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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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Bringing GTAs into the career development conversation

by Kristyna Campbell and Kaiyun Feng

The 2026 report published with HEPI by Dr Charlotte Fawcett entitled More than academia: Expanding career support for doctoral researchers sheds light on a timely challenge faced by swathes of PhD graduates. Notably, that much of their studies and professional development is shaped on the premise that an academic profession will be the destination for most. Fawcett weighs in on this issue, illustrating that PhD candidates are increasingly applying themselves to professions both across and beyond academia in today’s fierce employment landscape, and goes on to explain that preparation for this reality is made more difficult by the varied availability of resources to PhD candidates, mainly through their supervisors. While the report calls for better collaboration between stakeholders and more opportunities for work experience, we expand Fawcett’s work by offering insight into professional learning and career development experienced by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) during the doctoral journey.

Fawcett’s report gives the sector something it has lacked for some time: a clear, current picture of how doctoral researchers experience career support, set against a labour market that no longer resembles the one for which doctoral study was originally built. Its central contribution is not simply diagnostic. By tracking change since 2019, and by pairing survey data with the voices of students and careers professionals, Fawcett provides institutions with meaningful evidence to work from, and a set of recommendations for action. It is essential reading for anyone with a stake in doctoral education, and it sets a benchmark for the kind of practical, student-centred research this space needs. 

Our recent study highlights the significance of the GTA role as a site for doctoral employment, within which wide-ranging skills are fostered pertaining to teaching, research and service. Using a model that explores how GTA career trajectories were shaped by expectations and realities of the role, and aspirations beyond graduation (Feng, 2024), qualitative data from eight GTAs from different disciplinary contexts were explored. The intention of our study was to make explicit the connection between GTA professional development and career development, through consideration for how GTAs understand teaching, research and service roles and their implications for identity.

In the GTA role, doctoral candidates are encouraged to ‘try on’ identities, and to undertake dedicated skills training designed to ensure high-quality teaching and assessment practice.  Their capabilities can include interpersonal, leadership, and organisational skills. Our findings indicated that the GTA role remains oriented toward academic careers, despite the various professional pathways taken by today’s doctoral candidates, a point also raised by Fawcett. Building on this understanding, we consider possible internal institutional and experiential opportunities designed to elevate the competence and confidence of doctoral candidates applying for work beyond academic teaching roles. Like Fawcett, we argued that support in recognising and articulating the transferability of knowledge and skills acquired through employment as GTAs is needed and instead suggest that learnt skillsets should be understood as competencies that can be applied across many careers and contexts.

From our study, we sensed that the expected linear academic career trajectory was falling away as graduate numbers rise and post-doctoral positions become fewer. While, as Fawcett reports, an increasing number of career-focused resources are becoming part of supervisory toolkits, we believe the responsibility extends to other members of the institution (including disciplinary experts, careers teams, and education developers) whose tailored care may have implications for preparedness.  

Our data add another perspective to Fawcett’s work regarding a shared understanding of the benefits of GTA-related competencies. Where Fawcett finds that only 27% of PhD students believe their supervisor has useful advice for non-academic careers, a related opportunity for helping supervisors and GTAs to better articulate GTA competencies was found in our data. We asked GTAs to plot their expected, actual, and hoped-for relationships with teaching, research (doctoral studies), and service, and the participants’ responses scattered without forming any discernible cluster. This variation has been attributed to the challenge of communicating tasks, responsibilities, and learnt skills, which may be a disciplinary concern. Helping PhD students to identify and articulate their current work within Feng’s (2024) framework could, in turn, support supervisors and other significant colleagues to help with locating prospective career paths and understand the transferability of competencies developed as GTAs and doctoral researchers. While the GTA lived reality appears varied, individual-level insight now can prepare for career clarity later, pointing to a single intervention with dual benefit rather than two separate problems to solve. 

