ABSTRACT. Sustainability is increasingly recognised as a core component of engineering education (EE), promoted by accreditation bodies and global frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the proliferation of sustainability competency frameworks, important gaps remain regarding how these competencies are embedded in curricula, experienced by students, and supported through appropriate pedagogical methods. This study addresses these gaps by exploring how pedagogical approaches can mediate the tension between institutional norms of EE and sustainability principles. As the initial phase of a four-year project, a systematic literature review guided by the SPIDER framework is conducted to examine the epistemological compatibility between engineering and sustainability. The findings are synthesised into a matrix of compatibility that supports critical reflection and collaborative discussion, with the aim of informing curriculum development and enabling methodological transfer to other disciplines.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, we have seen work related to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and Anti-racism gain momentum across post-secondary institutions in N. America and globally. Educational developers are uniquely positioned to provide support to faculties as they are encouraged to acknowledge, and even embrace, non-Euro centric ways of knowing and doing. With the aim of decolonizing and decentering whiteness in curriculum and pedagogical practices, it is essential that critical approaches are considered to re-examine educational development.

For this Collaborative Space session, the presenter would like engage participants with the concept of “critical educational development” (Ultsch, et al., 2021), a way to dismantle systemic inequities that arise in post-secondary education due to power imbalances. Furthermore, participants will also be invited to share their experiences of engaging in educational development at their institutions through a critical lens.

Using critical pedagogy (Friere, 2005) “an intersection of education and critical theory”, the presenter seeks to invite participants to examine, and even interrogate, dominant narratives, critique power and privilege, and encourage student agency and empowerment. The presenter will pose the participants with 1-3 open-ended questions that will prompt the discussion on identifying factors that contribute to widening the inequity gaps which cause equity-deserving groups to be further marginalized and face increasing barriers in post-secondary education. With the aim of closing equity gaps in post-secondary education, this session will also focus on ways by which critical educational development can enhance the work of decolonization, EDI and anti-racism in mainstream teaching and learning across post-secondary institutions.

ABSTRACT. This collaborative space invites academic developers to an exploratory process with the specific aim to identify and discuss personal core values guiding their everyday practices. In a professional community there need to exist shared values of some kind. Arguably those values are formed and carried through the participant’s personal ethos, and as such they are essential for thriving academic developers. What if a national collegial network could find ways to nurture those aspects of professional identity and development? This is the guiding question for the collaborative space organised by Swednet – The Swedish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education. The collaborative space consists of two main parts – a nonstop-writing session which is followed by a reflective discussion about the statements that was produced during the first part. The insights that evolve will guide Swednet’s work with supporting academic developer’s capacity to act in wise and productive ways.

ABSTRACT. As faculty and student diversity increases and teaching scholarship advances, a critical gap persists between individual academic developers' expertise and how that knowledge shapes organizational cultures and practices within teaching and learning centers, especially in borderlands contexts where multiple identities, languages, and worldviews intersect. Despite this growing diversity, however, many centers for teaching and learning remain focused on the dominant culture’s practices, strategies, and theories. Our collaborative space session explores how academic developers can leverage their agency to integrate ethnorelative positioning into their own work, model it with their teams, and collaboratively explore border pedagogy with faculty they support. As a brief case study, three academic developers from a U.S.-Mexican borderlands institution will share their positionality, current work, and explore strategies for supporting instructors in culturally responsive, border-conscious teaching that integrates international perspectives. The panelists will map their observations onto the 4I framework of organizational learning (Crossan, Lane, & White, 1999) with its key concepts of Intuiting, Interpreting, Integrating, and Institutionalizing. We invite academic developers who work in borderlands to engage in structured dialogue about the conversations their centers are having—or lack—regarding intercultural competence, multilingualism, borderlands, and teaching. Through an interactive mapping activity using bilingual English-Spanish materials, participants will reflect on how well their teaching centers approach borderlands complexities in their programming, identify their own positionality as change agents, and consider strategies for building an ethnorelative perspective on teaching and learning within their centers and/or institutions.

ABSTRACT. The rapid expansion of AI tools in higher education is creating new pressures for academic developers, who are increasingly called upon to guide faculty, reassure leadership, and maintain student trust without clear institutional frameworks. This Collaborative Space introduces the Learning Integrity Trust (LIT) Framework, a conceptual model designed to help academic developers articulate, negotiate, and strengthen institutional agency in the age of generative AI. Rather than a traditional presentation, the session invites participants to interrogate, refine, and extend the LIT Framework in relation to their own systems, constraints, and priorities. Through structured dialogue and small group work, participants will examine how faculty, student, and institutional agency are shaped by AI practices and emerging governance structures. The session aims to surface shared challenges, context specific adaptations, and potential collaborations, supporting academic developers who are working at the intersection of educational practice, policy, and institutional strategy.

ABSTRACT. Higher education institutions often articulate values of collaboration, inclusion, and innovation in their strategic plans. However, translating those values into workplace culture is complex. Peter Drucker’s assertion that “culture eats strategy for lunch” underscores how workforce culture ultimately determines whether strategy succeeds. This interactive workshop explores how leading from the third space; a theoretical, hybrid, boundary-spanning space between traditional academic and administrative staff domains, can transform culture into strategy and empower workforce agency. Drawing on experience in our Division of Academic Innovation, we illustrate how inherited culture can be enhanced by integrating academic technology, instructional design, teaching excellence, and research creating a new work culture that supports agility and trust. Using design-thinking principles, participants will analyze their own institutional contexts, identify cultural gaps and potential opportunities, and co-create strategies for aligning workforce culture with strategic priorities. Through reflection, discussion, and collaborative prototyping, participants will leave with practical frameworks and tools for cultivating agency, inclusion, and innovation transforming culture into a living, strategic asset for institutional success.

ABSTRACT. This workshop explores "low-prep, high-presence" academic development events that prioritize participant agency and authenticity over perfection. Rather than meticulously orchestrated programming, these gatherings center faculty/academic staff as the creators of event content, adapting to their evolving needs and allowing them to be agents of change in their professional work as leaders, researchers, and educators. Drawing from research on social support and weak-tie theory, and models such as Communities of Practice, we'll examine how intentionally designed yet flexible spaces foster crucial social, emotional, and informational support, particularly during times of uncertainty. We'll identify strategies for creating responsive programming that requires minimal preparation while maximizing impact during especially challenging times.

ABSTRACT. Research tells us that effective peer observations can enhance reflection, boost confidence, and build community related to teaching. Peer observations can also promote equity in the evaluation of teaching by introducing the perspective of a peer. Poorly designed and executed peer observations, however, can have the opposite impact. This workshop introduces the Critical Teaching Behavior (CTB) observation tools and offers training for educational developers and faculty conducting peer observations to help them maximize the benefits associated with effective practice. Participants will use the instruments to take notes on a class video, identify strengths, and give formative feedback that promotes reflection and growth.

ABSTRACT. This workshop engages academic developers in exploring the principles of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and its practical implications for curriculum design and faculty development. Through two interactive activities (the diamond-shaped card-sorting activity and the PCK interaction mapping activity) participants actively reflect on how curriculum orientations and PCK components interact to shape effective teaching and curriculum design. The diamond activity allows participants to weigh the relative importance of different curriculum orientations, revealing the priorities and values that guide instructional choices. The PCK mapping activity enables participants to visualize how the components of PCK dynamically interact in real teaching scenarios, highlighting potential tensions and trade-offs. These exercises provide academic developers with firsthand insight into faculty challenges and decision-making processes, emphasizing that deep understanding of the discipline is a prerequisite for designing curricula that make the subject accessible and meaningful for students. Participants will leave with strategies to support faculty in using PCK to strengthen constructive alignment, creating discipline-informed, high-quality connections between learning objectives, teaching strategies, and assessments, and in enhancing student-centered university teaching. By making tacit knowledge explicit, the workshop demonstrates the added value of academic developers in fostering reflective practice, evidence-based course design, and professional growth across disciplines.

