the world.

In her research, Brenda leaves an extraordinary written record of scholarship; however, more importantly, there are the many, many lives that this extraordinary educator and scholar touched and influenced deeply. Brenda had an openness and generosity of spirit that allowed her to traverse boundaries and bring together collaborative teams across all the usual divisions of discipline, social background and institutional type. She had a solid compass that never deviated from its pointing towards the long arc of social justice, but she accomplished all she did with notable humility and serious interest in others and their educational and research journeys.

The period of late apartheid bred a distinctive sort of higher education researcher, many of these working in academic development at UWC in the 1990s. In this group of hugely influential higher education scholars, including Chrissie Boughey and Melanie Walker, Brenda made a distinctive and important contribution, cut much too short by her cancer diagnosis. We will remember her with love and admiration.

Jenni Case, Lisa Lucas and Delia Marshall