We also noted a shift in GTAs’ present-tense identities and their imagined post-graduation selves. Participants who located themselves around teaching and service when reflecting on their reality consistently repositioned themselves towards research when projecting beyond their PhD studies. This shows that participants experienced their current role and future career as distinct rather than continuous. This resonates with Fawcett’s finding that, while 82% of students feel prepared for a research career, only 40% feel similarly prepared for non-research careers, and suggests that building this preparedness is partly about how GTAs are supported to narrate their experiences, not only about the information or resources on offer. This speaks to our earlier diagnosis about how aspects of a role are articulated, and how this is translated for work within and beyond academia. One participant’s insistence that they do not ‘identify as teaching staff’, despite teaching being a substantial commitment, points to an opportunity: helping GTAs to recognise the significance of teaching and service to the development of academic identity, rather than as detours from it, complementing the signposting Fawcett recommends.

Our third contribution sits slightly outside Fawcett’s frame but strengthens the recommendations: the emotional and relational labour GTAs absorb, for example, patience, diplomacy, and responsiveness to ‘unexpected situational cases’, is central to how participants experienced the role, even where it goes unnamed in formal role descriptions and training. This matters for career-readiness in a very practical sense. If pastoral and interpersonal skills are what GTAs are actually developing, naming them explicitly, alongside ‘research’ or ‘teaching experience’, would help doctoral candidates translate what they already do into what they can put on a CV. This lends weight to our suggestion of a competencies glossary, and points to a further opportunity that Fawcett’s supervisor-focused recommendations open up: module conveners, disciplinary leads, and GTA programme teams each hold partial knowledge of what a given candidate has developed, and bringing this knowledge together, alongside continued investment in careers advice, could be a valuable and immediately actionable step for institutions. 

Fawcett’s timely report creates an important point of departure for conversations about career readiness and stakeholder provision. It highlights the myriad resources available to doctoral candidates across the academy, whilst gently drawing attention to areas in need of development. Bringing this together with our study of GTAs offers a more holistic view of careers following doctoral study. Together, the studies describe support structures and the opportunity for work experience, thus initiating a conversation about translation and transition. Instead of asking what additional support is needed, we should emphasise supporting doctoral candidates to articulate the capabilities they are developing.

Dr Kristy Campbell is a Lecturer in Education (GTA Development Programme Lead) at King’s Academy, King’s College London, supporting staff with continued professional development through workshops and professional accreditation. She is also Unit Lead for the PGCHE and MA Creative Education courses at Norwich University of the Arts. Kristy completed her PhD at UCL Institute of Education, specialising in Higher Education. Her interests include adult teaching and learning, transition, and identity. Kristy is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of Postgraduate Pedagogies, a developmental journal dedicated to showcasing the experiences of GTAs.

Dr Kaiyun Feng is a Lecturer in Education at King’s College London, specialising in higher education policy, institutional management, academic identities and professionalisation, and impact and evaluation. Previously a Researcher at the University of Cambridge, she analysed access and participation and evaluated widening participation projects. She earned her PhD from UCL Institute of Education, investigating institutional strategies for undergraduate teaching in world-class universities across China, the UK, and Canada. She leads master’s and undergraduate seminars on social policy, higher education management, and research engagement. Her evidence-based teaching is informed by her research into the teaching-research nexus and academic career development.


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Becoming a professional services researcher in HE – making the train tracks converge

by Charlotte Verney

This blog builds on my presentation at the BERA ECR Conference 2024: at crossroads of becoming. It represents my personal reflections of working in UK higher education (HE) professional services roles and simultaneously gaining research experience through a Masters and Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD).

Professional service roles within UK HE include recognised professionals from other industries (eg human resources, finance, IT) and HE-specific roles such as academic quality, research support and student administration. Unlike academic staff, professional services staff are not typically required, or expected, to undertake research, yet many do. My own experience spans roles within six universities over 18 years delivering administration and policy that supports learning, teaching and students.

Traversing two tracks

In 2016, at an SRHE Newer Researchers event, I was asked to identify a metaphor to reflect my experience as a practitioner researcher. I chose this image of two train tracks as I have often felt that I have been on two development tracks simultaneously –  one building professional experience and expertise, the other developing research skills and experience. These tracks ran in parallel, but never at the same pace, occasionally meeting on a shared project or assignment, and then continuing on their separate routes. I use this metaphor to share my experiences, and three phases, of becoming a professional services researcher.

