Towards a pragmatic scholarship of academic development
| Pages | 162-170 |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880110399167 |
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| Author | Graham Badley |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Towards a pragmatic
scholarship of academic
development
Graham Badley
Introduction
I should like to claim that the various papers
and articles I have written over the years
represent a series of explorations in what may
be termed the scholarship of staff and
educational development. I would also like to
see them regarded as contributions to a
world-wide conversation about the nature of
academic development in higher education. I
have previously argued (Badley, 1994) that if
academic developers wish to be regarded as
full members of the academic community, as
active participants in that conversation, then
they must take themselves seriously as
scholars and not operate as relatively
unreflective educational practitioners. In
order to do so a necessary first step is a careful
explication of what, in the context of
academic development in higher education,
might be meant by the term ``scholarship''
itself.
In this introduction, therefore, and in the
next three sections of this paper, I would like
to provide some brief contextual remarks
about the terms in my title. Each of the three
main terms is worthy of at least a paper in
itself, but I will restrict my comments to the
main reasons why I have chosen to present my
work as pragmatic rather than as, say,
theoretical; as contributing to scholarship and
conversation rather than to pure research as
such; and as inhabiting the somewhat messy
hinterland of academic development rather than
the purer central territory and problems of
higher education itself.
``Towards''
Before all of that, however, I should like to
outline the point of my use of the preposition
``towards'' at the beginning of my title. I use it
in the same sense that the American
psychologist, Jerome Bruner, used the
preposition ``toward'' in his seminal ``Toward
a Theory of Instruction''. For Bruner, his
essays were a series of ``gropings'' (Bruner,
1968, p. 171) in the direction of a theory of
instruction and, similarly, I would claim no
more than that my papers are also mere
gropings in the direction of a scholarship of
academic development. It is a continuing ± an
on-going ± exploration of both the scholarship
and the practice of academic development.
That is to say, that whatever conclusions I
The author
Graham Badley, is at Anglia Polytechnic University,
Chelmsford, UK.
Keywords
Education, Development
Abstract
Argues for an eclectic and pragmatic model of academic
development. Such a model encourages inquiry into, and
conversations about, academic problems and practices.
The intention is to produce more or less useful, though
tentative, suggestions for action and intervention. These
would reflect Rorty's pragmatic rationale for
``nonideological, compromising, reformist muddling
through'', or what Dewey called ``experimentalism''.
Examines each main term: ``towards'', ``pragmatic'',
``scholarship'', and ``academic development''. For
example, ``pragmatic'' is characterised as wanting to
promote a liberal, democratic, consensual, just, and even
a Utopian society. ``Scholarship'' is examined as a broad
conception following Boyer. ``Academic development'' is
viewed as promoting useful (rather than, say, true or
correct or best) approaches to teaching and learning, as
encouraging experiments and inquiries, as being more
anti-managerial than managerial, as arguing for a
conversational and contestational approach, and as
claiming only ``tentative responses, possible readings and
suggested ideas for action and intervention''.
Electronic access
The research register for this journal is available at
http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
162
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 9 .Number 3 .2001 .pp. 162±170
#MCB University Press .ISSN 0968-4883
To continue reading
Request your trial