ABSTRACT. Whatever our opinions on the use of the word ‘impact’, those of us who support teaching and learning are increasingly being called upon to prove that our work is meaningful, worth the time and effort invested, and impactful (Sutherland & Hall, 2018). The EDIN Impact Analysis Tool underpinning this workshop was developed to help anyone with an interest in educational/academic development capture how and where their work has impact. Originally developed by the Educational Developers of Ireland Network (EDIN), the tool offers a structured series of steps to help guide reflective evaluation of the impact of an educational innovation, project, or intervention. The steps encompass a wide range of potential evidence, drawing upon the work of Bamber (2013) to help ‘evidence the value’ of teaching, learning and assessment efforts. Colleagues from three European universities will guide participants through the tool, offering examples from their institutional contexts to stimulate ideas. Throughout the workshop, participants will interact with the tool to create a tangible, personalised output of their own about the impact of a chosen staff development initiative. The objective will be to compile a mix of evidence data, thus generating an ‘evidence grid’ or document somewhat similar to that described in Bamber & Stefani (2016, p. 251). Participants will also have the opportunity to discuss and make recommendations about further internationalising the tool to support practice across a range of institutional contexts.

ABSTRACT. Academic development is widely recognised as a key lever for improving teaching and learning and for advancing institutional change. Yet academic developers’ agency—their capacity to influence practices, environments, and strategic directions—varies substantially across countries and institutions, depending on how academic development is positioned and resourced. This workshop offers an interactive, comparative space to explore how organisational embedding, strategic alignment, and professional role configurations enable or constrain agency in academic development. Drawing on agentic theory and professional agency scholarship, and informed by research on “third space” roles in higher education, the workshop begins with a brief conceptual framing and a short case vignette from a decentralised higher education context where academic development is largely locally organised and coordinated through a national professional network. Participants then work in small groups to map their own national/institutional contexts (e.g., organisational location, mandate, strategic leverage, typical role profiles, legitimacy tensions). Cross-case comparison and collective synthesis will identify patterns, tensions, and leverage points for strengthening agency. The workshop is designed for practical takeaways, networking, and seeding potential international collaboration (e.g., joint research, shared frameworks, or follow-up symposia).

ABSTRACT. AI is increasingly recognised as a valuable tool for providing students with feedback on assessed work, offering timely and personalised responses. Yet, its role remains distinct from the human feedback, which is essential for building relational and emotional connection, that fosters reciprocal recognition of disciplinary standards and effort in attaining them, and builds trust between students and teachers. Recent scholarship highlights the affective dimensions of feedback and the need for both students and staff to manage emotions effectively when engaging with feedback. Emotional intelligence (EI) - the ability to anticipate and respond to emotional impact - is central to this process, but it is not innate and must be developed. This workshop explores both how the differing impact of human feedback and AI feedback on learner and teacher emotions can be leveraged, and how AI can support the development of EI, moving beyond automated feedback systems toward using AI as a mediator to enhance emotional understanding. Through interactive activities, participants will reflect on the role of emotions in feedback, compare strengths and limitations of human feedback and AI feedback, with a focus on affective impact, examine practical strategies for integrating AI to foster EI, and critically consider the affordances and challenges of these approaches.

ABSTRACT. Academic developers are being called upon to support instructors and students in navigating generative AI (genAI) for teaching and learning purposes. At the same time, some students and educators call for the complete rejection of genAI given its complicity in capitalist and extractive forms of knowledge production. Within this fractured landscape, what role can academic developers play in helping our campus communities re-vision and create the kinds of educational futures we collectively wish to cultivate? In this session, we will draw on a decolonial speculations framework to collectively imagine alternate futures for higher education and explore the agency we have as academic developers to build those preferred futures.

ABSTRACT. International students enrich academic communities with diverse perspectives, yet their transition to higher education often involves navigating complex cultural, linguistic, and institutional challenges. From pre-arrival hurdles be it language proficiency, credential validation, and immigration processes to post-arrival experiences of isolation and hidden expectations, these students face barriers that can substantively impact their success and sense of belonging, amidst growing global unrest and changing immigration policies. At the same time, an institution-wide and coordinated support network has the potential to help international students and scholars to thrive and contribute to the cultural, academic and economic milieu of the place they are in. Drawn from the experience of building an academic development program grounded in culturally responsive teaching frameworks, this interactive workshop aims to provide a model for a collaborative, inter-unit and student-informed approach to supporting international students and scholars. The workshop is designed for higher education teaching staff, educational developers, and academic leaders committed to building inclusive learning environments and will include resources, models as well as time to reflect on challenges and opportunities when building sustainable academic development programming to support international students. Attendees will leave with a portable set of discussion prompts, curated resources, and an implementation roadmap adaptable for education development programs at their own institutions.

ABSTRACT. Academic teams across higher education face growing pressure to integrate multiple institutional priorities, such as inclusion, sustainability, employability, wellbeing, and digital capability, into their curricula. While each priority matters, they are often developed in silos, leaving educators to combine them with limited guidance and no coherent framework. This ICED Talk argues that the challenge is structural rather than individual, and that academic developers have a crucial role in making complexity workable.

Drawing on my experience as a third-space professional working at the intersection of academic practice and professional services, the talk introduces an ecosystem approach that helps programme teams see connections across competing agendas. Through co-designed tools and facilitation methods, this approach reframes curriculum as an interconnected system shaped by multiple “ecological pressures.”

The talk shares key insights from working with academics, cross-functional teams, and students to transform strategy overload into strategic coherence. It highlights how clearer visualisation, shared language, and collaborative design strengthen staff agency, reduce cognitive burden, and support more meaningful institutional learning. The aim is to inspire new ways of thinking about curriculum enhancement and the distributed nature of academic development.

ABSTRACT. How can academic developers construct, share, and apply knowledge beyond institutional boundaries while fostering agency among educators? This ICED-Talk introduces the “traveling workshop,” an innovative, low-threshold, participatory program designed to connect diverse institutional contexts through online, collaborative educational development. This model, working similar to a virtual roadshow, serves as a flexible vehicle for disseminating pedagogical knowledge, sharing teaching practices, and fostering interdisciplinary. Central to the format is the promotion of epistemic agency: past participants in the traveling workshop engaged in reflective practice, co-created knowledge, and developed actionable next steps tailored to their teaching contexts.

Our talk will detail design principles, implementation strategies, facilitation techniques, and possible outcomes, demonstrating how the model supports academic developers in advancing community-building across boundaries. Attendees will leave with inspiration for a new format that encourages interinstitutional collaborations.

ABSTRACT. This ICED Talk examines how the Teaching Excellence & Innovation Center (TEIC), established in 2025 at Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE), operates as a strategic agent shaping institutional policy, culture, and organisational transformation in teaching and learning. Rather than positioning academic development as a primarily supportive or service-oriented function, TEIC was intentionally designed to influence decision-making processes, align pedagogical practices with institutional priorities, and promote a coherent culture of teaching excellence across programmes. The talk explores how TEIC exercises strategic agency through three interconnected levers: (1) policy coordination, exemplified by its leadership of the Instructor Training Plan (2025–2026), which formalises expectations for teaching readiness and embeds them within institutional governance; (2) strategic capacity-building, through the implementation of BEEP (Business & Economics Educational Practices), a cross-faculty development ecosystem supporting pedagogical innovation and curricular alignment; and (3) organisational learning, via the development of evaluation and feedback mechanisms that inform programme leadership, accreditation processes, and long-term educational strategy. Drawing on early implementation experiences, governance design choices, and emerging challenges, the presentation illustrates how academic development units can act as catalysts for systemic change. The case offers transferable insights for institutions seeking to enhance the strategic influence, legitimacy, and resilience of their academic development structures.