Becoming research-informed: accelerating and expanding my professional track

The first phase was filled with opportunities; on my professional track I gained a breadth of experience, a toolkit of management and leadership skills, a portfolio of successful projects and built a strong network through professional associations (eg AHEP). After three years, I started my research track with a masters in international higher education. Studying felt separate to my day job in academic quality and policy, but the assignments gave me opportunities to bring the tracks together, using research and theory to inform my practice – for example, exploring theoretical literature underpinning approaches to assessment whilst my institution was revising its own approach to assessing resits. I felt like a research-informed professional, and this positively impacted my professional work, accelerating and expanding my experience.

Becoming a doctoral researcher: long distance, slow speed

The second phase was more challenging. My doctoral journey was long, taking 9 years with two breaks. Like many part-time doctoral students, I struggled with balance and support, with unexpected personal and professional pressures, and I found it unsettling to simultaneously be an expert in my professional context yet a novice in research. I feared failure, and damaging my professional credibility as I found my voice in a research space.

What kept me going, balancing the two tracks, was building my own research support network and my researcher identity. Some of the ways I did this was through zoom calls with EdD peers for moral support, joining the Society for Research into Higher Education to find my place in the research field, and joining the editorial team of a practitioner journal to build my confidence in academic writing.

Becoming a professional services researcher: making the tracks converge

Having completed my doctorate in 2022, I’m now actively trying to bring my professional and research tracks together. Without a roadmap, I’ve started in my comfort-zone, sharing my doctoral research in ‘safe’ policy and practitioner spaces, where I thought my findings could have the biggest impact. I collaborated with EdD peers to tackle the daunting task of publishing my first article. I’ve drawn on my existing professional networks (ARC, JISC, QAA) to establish new research initiatives related to my current practice in managing assessment. I’ve made connections with fellow professional services researchers along my journey, and have established an online network  to bring us together.

Key takeaways for professional services researchers

Bringing my professional experience and research tracks together has not been without challenges, but I am really positive about my journey so far, and for the potential impact professional services researchers could have on policy and practice in higher education. If you are on your own journey of becoming a professional services researcher, my advice is:

  • Make time for activities that build your research identity
  • Find collaborators and a community
  • Use your professional experience and networks
  • It’s challenging, but rewarding, so keep going!

Charlotte Verney is Head of Assessment at the University of Bristol. Charlotte is an early career researcher in higher education research and a leader in within higher education professional services. Her primary research interests are in the changing nature of administrative work within universities, using research approaches to solve professional problems in higher education management, and using creative and collaborative approaches to research. Charlotte advocates for making the academic research space more inclusive for early career and professional services researchers. She is co-convenor of the SRHE Newer Researchers Network and has established an online network for higher education professional services staff engaged with research.


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Are higher education managers becoming more professional and if so, how?

by Susan Harris-Huemmert, Julia Rathke, Anna Gerchen and Susi Poli

How well are HEIs being managed? Who are those in charge? Can we really be confident in their abilities? At a time in which the HE sector appears more complex and diverse, how sure can we be that those at the top are ‘professional’? How are they being prepared (or actively prepare themselves) for these positions, and if they get to the top, are they themselves making sure that staff members, too, are being ‘professionalised’? Especially in terms of new areas of employment within the HE sector, how are these staff members qualifying themselves? These seem pertinent questions and the ongoing lack of empirical work into HE governance reveals that there are considerable gaps in our knowledge. To address this, we bring together empirical data from ongoing research projects in the UK, Germany and Italy, which, from various angles and viewpoints, explore how professionalism within the HE sector is being developed to meet present and future needs and challenges.

A current German research project, financed by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) – KaWuM – is examining the career trajectories and qualification requirements of so-called higher education or science managers (www.kawum-online.de). Qualitative work has been undertaken to explore in depth the viewpoints and experiences of this particular group of staff, who work at the interface between research, teaching and administration (Whitchurch, 2010). A sample of 32 qualitative interviews has been drawn upon here from the project by Susan Harris-Huemmert and Julia Rathke, who examine the roles of German HE leaders from two vantage points. Firstly how do they prepare for and become more professional as institutional heads, and secondly: how do these leaders ensure that their academic or administrative staff members are also being professionally trained and developed? (Thoenig and Paradeise, 2016: 320). Interviews were conducted with both formal (presidents/rectors/chancellors/VPs) and informal leaders (science managers) and analysed in MaxQDa according to Kuckartz (2018). Findings suggest that formal HE leaders are encountering ever more complex management tasks, with little management training or ‘other’ work experience outside academia. They mainly learn by doing and often lack the time and/or motivation for professional training. It appears that formal HE leaders are seldom professionalised, although management tasks are their main responsibility. However, they are relying increasingly on professionalised science managers and their expertise, who can advance their professionalisation via personnel development.