ABSTRACT. As Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) rapidly integrate Generative AI (GenAI) into curricula, much faculty professional development was often carried out as generic, one-size-fits-all workshops. These approaches frequently fail to address individual pedagogical contexts, making it difficult for faculty to transition from “having ideas” to “taking meaningful actions”. Additionally, there was no identified end goal – to what degree of skills ought we be training faculty towards? This talk presents the AI Champion Mentorship Programme, a university-wide initiative designed to personalise faculty AI upskilling through structured peer learning and the cultivation of a Community of Practice (CoP) (Wenger, 1998). To address these dual challenges,the programme began with a self-assessment framework evaluating faculty AI literacy across Tool Use, Student Role, Innovation/Collaboration, and Impact, categorising participants into Beginner (Substitution), Intermediate (Integration), and Advanced (Redefinition) levels. This structured diagnosis, supplemented by a survey on teaching and pairing preferences, led to the formation of 51 mentor-mentee cohorts (122 faculty members). The initiative fostered scaffolded participation through a structured support ecosystem, which included monthly mentor-mentee meetings and reflective artefacts—a Learning Portfolio for mentees and an End-of-Project Report for mentors. This was complemented by structured workshops on AI tools and integration ideas, templates and guides to support the mentorship relationship, and crucially, on-demand instructional design support with instructional designers. This session will explore how providing this combination of self-assessment, structured mentorship, and instructional design can accelerate AI literacy. It also discusses how such mentorship programme empowers faculty to move from anxiety to agency.

ABSTRACT. While Henderson et al.'s Four Categories of Change Strategies1 (FCCS) offers a comprehensive framework for understanding educational change, a gap persists: how can we systematically identify specific frictions hindering evidence-based teaching adoption? This collaborative space examines operationalising FCCS within the Behaviour-Friction-Solution2 framework to develop actionable change strategies.

Sustainable implementation involves going beyond merely categorising change strategies to actively diagnosing friction patterns. By mapping FCCS categories onto friction types, we determine whether barriers are rooted in knowledge, beliefs, structural issues, or cultural factors. This diagnostic approach uncovers that various institutional contexts require different intervention strategies. Nonetheless, applying generic frameworks to specific institutional realities offers both opportunities and challenges.

Our preliminary framework suggests that identifying frictions rather than creating solutions is the key to sustainable change. While solutions tend to be generic, frictions are deeply contextual and interconnected across individual and organisational levels.

This session invites participants to develop and test friction-mapping using institutional cases collaboratively. We seek input on how academic developers can use FCCS categories to prioritise interventions. What tools would make friction analysis more practical? How can we balance comprehensive analysis with actionable insights?

The session aims to establish a community of practice around systematic friction analysis and to explore cross-institutional research opportunities to implement evidence-based teaching through strategic friction identification.

1 Henderson, C., Beach, A., Finkelstein, N. (2011). Facilitating Change in Undergraduate STEM Instructional Practices: An Analytic Review of the Literature. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(8), 952–984. 2 Adapted from Fogg Behavior Model. (n.d.). https://www.behaviormodel.org/

ABSTRACT. Teaching large classes presents unique challenges that instructors of smaller classes do not typically face. Instructors often navigate diminished student engagement (Cahill, et al., 2017; Exeter et al., 2010; Goff et al., 2007), reduced student-student interaction (Elson et al., 2018; Mahalingam et al., 2008), increased grading loads (Broadbent et al., 2019), and emerging technologies such as AI (Meng et al., 2024), all while managing the unseen labor required to sustain engagement at scale. This session provides an opportunity for academic developers, instructors, and administrators to share their experiences, exchange strategies, and advocate for institutional support. Through guided discussion, participants will explore practical approaches to conducting meaningful assessments, leveraging technology, and fostering inclusive learning environments in high-enrollment settings. The session aims to generate actionable ideas for improving teaching conditions and student outcomes through dialogue, resource sharing, and collective advocacy for impactful change.

ABSTRACT. Transdisciplinary approaches have emerged as important avenues for addressing complex societal problems, both within and beyond academia. These approaches transcend disciplinary boundaries, fostering connections among disciplines and engaging non-academic stakeholders in problem-solving. As a result, a considerable scholarly effort has been dedicated to identifying and recommending the key skills and competencies required for (successful) transdisciplinary endeavours, both in research and educational contexts. However, current studies often overlook the role of individual identities in developing such competencies for transdisciplinarity, including the multifaceted array of values, beliefs, skills, knowledge, attitudes, and backgrounds that greatly influence one’s participation in and contributions to transdisciplinary work. To move beyond this, we seek to broaden the current discourse by highlighting the importance of individual identities in developing transdisciplinary competencies and exploring which aspects are considered most crucial for engaging in transdisciplinary environments. Therefore, this workshop provides a space for academics, lecturers and practitioners to reflect on their individual identities and to uncover the elements they consider vital in supporting them in their transdisciplinary journey. The workshop exercises leverage on the reflective mindset we champion in transdisciplinary environments, allowing us and the participants to move beyond surface-level narratives and engage in deeper conversations about the complexities of competency development.

ABSTRACT. Digital transformation is redefining higher education, not only in technological terms but also in pedagogical conceptions and in the role of faculty. The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) offers unprecedented opportunities to innovate in curriculum design, activity creation, assessment, and enhance the learning process while also raising legal, ethical and epistemological challenges that require critical reflection. In this context, faculty agency becomes a central axis: it is not about adopting tools uncritically, but about deciding how and why to use them, aligning their application with learning objectives and graduate profile competencies. This workshop adopts a participant-centered design that actively engages faculty in applying GenAI to their own teaching contexts. Rather than receiving information passively, participants work through structured, practice-oriented tasks that prompt reflection on their courses and reveal opportunities for pedagogical improvement. Through collaborative activities, guided discussions, and hands-on experimentation with GenAI tools, attendees develop concrete outputs, including draft ideas for curriculum alignment, examples of AI-supported learning activities, and strategies for navigating legal, ethical, and pedagogical challenges. By the end of the session, participants will leave with actionable resources, such as templates, prompts, and design principles, that can be immediately implemented in their classrooms. Grounded in practical relevance and collaborative inquiry, the workshop fosters professional agencies, provides a practical guide to support GenAI effective integration, and equips faculty to design technology-enhanced learning environments. Ultimately, it aims to translate conceptual insights into tangible practices, providing a shared space for experimentation and collective problem-solving around emerging challenges in higher education.

ABSTRACT. The concept of belonging has recently become vital for understanding why certain groups and individuals thrive and others do not reach their full potential in higher education. A strong sense of belonging enables students and academic staff to learn and grow, even in the face of significant challenges. On the other hand, belonging uncertainty contributes to students and staff feeling isolated and disempowered, making it harder for them to succeed. In short, sense of belonging has serious consequences for individuals, their future study and careers, and also for their colleagues, institutions, and society as a whole.

In this workshop, we draw on insights from three recent books on belonging in higher education (Cohen, 2022; McCabe, 2025; Young-Ann, Venn and Lowe, 2025), alongside key empirical and conceptual literature and our own research (citations withheld for anonymity), to explore how educational developers and other academics can translate the concept of belonging into meaningful action in their own contexts. Participants will be invited to critically reflect on their own understanding of belonging, exchange perspectives with others, and identify specific ways in which they can foster a stronger sense of belonging in their contexts.

The workshop highlights participants’ agency in shaping more equitable, collaborative, and inclusive academic environments for students and staff. Its interactive format supports reflection, dialogue, contextual awareness, and the generation of concrete ideas for practice.

ABSTRACT. Drawing on the design principles of an educational escape room, this “playshop” is designed for participants to collaborate through creativity in small groups to “escape” a metaphorical higher education context. Led by a narrative, the aim is to explore a series of collective play activities to escape from socialized academic norms that do not serve and consider alternative shifts. The playshop intends to purposefully and productively disrupt academic and academic development institutionalized higher education practice norms and to collectively and agentically reshift, refocus and reimagine higher education practices. A globally diverse and multilingual group of participants will add to the collective complexity of experiential engagement, and foster multicultural, multidisciplinary and multi-perspective negotiation and mediation through collegial conditions. The playshop provides an opportunity for academic developers, academics and higher education practitioners to explore opportunities to dismantle taken-for-granted individual, institutional and disciplinary assumptions and foster novel ways of enacting academic agency and interdisciplinary approaches to support meaningful transformation. The value of this workshop is the decolonial intention to provide reimagined interactive playful engagements as a catalyst to productively disrupt contexts, practices and practitioner identities.

ABSTRACT. Supporting mid-career academic staff in their teaching development can sometimes be overlooked in favour of beginning teacher programmes (i.e. PhD or early-career) or leadership-focused initiatives. Rather, mid-career university teachers are often ‘where the magic happens’ in terms of educational change, innovation, and student success at programme level. At the University of (anonymous), a project-based programme exists for academics of this level and has been successful in utilizing participants agency to improve or change their own programmes while concurrently offering support to budding educational leaders. However, the project-based approach has not happened without continued discussion around several key, and ongoing, choices. In this workshop, we will use these five dilemmas to guide participants towards 1) initial design/redesign plans for a project-based programme in their own institutions (for mid-career faculty) and 2) a significant amount of knowledge and expertise sharing between academic developers. The session will largely consist of ‘dash design’ steps where participants can expect to combine brief individual reflections with multiple (and rotating) small group discussions.

ABSTRACT. How do institutional strategies reflect what universities truly value about teaching? This interactive workshop invites academic developers to explore that question through the lens of the Institutional Teaching Culture (ITC) Framework, an evidence-based model grounded in ten years of Canadian research on valuing teaching. The framework identifies six key levers that signal how institutions demonstrate value for teaching through their strategic initiatives, assessment practices, infrastructure, engagement, and reward systems.

Participants will use the ITC levers to analyze and map their own institutional or departmental strategy documents, identifying where teaching culture is represented, and noting where gaps or tensions exist. Through facilitated reflection and cross-institutional dialogue, participants will uncover patterns of alignment and dissonance, consider how to strengthen agency in their contexts, and develop one actionable idea for advancing a culture that truly values teaching.

This workshop bridges research and practice, offering academic developers a structured yet adaptable approach for integrating teaching culture analysis into institutional planning. It aligns with Agency and Strategy, foregrounding how developers can act as strategic agents of change to influence policy, resource allocation, and institutional narratives about teaching and learning.

ABSTRACT. Facilitating change is central to our work as academic developers (Timmermans, 2014), and requires trust and ethical practice. Whether working with individual instructors and departments or in committees developing institutional policy, our work focuses on improving conditions for teaching and learning in specific contexts. We encounter opportunities to effect this change: new initiatives to launch, new research findings to apply to our own contexts, new colleagues to engage and inspire Simultaneously, many of us are also experiencing resistance and scarcity – in resources and our bandwidth to start new projects and maintain cherished practices without burning out or diminishing trust.

How do we choose intentionally among those many activities and ideas? How do we find agency in the decision-making process and clearly articulate our values, commitments, and ethical code of practice in order to maintain trust?

This session offers participants space for structured reflection and discernment in community to consider our own professional identities, agency, ethical priorities, and key values that motivate and animate our efforts. Facilitators will draw on the latest draft of the POD Network’s “Ethical Guidelines for Educational Developers,” as well as research on developers’ values, positionality, and integrity (Wilson & Popovic, 2025; Author & Author, dates). As a group, we’ll discuss the role that each of these plays at various levels in our work – micro, meso, macro. Ultimately, we aim for participants to leave the session with ideas and reflective questions for proactively making good and sustainable choices, centered on their own values and ethics.

ABSTRACT. As academic developers, we often define our work by the needs of others and act as agents of change for those others, rather than working from our own commitments or effecting change for ourselves. This orientation serves the needs of colleagues and institutions, but it doesn’t necessarily contribute to developer well-being or agency. How can we support others while also honoring our own identities and commitments?

This workshop will guide participants in responding to this question by drawing from my new co-authored open-access book on reorienting SoTL. In the book, my co-authors and I guide faculty in developing SoTL inquiries that emerge from their authentic identities, their deepest commitments, and their “why”—moves we too rarely turn upon ourselves. Yet if SoTL is a signature pedagogy of academic development (Felten & Chick 2018), shouldn’t we also act on our authentic identities, our deepest commitment, and our “why”?

This workshop will invite participants to briefly pause their outward-facing work and engage in the same “inner work” my new book on SoTL offers to faculty. Participants will explore how their identities and values shape—and are shaped by—their work. Using the book’s SoTL frameworks, participants will uncover meaningful entry points for their own practice and scholarship, moving from being facilitators of others’ inquiries to being authentic and agentic scholars of their own practice. Through this process, participants will not only (re)claim their own agency and connect meaningfully with other developers, but also leave with tools and insights to facilitate meaningful SoTL workshops.

ABSTRACT. Through academic writing, educational developers can contribute to a broader body of evidence-based practice, gain credibility among instructional, and advance their careers. Recent studies have suggested, however, that educational developers may hold a complex relationship with, and perhaps even a resistance to, adopting an academic writing identity.  In this collaborative space, structured as a unique participatory action research project (PAR), you will be invited to reflect on, explore, and describe your scholarly identity (e.g., scholar, author, researcher, content developer, etc.) and identify intersections among your academic writing identity, prior writing experiences, social identities, and role(s) within academic development.

ABSTRACT. In university education within complex professional disciplines, such as Cultural Heritage Conservation and Restoration, teaching staff recurrently identify difficulties related to students’ deep understanding, particularly in transversal content and processes. This paper presents an institutional teaching-research project developed at the Universitat Politècnica de València, whose primary aim has been to analyse and characterise these difficulties from an interdisciplinary and collaborative perspective.

The project is grounded in theoretical frameworks such as threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2003; Barradell, 2013), learning bottlenecks (Pace, 2017), and the Decoding the Disciplines model (Middendorf & Pace, 2004), all integrated within a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning approach. Through a consensus-based methodology, teaching staff from different disciplinary areas engaged in the decoding of expert reasoning, comparing expert and novice perspectives and designing pedagogical devices aimed at making visible the thinking processes involved in professional decision-making.

Rather than reporting learning outcomes, this article focuses on describing the type of academic work undertaken, the methodological processes followed, and the value of fostering teaching communities of practice to support the development of deep understanding.