In her work from within the BerBeo project, which also stems from the same BMBF funding thread as the above-named KaWuM project, Anna Gerchen is examining how the influence of New Public Management, academic reforms and increasing competition between universities have changed the demands on recruitment processes in German HE, in particular those regarding professorial appointments. Professorships in Germany are characterised by a particularly high degree of autonomy and prestige (Hamann, 2019). Almost all full professors are civil servants and hold tenured, safeguarded lifetime employment. This emphasises the importance of professorial personnel selection for which German universities use highly formalised procedures. To professionalise these procedures, Germany’s Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) called for the creation of officers for professorial appointments to take responsibility for the “proper and smooth running of the procedure” (WR, 2005, p5). Following this recommendation and the subsequent legal revisions, many German universities have introduced officers for professorial appointment procedures – non-professorial staff members appointed specifically for quality assurance and decision-making support. These appointment managers – as shown on the basis of a quantitative survey (Gerchen, 2021) – are predominantly female, relatively young, highly educated and from the social sciences; in particular they show a background in administrative science or in law. Informing and advising the university management is reported by 94% of the respondents to be central to their work. This shows that the purpose of supporting the university management in appointment matters, as stated by the Council of Science and Humanities, actually represents the core function of this new position in practice.

In her research Susi Poli turns the lens towards Italy and a number of other countries to investigate the role of research managers (RMAs), as one of the most hybrid or blended groups that can be found in today’s HEIs among staff in professional services. She asks to what extent these managers are qualified for this specific role, even in relation to qualifications, training, and any sort of network provided by their professional associations. Is what they have, and do, enough? Or is there much more than that coming up in the RMAs’ community, even as creators of new discourses in today’s HE management? She draws on Barnett’s notion of supercomplexity, in which he suggests the re-creation of discourse on competences, qualifications, and professional frameworks (Barnett, 2008: 191). In this new age, research managers should be “pioneers or the creators of these new discourses” (Barnett, 2008: 206). Susi’s work includes an analysis of professional networks and supporting bodies in countries such as the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Norway, the US, Portugal, Japan, South Africa (Romano et al, 2021). She concludes that there is a growing awareness of the identity and purpose of research managers and that the literature is now paying more attention to this staff group.

In sum, it appears that there is a developing international trend towards greater professionalism within the HE sector, including the work of formal and informal leaders in various capacities. Networks reveal an increasing level of support, but it appears that professional development per se is still very much in the hands of the individual, and is not the result of any particularly well-structured system. This is a question the sector needs to ask itself, reflecting what Thoenig and Paradeise stated in 2016: “If knowledge gaps remain, this may be to the detriment of the strategic capacity of the whole institution”. Our question should therefore be whether we can afford to allow such knowledge gaps, or whether we as a sector can do more, to fill them.

Susan Harris-Huemmert is Professor of International Education Leadership and Management at Ludwigsburg University of Education. Following her doctoral research at the University of Oxford on the topic of evaluation practice in Germany, she has researched and published internationally on topics such as higher education systems and their governance, quality management and the management of campus infrastructure. Contact: susan.harris-huemmert@ph-ludwigsburg.de

Julia Rathke is research assistant at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer in the project “KaWuM – Career Paths and Qualification Requirements in Science and Higher Education Management” since August 2019. In January 2021 she took over charge of the joint coordination and management of the project team KaWuM Central Coordination and Interviews from Prof. Dr. Susan Harris-Huemmert. Contact: rathke@uni-speyer.de; www.kawum-online.de 

Anna Gerchen is a researcher at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) in the research area ‘Governance in Higher Education and Science’. With a background in communication science, sociology and gender studies she currently works on the field of quality assurance and appointment procedures at universities. Contact: gerchen[at]dzhw.eu

Susi Poli is Professional Development Lead in the Education Division at Bologna University, after several years spent as research manager in Italy and abroad. She holds a MBA in HE Management and an EdD in HE from the Institute of Education and her research interests primarily cover research management, staff development, and women’s leadership in HE. Contact here: susi.poli@unibo.it

References

Barnett, R (2008) ‘Critical professionalism in an age of supercomplexity’ in B. Cunningham (ed) Exploring professionalism London: Bedford Way Press pp190-208.

Gerchen, A (in press) Berufungsmanager*innen an deutschen Universitäten. Profilmerkmale eines neuen Stellentypus. Hochschulmanagement 4(16)

Kuckartz, U. (2018) Qualitative Inhaltanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung.4th ed. Basel & Weinheim: BeltzJuventa


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Quality teacher educators for the delivery of quality education

by Desiree Antonio

A spectrum of interesting critical issues related to ‘quality’ were brought to light during the SRHE Academic Practice Network conference on 22-23 June 2021. The conference Qualifying the debate on quality attracted my attention and I was keen to share my perspectives on the implications of having quality teacher educators in order to produce quality classroom teachers.

 My substantive work as an Education Officer, supervising principals and teachers in our schools and secondly as an Adjunct Lecturer teaching student teachers in a Bachelors of Education Programme, positioned me an inside observer and participant in this phenomenon. My doctoral thesis (2020) explored teacher educators’ perceptions about their continuing professional development and their experiences as they transitioned into and assumed roles as teacher educators. Hence, I am quite pleased to write this blog that captures the essence of my presentation from the conference.  

Ascribing the label of “quality” to education has different meanings and interpretations in different conditions and settings. ‘Quality’ depends on geographical boundaries and contexts, with consideration given to quality assurance, regulations and established standards using certain measures (Churchward and Willis, 2018). Attaining ‘quality’ can therefore be elusive, especially when we try to address all the layers within an education system. The United Nations sustainable development goal number 4 is aimed at offering ‘quality’ education for all in an inclusive and equitable climate. But this quality education is to be provided by teachers, with no mention (as is generally the case) of the direct input of teacher educators who sit at the apex of the ‘quality chain’. These teacher educators work in higher education institutions and are tasked with the responsibility of formally preparing quality classroom teachers. The classroom teachers in turn would ensure that our students receive this inclusive equitable quality education within schools and other learning institutions.

Although the lack of attention to teacher educators’ professional development is now receiving more attention, as reported in the literature, this once forgotten group of professionals who make up a distinct group within the education sector need to receive constant support and continuous professional development. This attention will enable  them to offer improved quality service to their student teachers.  Without giving teacher educators the support and attention they deserve, quality education cannot be realised in our classrooms. Sharma (2019) reminds us that every child deserves quality classroom teachers.

Responsibilities of teacher educators

An understanding of what teacher educators are expected to do is therefore critical, if we are to recognize their value in the quality chain. Darling-Hammond (2006) opines that teacher educators must have knowledge of their learners and their social context, knowledge of content and of teaching. Furthermore, Kosnik et al (2015) explain that they should have knowledge of pedagogy in higher education, research and government initiatives. Teacher educators must also have knowledge of teachers’ lives, what it is like to teach children and also the teachers of children; they therefore should have had the experience of being teachers (Bahr and Mellor, 2016). In essence, they should be equipped with teachers’ knowledge and skills, in addition to what they should know and do as teacher educators. It appears that the complexity of teacher educators’ work is usually underestimated and devalued. This is evidenced especially when it is taken for granted that good classroom teachers are suitably qualified to become teacher educators and that they do not require formal training and continued differentiated support as they transition and work as teacher educators in higher education.

Improving the quality of teacher educators’ work   

Targeted continuing professional development (CPD) of different types and forms that address different purposes according to teacher educators’ needs and that of their institutions is suggested. I have recommended (Antonio, 2019) a multidimensional approach to teacher educators’ CPD. This approach takes into consideration forms of CPD (informal, formal and communities of practice); types of CPD (site-based, standardised and self-directed); and purposes of CPD – transmissive, malleable and transformative proposed by Kennedy (2014). Teacher educators must have a voice in determining the combination and nature of their CPD. Notwithstanding, there needs to be a ‘quality barometer’ which gives various stakeholders the opportunity to assist in guiding their development. Their CPD must have relevance in this 21st century era.