ABSTRACT. The rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) calls for targeted educational development to support instructors in navigating its pedagogical implications. This poster reports on a Scholarship of Academic Development (SoAD) project (Eggins & Macdonald, 2003) that evaluated an educational development course designed to enhance teachers’ knowledge of genAI in higher education. The course was guided by the TPACK framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), focusing on pedagogical knowledge (PK), technology-related knowledge (TK), and their intersection (TPK). Twenty-five educators participated in the study, completing pre- and post-course questionnaires that assessed PK, genAI-TK, and genAI-TPK (Schmidt et al., 2009). Items also examined instructors’ perceptions of genAI’s teaching opportunities and challenges (Kiryakova & Angelova, 2023). Results demonstrated significant growth in genAI-TK and genAI-TPK, while PK remained stable. Participants additionally reported heightened recognition of opportunities and fewer perceived challenges in applying genAI in teaching. These findings suggest that the course effectively strengthened instructors’ genAI-related knowledge and positively influenced their pedagogical perspectives. The stability of PK underscores the importance of further investigation, including qualitative observation data collected during the course sessions. Data from three course implementations (spring and fall 2024 and fall 2025) will be presented at the conference. By situating this work within SoAD, the study contributes to ongoing discussions on how academic developers can cultivate epistemic agency, advance knowledge, and foster inclusive, sustainable pedagogical practices in the face of digital transformation.

ABSTRACT. Blended Learning (BL) is nowadays widely spreading at university level in response to the current need for flexibility in learning situations, thus combining two traditional models: the in-person and the online (synchronous or asynchronous) models in which the use of computer-based technologies increasingly assumes a central role in the teaching/learning process (Graham et al., 2005; Graham, 2006). The university of XXX (XXX) has also taken up the challenge of introducing teaching methods in BL, responding to emerging and current training needs, launching the Blended Learning trial in June 2025, promoting a flexible and personalized model that integrates in-person activities and online learning for bachelor and master degree students. The model, developed within a team of experts of our university through the Teacher and Learning Center (TLC), adopted a methodological framework based on three approaches: Flipped Classroom, Individual and Group Active Learning (Bruni et al., 2023). Our contribution focuses on the teachers’ training methodological and technological program and the services that TLC developed in order to support the implementation of the BL, also presenting the mapping of the learning scenarios and the methodological-technological choices planned for the trial.

ABSTRACT. The Center for Teaching Innovation Support and Online Studies (IDEO, for short) is the center responsible for orchestrating the main teaching and learning innovative actions at Universidad de Alcalá (UAH), Spain. The main purpose of this contribution is to provide some details on the organizational and strategic transformation brought with its creation and consolidation at UAH: coordinating the calls for innovative projects and innovative groups, organizing an annual workshop collecting innovative experiences in teaching along a course (EIDU), and promoting the internationalization of teaching innovation within the framework of the alliance of European universities EUGLOH, in which Universidad de Alcalá is involved. The contribution concludes with some brief remarks on future directions for IDEO.

ABSTRACT. Transformative learning has become increasingly important in higher and further education, especially in small-island contexts where institutions are expected to prepare students for changing labour markets, lifelong learning and active citizenship. In Malta, these expectations sit alongside growing attention to sustainability and learner wellbeing, raising questions about how educational institutions can move beyond transmission-oriented approaches to teaching and support deeper shifts in students’ assumptions, identities and ways of knowing. This study explores how higher and further education institutions in Malta foster, or limit, opportunities for transformative learning. It is the initial research of an ongoing doctoral study and focuses on the perspectives of senior institutional leaders. Located within an interpretivist paradigm, the study adopts a constructivist grounded theory design. Four senior officials from different Maltese higher and further education institutions participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews. The analysis explored how they understood transformative learning and which institutional conditions enabled or constrained it. Emerging findings suggest that relational support, space for critical and student-led learning, and institutional cultures that value deep learning can create conditions for transformative change in students’ frames of reference. At the same time, strong pressures for standardisation, performance metrics and risk-averse practices may restrict such possibilities and reinforce more superficial forms of learning. The study offers a contextually grounded lens for academic developers and institutional leaders seeking to align organisational conditions, staff development and curriculum practices with the goal of fostering more transformative learning environments in Maltese higher and further education.

ABSTRACT. The objective of this project is to evaluate the acceptance and impact of the outreach podcast “saberes al desnudo” as a scientific communication strategy to share knowledge in the community of a public university in Guadalajara, Mexico during the 2025B - 2026A school year. Higher education is undergoing a transformation that requires the implementation of innovative pedagogical methods to generate and share knowledge. In this context, podcasts are a tool used in various fields, and in education they support teaching and learning processes, bridging the gap between theory and practice (Rochilla et al., 2019). Therefore, from an academic development perspective, this study evaluates the acceptance and impact of podcasts as an innovative strategy that enhances knowledge sharing and the creation of learning communities. It employs a mixedmethods approach, seeking to assess the acceptance and impact of the podcast "Saberes al desnudo" (Knowledge Unveiled) through numerical metrics and to understand how students' perceptions change across various channels, incorporating digital ethnography. This project aims to promote student agency by humanizing research, demonstrating how academic knowledge has a direct and positive impact on daily life.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the integration of mediation education into legal curricula at Czech law faculties as a tool for academic development and institutional transformation. Based on an exploratory case study of the Mediation Clinic at the Faculty of Law, Palacký University Olomouc, it analyses how experiential and practice-oriented teaching methods complement traditional lecture-based legal education. The paper identifies three interrelated pillars of implementation: (1) the Mediation Clinic as a core course grounded in experiential learning and service-learning principles; (2) international cooperation, particularly with New York University School of Law; and (3) institutional support through a Mediation Centre ensuring the sustainability of the model. Drawing on empirical data, the study demonstrates a growing student demand for clinical forms of education, which consistently exceeds course capacity. The findings indicate that this approach enhances student autonomy, professional competencies, and engagement, while also contributing to pedagogical innovation and organizational transformation at the faculty level. The paper argues that clinical mediation education should be understood not merely as a curricular innovation, but as a structural instrument of institutional change linking teaching, research, practice and community engagement.

ABSTRACT. This poster outlines a structured approach to designing aspirational oaths in STEM higher education institutions (HEIs) based on Tronto’s ethics of care framework. Using the Archimedean Oath as a case study, it proposes a transferable process applicable across disciplines. Aspirational oaths differ from other ethical codes by promoting values that extend beyond compliance, encouraging professionals to prioritize societal responsibility. The Archimedean Oath demonstrates a student-led, evolving commitment shaped by social and technological challenges, yet its design process remains insufficiently formalized. To address this, the poster introduces a five-step model grounded in care-ethics: responsibility, solidarity, attentiveness, competence, and responsiveness. This framework supports inclusive stakeholder engagement, attention to marginalized voices, and iterative refinement. The proposed approach enables HEIs to develop context-specific, collaboratively designed oaths that integrate ethical reflection with technical education, fostering responsible and socially aware STEM professionals.

ABSTRACT. Academic developers (ADs) often occupy a liminal space within higher education, positioned between institutional leadership, faculty roles, and various support units. Rather than viewing this location as solely precarious or fragmented, this conceptual talk proposes that such positioning can function as a strength—enabling mobility across communities and contexts. Building on a synthesis of research literature and insights developed over more than a decade as a professional academic developer, this talk focuses on three central perspectives: the AD as ‘The One Who Does Not Belong’, the AD as a strategic ‘Player in the System’, and ‘The Personal Dimension’ of AD work. Through an emphasis on relational trust, authenticity, and building community, the talk suggests that liminality need not constrain identity but may instead support a shift toward roles marked by integrity and connection—toward becoming ‘The One Who Belongs in Many Places’.