Interventions as a necessity

The idea that teacher educators are self-made, good classroom teachers who can transmit these skills and knowledge into higher education institutions without formal training as teacher educators should be examined decisively. Systems need to be established for teacher educators to be formally trained at levels beyond that of ordinary classroom teachers. However, their CPD should be fostered under the experienced supervision of professors who themselves have been proven to be 21st Century aware in the areas of technological pedagogical content knowledge, as well as other soft skills. No one should be left untouched in our quest to providing quality education for all. We must be serious in simultaneously addressing the delivery of quality education at every level of education systems. Our children deserve quality classroom teachers and quality teacher educators hold the key.

Desirée Antonio is Education Officer, School Administration within the Ministry of Education, Sports and Creative Industries, Antigua and Barbuda. She has been an educator for nearly 40 years. Her current work involves the supervision of teachers and principals, providing professional development and contributing to policy development. She has a keen interest in Continuing Professional Development as a strategy that can be used to assist in responding to the ever-changing challenging and complex environment in which we work as educators.

As an Adjunct Lecturer, University of the West Indies, Five Islands Campus, Desirée teaches student teachers in a Bachelors of Education Programme. Her doctoral thesis explored the continuing professional development of teacher educators who work in the region of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. Her involvement over the past year in many webinars and workshops with SRHE inspired her to develop and host an inaugural virtual research symposium on behalf of the Ministry of Education in May 2021, with the next to be held in 2022.

References

Antonio, D (2019) Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of Teacher Educators (TEs) within the ecological environment of the island territories of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) PhD thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool

Bahr, N and Mellor, S (2016) ‘Building quality in teaching and teacher education’ in Acer, ACER Press. https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=aer

Churchward, P, and Willis, J (2018) ‘The pursuit of teacher quality: identifying some of the multiple discourses of quality that impact the work of teacher educators’ Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 47(3): 251–264 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2018.1555792

Darling-Hammond, L (2006) Constructing 21st-Century Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 57(3), 300–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487105285962

Kennedy, A (2014) ‘Understanding continuing professional development: the need for theory to impact on policy and practice’ Professional Development in Education, 40(5), 688–697 https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2014.955122

Kosnik, C., Menna, L., Dharamshi, P, Miyata, C, Cleovoulou, Y, and Beck, C (2015) ‘Four spheres of knowledge required: an international study of the professional development of literacy/English teacher educators’ Journal of Education for Teaching, 41(April 2015): 52–77 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2014.992634

Sharma, R (2020) ‘Ensuring quality in Teacher Education’ EPRA International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (IJMR) 5(10)


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Literature reviews and how to do them: an SRHE webinar in the time of Corona

by Akmarzhan Nogaibayeva

For some PhD students attending conferences, research seminars and so on means getting a break from research and it means leaving the library or the lab. During the pandemic everyone has started working remotely and has become only virtually accessible. Cancelling planned face to face events to avoid social contact has made our life extremely quiet and isolated. However, this unusual situation has given me time to reflect on the importance of attending conferences, seminars and other events related to my field. Since the lockdown I have had the chance to attend webinars organized by SRHE. I was lucky to listen to talks on different topics and this  opened new ways of thinking about a topic, giving me access to new ideas that I had previously never thought about. This blog reflects on a webinar I attended recently on ‘Undertaking Literature Reviews’ which took place on 29 April 2020, hosted by SRHE. Even though I had attended a seminar on Literature Reviews (LR) two years earlier, during my first year of study, I still had some remaining questions: What type of review did I carry out in my study? And, Where does my voice come into my review? Hoping to get answers to these questions from the presenter as well as from other researchers I was happy to attend the online webinar without wasting time travelling long distances.

Before the start of the webinar we were provided with slides and articles to discover different approaches to the literature review, which can either shape the chapter for the proposed study or provide a background for an academic article. The material suggested three broad approaches: narrative, systematic and theoretical. The Narrative approach is a review that tries to tell a story, reviewing the extant literature as a way of attempting to summarise what has been written on a particular topic. The systematic approach is a way of reviewing literature by using more objective criteria with a goal of summarising enormous amounts of research, scientifically tracking them for quality control. The theoretical approach is a review that covers the history of different meanings given to key terms in a study that has accumulated evidence in regard to concepts, theories or phenomena. The overall aim of the LR is to persuade other scholars in the field of your command of the relevant literature. My own original LR had been a narrative review in a more traditional way that most doctoral researchers tend to follow, mixing concepts and case studies, organising them under big themes followed by subthemes. I chose this approach to show the research committee what I know about my topic. This type of  narrative LR helped me to understand my topic by focusing precisely on the context of my research and in establishing  the theoretical framework of  the study.  