ABSTRACT. Academic staff in universities are recognized as dual professionals: teachers in higher education (HE) and specialists in their disciplines. Teacher quality directly influences students’ achievement and personal growth. This paper examines the development and implementation of THPSF in higher education, situating it within national and international efforts to enhance teaching quality and align academic practice with global benchmarks. Grounded in competency-based, evidence-informed pedagogy, reflective practice, and continuous professional growth, THPSF defines three domains—knowledge, competencies, and values—across four progressive levels of professional recognition, ranging from Level 1 (Fellow Teacher) to Level 4 (Mastery Teacher). Methodologically, the study employs qualitative policy analysis and case studies from pilot universities to illustrate how THPSF has been embedded into faculty development, promotion systems, and institutional quality assurance. Key milestones include the establishment of the Thailand Qualifications Framework for HE (2009), collaboration with the European Union (2015), endorsement of teaching standards (2016), and the development of national guidelines (2017), culminating in the official launch of THPSF in 2023. The Association of Professional and Organizational Development Network of Thailand Higher Education (Thailand POD) plays a pivotal role in certification, reviewer training, and nationwide implementation. Findings highlight THPSF’s contribution to learner-centered, reflective teaching and professional recognition, while acknowledging challenges of institutional variability, reviewer capacity, and sustained engagement. Overall, the implementation of THPSF reflects Thailand’s commitment to enhancing teaching quality, advancing educational equity, and positioning higher education institutions to meet evolving learner and societal needs.

ABSTRACT. This document examines the work process that led to the establishment and characterises the work of the CRUI-TLC National Committee, an initiative recognised by the Conference of Italian University Rectors (CRUI) to promote systemic coordination in the development of Teaching and Learning Centres (TLCs). The CRUI, a representative body of Italian universities, plays a strategic role in guiding national policies on teaching, quality and innovation. From 2024–2025, the Board operated through a collaborative educational research approach, based on thematic working groups, observation of institutional practices, triangulation between documentary sources and a national survey of the 85 member universities of the CRUI. The four thematic groups—dedicated to TLC structures, training models, enhancing teaching professionalism, and evaluating the impact of faculty development—produced synergistic position papers, integrating literature analysis, collection of practices, operational models, and evaluation tools. The outcome of the process reflects strong consistency with the main European policies on teaching quality (EUA, Advance HE, ANECA) and with the guidelines on the professionalisation of teaching provided by the Italian National Agency for Universities Evaluation (ANVUR). The results seem to indicate the value of the CRUI-TLC Round Table as a national infrastructure for the coordination of TLCs, capable of guiding cultural change in Italian universities through shared actions, common criteria and a methodological framework based on empirical evidence and inter-institutional comparison.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents an inter-university reflection developed within the framework of the Red AVANZA, a collaborative initiative of the Spanish University Teaching Network (REDU) that brings together universities engaged in implementing the Academic Teaching Development Framework (MDAD). Based on the institutional reflection guides produced by each university, the study analyses shared learning and challenges through the four-dimensional framework proposed by Mihai, Dailey-Hebert and Beausaert (2025) 1, which conceptualizes teaching and learning centres through the dimensions of governance, identity, social capital, and activities.

The analysis reveals a convergence towards active and reflective models of teaching development, progress in peer collaboration and evaluation cultures, and persistent structural challenges related to resources and institutional support. The experience demonstrates that reflection guides are effective tools for generating shared knowledge and strengthening the institutional identity of teaching and learning development units.

ABSTRACT. Across more than two decades of digitalisation—from early e-learning to emergency remote teaching and the rapid diffusion of generative AI—the meaning of “quality” in higher education has undergone profound change. Yet two central questions remain insufficiently explored: Who defines what counts as quality in digital higher education, and how has this concept shifted over time?

This study examines how quality in digital higher education is discursively constructed across different arenas and by different actor groups. It analyses global and European policy discourses (OECD, UNESCO, EU/EHEA, ENQA/EQAR) as well as national policy discourses in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), tracing how definitions of quality are framed, legitimised and translated into institutional expectations.

Methodologically, the study applies the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) to reconstruct shifting actor constellations, power relations and meaning-making processes. Harvey’s extended 2024 framework—integrating classical conceptions of quality with standards, assurance, culture and epistemology—serves as the analytical lens.

Preliminary findings indicate that global policy actors anchor quality through normative governance frames such as accountability, comparability and digital readiness. National policies translate these frames into regulatory and strategic expectations, while scientific discourse increasingly problematises them, particularly in response to generative AI. Emerging discursive elements such as ethical quality, epistemic integrity and digital sovereignty point to a broadening of quality concepts in digital contexts.

The study contributes to academic development by showing how evolving quality discourses shape the conditions under which educators and academic developers can exercise agency in digital transformation.

ABSTRACT. Mid-career university teachers constitute a significant proportion of the academic workforce, yet their professional development (PD) receives less focussed attention. While early-career academics benefit from structured induction and institutional support, those in mid-career often encounter fragmented opportunities, increased role complexity, and reduced clarity around developmental pathways. This narrative review synthesises international empirical research on teaching-related PD for academics beyond the early-career stage and develops a two-axis conceptual framework to interpret the diverse approaches identified in the literature. By organising PD initiatives according to their level of formality and collaboration, the framework offers a coherent structure for understanding how different activities contribute to sustained pedagogical vitality. Analysis of 24 empirical studies reveals three overarching insights. First, mid-career growth emerges from the interplay of multiple forms of PD rather than any single activity. Second, the visibility, uptake, and impact of PD are shaped by institutional cultures and reward structures, while academics actively navigate and interpret these conditions, exercising agency in pursuing meaningful development. Third, informal collegial learning, reflective or inquiry-oriented practices, structured mentoring and network-building, and innovation-oriented approaches each support different dimensions of teaching vitality. The review contributes a conceptual map that can assist academic developers in designing intentional, stage-sensitive PD ecosystems. It highlights the importance of recognising informal learning, legitimising reflective practice, and creating enabling conditions that support mid-career academics as autonomous learners and influential contributors to academic development.

ABSTRACT. Mandatory reciprocal peer observation can strengthen collegiality and pedagogical dialogue among tenured faculty when carefully designed and supported. This paper reports on a faculty-wide, mandatory, reciprocal peer observation of teaching programme implemented for approximately 140 tenured staff in the Faculty of Social Sciences at a research-intensive Danish university. The initiative was introduced to meet a national requirement for continuous educational development while accommodating local microcultures and departmental priorities. Faculty were organised into department-based triads using a non-evaluative peer review model. Participants attended introductory meetings, engaged in pre-observation discussions, observed each other’s teaching once, and provided confidential feedback. A mixed-methods evaluation combined survey data, field notes from educational developers, and written reflections from department heads, analysed through descriptive statistics and thematic coding. Findings show high feasibility and compliance, with near-full participation over the first two-year cycle. Faculty reported increased motivation to engage colleagues in conversations about teaching and enhanced knowledge of peers’ courses and pedagogical practices. Resistance was limited and overall experiences were predominantly positive. The study argues that, when aligned with local microcultures and built on trust, flexibility, and developmental intent, mandatory reciprocal peer observation can effectively support collegial and systematic educational development among senior academics.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the experiences of 148 educators who completed Graduate Certificates or Postgraduate Certificates in Higher Education across Australian and New Zealand institutions between 1994 and 2024. Despite policy calls, such as the Accord, for intentional training of higher education teachers (Department of Education, 2023), only 42% of Australian universities currently offer formal teaching qualifications a significant decline over recent decades. This study addresses gaps in existing research by examining long-term participant perspectives on motivations, perceived value, and impacts on professional confidence and collegial relationships. Drawing on Most Significant Change (MSC) methodology (Davies & Dart, 2005), this survey research asked participants the perceived value of their qualification. Three key themes emerged from inductive analysis: key findings: First, while motivations varied (40% to improve teaching, 32% for career progression, 25% as requirement), 89% found the GradCert valuable. Second, the most frequently cited benefit (28% of participants) was gaining evidence-based understanding of pedagogy,the theoretical "why" behind practice, challenging deficit-based framings of these programs as remediation. Third, while 72% valued relationship-building with other educators, many described these communities as temporary, "falling away" after completion. The shift from predominantly face-to-face (69% of earlier cohorts) to majority online/hybrid delivery (75% of recent completers) may undermine this valued community benefit. These findings provide educational developers with evidence for program design, reveal a critical tension between accessibility and community-building in online formats, and highlight a troubling disconnect between policy rhetoric about teaching quality and declining institutional investment in formal teacher training.

ABSTRACT. This research examines the relationship between the continuous professional development (CPD) trajectories of university faculty and the construction of their professional pedagogical knowledge (PPK). It aims to answer the following research question: How does the continuous professional development trajectory of university faculty relate to the construction of their professional pedagogical knowledge? The general objective is to analyze this relationship, and the specific objectives are: a) to describe the continuous professional development trajectories of university faculty; and b) to explore the changes in the construction of university teachers' professional knowledge and its connection with continuous training. Methodologically, a qualitative-interpretive approach was adopted, using a biographical approach as the guiding perspective for the research, and a multiple instrumental case study as the methodological design. The main findings indicate a prioritization of disciplinary knowledge in continuous training. Self-training emerged as a fundamental means of updating. Furthermore, tensions were identified among the roles of teaching, research, and management. The study concludes that continuous training constitutes a complex and dynamic process that shapes PPK, generating transformations in knowledge, beliefs, and practices. Faculty members express a positive disposition toward training, with future projections focused on disciplinary specialization and, to a lesser extent, pedagogical specialization, all oriented toward professional growth.

ABSTRACT. Following a nationwide study on how Teaching and Learning Centers partner with graduate students in academic development activities, this session shares a practical application of our findings through a Graduate Student Partnership Plan template. The original research, grounded in the Students-as-Partners (SaP) framework, highlights the three core principles for effective partnerships: respect, reciprocity, and shared responsibility. The Graduate Student Partnership Plan consolidates these best practices into a practical tool that makes transparent and explicit the expectations and goals of both academic developers and graduate students. It also incorporates final reflection questions to review learnings and identify future growth opportunities. This session will share the template, feedback from graduate students after one academic year of implementation, lessons learned from this first iteration and planned future adaptations. This research-informed framework provides academic developers with a pragmatic guide for establishing meaningful partnerships that enhance agency and create mutually beneficial working relationships.

ABSTRACT. With the advent of AI, the continued politicization of university practices, funding distributions, and goal structures, graduate¹ teaching assistants (GTAs) are often undervalued and overlooked as educators. Yet they may be change agents in leading innovative approaches to support student success and classroom learning, teaching, and mentoring (Pentecost, et al., 2012; Sateria et al, 2023). To recognize the important roles GTAs play in transforming students’ learning experiences, 14 GTA Preparation program directors at 14 research-intensive U. S. universities were surveyed and interviewed to learn about their approaches to involving experienced GTAs in designing curricula for university-wide GTA preparation programs in partnership with educational developers and departments. The program directors were asked to describe the history of their programs, the process and evolution of their curriculum design, and how their programs have responded to changing pedagogical challenges and subsequent demands on GTAs. The results showed that GTA preparation program directors attributed the impact of their programs largely to their partnerships with advanced graduate teaching assistants. Providing these graduate students the opportunity to partner in shaping curriculum design, delivery, assessment, and feedback resulted in greater participation and commitment of and graduate teaching assistants’ investment in their teaching professional development. The importance of building communities of practice to discuss and engage with evidence-based teaching and learning practices and how to successfully partner with GTAs will be discussed.

¹Graduate students in other contexts may be called tertiary students.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyses the role of educational developers as capacity builders in research-intensive environments, using an ongoing development initiative in a Master of Science in Engineering programme at a Swedish university as an illustrative case. The programme operates under significant organisational constraints: low completion rates, a strong "my course" culture, unclear mandates in educational leadership, and fragmented course structures. These conditions are treated not as exceptional failures but as structural features shaping the conditions under which programme-level development work must operate. Drawing on an extensive logbook, interviews with key actors, and a synthesising development report, Kezar's multi-lens framework for organisational change is employed to interpret the developer's work in collaboration with programme directors, teachers, and departmental leadership. The work is conceptualised through five interwoven roles: designer of structures, navigator of external conditions, co-constructor of meaning, cultural worker, and political actor, connecting structural, cultural, cognitive, evolutionary, and political dimensions of change. What emerges is a picture of educational development as inherently ongoing work, shaped by structural conditions that persist beyond any single initiative. The paper discusses implications for how the developer's role might be understood less as discrete problem-solving or visionary, and more as sustained capacity support within change processes that are structurally complex and without a clear endpoint.

ABSTRACT. Universities increasingly recognize that effective educational development requires moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches to address the diverse pedagogical needs of academic disciplines. We present a case study from the XXXX’s [CTL], which conducted a series of departmental listening tours across nearly twenty academic units to better understand localized teaching challenges and support needs. We provided a semi-structured mechanism through which departments engaged directly with educational developers to articulate various priorities such as artificial intelligence, large class instruction, instructional technology, peer evaluation of teaching, and accessibility.

The resulting insights shaped a strategic shift toward department-centered faculty development, including the launch of new discipline-specific programming, expanded resource hubs, cross-campus collaborations, and low-to-high-touch initiatives such as the Peer Alliance for Classroom Excellence (PACE) which focuses on faculty community building and peer observation. We share the methods used in the listening tours, key thematic findings, and implications for academic developers seeking to deepen relationships with departments, highlighting our case as a collaborative model for change agency. Attendees will gain a practical framework for employing listening-driven approaches that foster departmental agency, align development initiatives with curricular design, and strengthen partnerships across campus.

ABSTRACT. In South African Higher Education Extended Curriculum Programmes (ECPs) are a vital equity-driven intervention aimed at supporting students who meet the university admission requirements but are academically underprepared yet are capable. However, ECPs often remain marginalised within institutional structures, limiting their potential to effect meaningful transformation. This paper positions agency of students, academic developers and lecturers—as a central driver for reimagining ECPs as transformative spaces. Drawing on Archer’s morphogenetic approach to agency and principles from the Flexible Degree Proposal, the paper explores how academic development can foster agency at multiple levels to enhance teaching, learning, and organisational change. Through case-based reflections on ECP practice, I highlight strategies such as participatory curriculum design, scaffolded learning environments, and collaborative professional communities. I argue that when academic developers act as strategic partners rather than service providers, ECPs can shift from remedial provision to drivers of institutional transformation—advancing equity, epistemic access, and success.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores how affectivity and reflexivity can nurture agency and professional identity in teacher education. Within the framework of circular pedagogy, learning is conceived as a relational and transformative process where knowledge emerges from dialogue, emotion, and shared reflection. The study is grounded in the integration of reflective practice (Schön, 1983), transformative learning (Mezirow, 1991), and psychoanalytic theories of intersubjectivity and play (Winnicott, 1971; Ogden, 2004). Through narrative and experiential methods implemented in teacher training programmes, future teachers are encouraged to reinterpret complex classroom situations, recognise emotional responses, and translate them into professional insight. Qualitative data from written reflections and group discussions suggest that this approach strengthens self-awareness, empathy, and intentional action, key components of emotional and epistemic agency. The contribution argues that academic development should embrace the affective and symbolic dimensions of teaching, as these constitute essential conditions for sustainable learning environments. By valuing emotion as a form of knowledge and reflection as a collective practice, teacher education can promote both individual and institutional transformation.