From the beginning of the seminar I noticed how the presenter warmly welcomed attendees, letting them introduce themselves by asking the reasons for attending this webinar and their expectations. Even though we were all connected online maintaining physical distance, by introducing ourselves and reflecting on the question ‘why we are attending this online seminar’ we softened the boundaries. Participants came from different backgrounds: experienced supervisors; university lecturers; PhD students like me; and people interested in pursuing a PhD in the future. They all had different reasons to join this online event; some of them had professional interests and wanted to get some suggestions for dealing with their own students` questions; some like myself were undertaking doctoral research of their own and were returning to LR in that context. The webinar description on the website was a clear prospectus: by attending this webinar we would be able to answer questions on the objectives of LR, examine epistemological assumptions about LR and engage in discussion by comparing the types of LR.

The facilitator of the webinar, Dr Michael Hammond (Warwick), started his talk by inviting participants to think about the question, ‘Why do we do LR?’ The answer to this question was a major theme that would guide us through the whole seminar. One answer was that it is a way of knowing where you fit in. The LR must not only demonstrate that I understand debates and conversations, but how my research will contribute to the field. In other words I should be able to create an argument as to why my work is relevant to my field by evaluating conversations surrounding my work describing their weaknesses and strengths.

We also discussed finding the gap that our research addresses, and the importance of finding models of methodology to orient oneself – in carrying out a literature review can you find a study that follows a methodology that you want to use? A literature review should be a critical examination of what has come earlier. I was inspired by thinking about the value and status of literature and we all got the chance to ask questions. One participant wanted to understand where the researcher’s voice comes in the review and shared her view that the voice of the researcher comes from what you choose to cite. Another participant raised the question of what to do if the researcher finds that an existing literature review has already covered the things that you want to discuss. The presenter explained you can re-present past reviews in ways that are more relevant for your particular research question but there was always the opportunity to update any review. 

Later we were invited to discuss LR in  groups. It was an enjoyable experience, with Zoom creating space for individuals to share their views and experiences of doing reviews. After a while we returned to our main group space. I felt because of this that online events could follow some of the processes common to face to face working. Thanks to the questions raised during the discussion and by sharing my own experience I gained more understanding of LR and had some answers to the questions that I had in my mind.

In conclusion the presenter showed us ways of organising the literature review by using different tools like Endnote and Mendeley. I noticed how the facilitator of the webinar could present his own thoughts, reflecting back again to the questions posed at the beginning of the seminar. As a doctoral researcher I had found answers to my own questions. This event helped me to reflect on my own literature review, carried out two years ago. When I return to it again I will have in the front of my mind the question of how my work will add to the knowledge in my field. 

When I first started writing my LR I tried to briefly point out debates and conversations in what has been published about my topic. As my research is looking at the use of technologies in language teaching and learning I discussed the use of technologies chronologically, organizing them under themes, basically looking at the key ideas and theoretical approaches. However, after attending this webinar I have understood the importance of organizing the LR from the beginning around the key ideas and concepts or theoretical approaches. As the presenter explained, making an example of his students` work, organizing your LR from the beginning might be very useful in setting up a coding process of your interview analysis at the later stages of your proposed work.


Akmarzhan Nogaibayeva is a third-year PhD student at the University of Warwick, researching language teachers` ICT use through the lens of ecological theory, in higher education in Kazakhstan.


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Why write?

By Joy Jarvis

Why do we write? The University of Hertfordshire’s in-house journal, LINK, ‘aims to support academics and professionals in contributing to the understanding and development of educational practice’. This means it supports and promotes academic writing, and my recent article for LINK on pedagogic frailty suggests a place to start when thinking about why we write. We might of course need to think about REF, but there are other sorts of writing that might be equally valuable. Is ‘REFability’ valuable beyond what it achieves in terms of university scores? Why did we write before the REF? Those of us who have been in universities for many years do remember that time!

The pedagogic frailty article was written to give information about something important for university leaders and managers to consider. It aimed to Continue reading →