ABSTRACT. Dialogue is one of the most important drivers of learning, reasoning, and participation in childhood classrooms, yet university teacher education programs often fall short of providing students with the linguistic foundation and cultural knowledge needed to enact dialogic pedagogy in quality, equitable ways. This conceptual paper argues that preparing teachers for equitable dialogue requires fostering their professional agency through a deep understanding of language (i.e., its forms and functions) and the language ecology of classrooms. Without cultural and linguistic foundational knowledge, teacher candidates lack the agency to interpret their own and children's diverse repertoires of lived experiences, recognize the hidden curriculum of discourse, or engage with students in ways that support shared thinking and belonging.

Integrating research on dialogic pedagogy, learning communities, and adapting the DOLE framework (Dialogue, Opportunity, and Language Ecology), we propose sharing evidence-informed analyses and a critical reflection on why university-level teacher education programs should center linguistic, cultural, and dialogic agency as essential teacher competencies. In this work, we identify four mediating capacities–metalinguistic insight, metacognitive awareness, metacultural understanding, and an agentive stance toward teachers' and children's voices– as foundational outcomes of teacher preparation.

Aligned with Agency and Academic Development, this paper positions teacher educators as academic developers who must bridge the gap between scholarship (across various disciplines ranging from linguistic anthropology to cognitive science) and practice to cultivate teacher agency, empowering young learners to become active participants in their academic and professional learning and preparation. Implications for course development, practicum supervision, and program-level transformation will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. This study explores how in-service teachers exercise their epistemic agency through the active use of educational research and professional collaboration inside and outside schools. As part of the REDU-CAT project, a questionnaire was designed that integrates research skills, informed teaching practices, and collaborative processes, and was administered to 480 teachers from an inter-institutional network of schools. Through exploratory factor analysis and latent profile analysis, differentiated configurations of epistemic agency were identified along three dimensions: critical inquiry, informed pedagogical practice, and professional collaboration (internal and external). The results show that commitment to research acts as a catalyst for teachers to question assumptions, regulate their professional learning, and collectively construct knowledge. These configurations are expressed in a situated manner, influenced by the organisational dynamics and collaborative spaces of each school. The study provides empirical evidence on the connections between epistemic agency, use of evidence, and professional networks, offering guidance for strengthening inter-institutional communities that promote informed pedagogical practices and sustainable professional development.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the potential of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) to enhance English-speaking skills in higher education through the integration of ELSA Speak, Duolingo, and BBC Learning English at a public university in southern Ecuador. Methodologically, it employs a qualitatively driven mixed-methods action research design, combining learners’ experiences with pre- and post-speaking assessments. Consequently, the findings show improvements in pronunciation, fluency, anxiety reduction, motivation, autonomy, and engagement, highlighting MALL’s value in extending practice beyond the classroom. Finally, the study provides implications for teacher training, faculty support, and institutional innovation, offering a context-sensitive and replicable model for integrating mobile technologies in language education.

ABSTRACT. While academic development and practice have been confronted with increasing challenges in the context of internationalization processes, with dramatically rising numbers of study programmes and courses being taught to international students in English, often by and to non-native English speakers, research in the field of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) and affiliated fields, indicates that academic development, research and -practice regarding teacher professionalization in this context is limited, lacking insights and approaches from a pedagogical point of view in particular. In order to explore how teacher professionalization in the EMI-context may be stimulated by a didactic intervention, the here portrayed undergoing doctoral study in educational sciences therefore explores how EMI-teachers’ self-efficacy experience may transform in the course of one semester, when participating in an EMI-targeted didactic intervention. With self-efficacy presumed central in advancing teaching competencies and -performance, teachers’ self-efficacy experience regarding their teaching in the EMI-context will be explored through semi-structured interviews carried out before and after taking part in the didactic intervention and teaching in the winter semester of 2026/27. The findings of the doctoral study may indicate how pedagogical approaches of this kind may advance EMI-teacher development and inspire teaching practice, while highlighting further research needs.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates the impact of pedagogical consultations provided by Academic Developers (ADs) at the University of Trento in the FormID Teaching and Learning Centre. Over two academic years, 38 lecturers received support, mainly following participation in a teaching innovation funding call. Using a multi-level qualitative and quantitative approach, the research explores how ADs improve reflective practice, methodological change and professional growth. Results highlight increased adoption of active teaching strategies and improved planning. The study contributes to evidence-based evaluation in faculty development and suggests future directions for research in faculty development. Moreover, this study provides elements for the continuous improvement of the actions in teaching and learning centers.

ABSTRACT. Despite policy directives prioritizing academic development in South Africa’s higher education context, mentorship, as a key mechanism for situated learning, has yet to be embedded as a consistent, institutionalized practice. While frameworks including the Staffing South Africa’s Universities Framework (2015) emphasize academic capacity building, the relational, performative and embodied nature of mentorship is seldom in the foreground. In this reflective account I reflect on the role of informal mentorship which emerged organically through relational exchanges. In this autoethnographic reflexive account, using Wegner’s Community of Practice framework as a lens, I reposition mentorship from the academic periphery and recast it as integral to my professional development. My reflections draw on informal mentorship relationships with two mentors, an Indian Female and an African Male whose contrasting but complementary approaches allowed me to reclaim my critical voice. Two central themes are emphasized: Learning in Practice and Becoming through Practice, which jointly demonstrate the centrality of relational, informal mentorship in shaping competence and identity in a community of practice.

ABSTRACT. Peer-mentoring offers important learning opportunities for student-teachers, and it likewise supports learning for practicing teachers working in schools. Peer-mentoring can facilitate individual and collective learning, critical reflection, and practice development (Geeraerts et al., 2015). If student-teachers learn the practice of peer-mentoring during their education, they are better prepared both to continue learning and to participate in and contribute to professional learning communities. In this study we examine student-teachers’ peer‑mentoring conversations based on video recordings of their practicum teaching. Our analysis identified instances of student-teachers engaging in epistemic practices that are central to their enrolment in, preparation for, and contribution to the profession. By analytically attending to enacted epistemic practices, and by interpreting these findings through the notion of scaffolding, we explore how epistemic practices can be better supported in peer‑mentoring settings. The findings have implications for teacher educators and student-teachers seeking to enhance the learning that occurs through peer-mentoring.

ABSTRACT. Abstract. Many early career academics (ECAs) enter academia facing competing demands, insecure employment and performance pressures that privilege research over teaching. Within this context, Educational Development (ED) programs play a crucial role in supporting ECAs’ professional growth as educators. However, the design of such programs shapes what kind of learning they foster. While linear, transmission-oriented programs often focus on skill acquisition, dialogue-based approaches provide space for reflection, collaboration and identity negotiation. This paper explores how ECAs construct and negotiate their teacher identities through peer interaction at a research-intensive Danish university. Drawing on Positioning Theory (Davies & Harré, 1990) and perspectives regarding Communicative Constitution of Organization (Cooren, 2004), the study conceptualizes teacher identity as discursively accomplished in interaction. Using a longitudinal ethnomethodological design, the study analyzes approximately 30 hours of audio-recorded peer discussions. The analysis shows how ECAs take up, resist and reassign available positions within moral orders of academic life, revealing how identity work is simultaneously individual and institutional. Through these conversational negotiations, the boundary between self and organization becomes blurred. ECAs are not only discussing teaching but constituting what “teaching” means within their university. The paper thus argues, that ED should not only be perceived as a arena for the transmission of pedagogical techniques, but of equal importance as a communicative infrastructure through which legitimate teacher identities can be taken on, assigned, resisted and at times re-worked in interaction with peers and educational developers.

ABSTRACT. Higher education institutions increasingly emphasize learner-centered pedagogy, yet novice faculty often face challenges in translating theoretical frameworks into practical classroom strategies. This study examines how structured observation-based teaching consultations enhance the development of teaching agency among early-career instructors. The study utilizes the BOPPPS framework not merely as training content, but as a shared diagnostic vocabulary. Using a mixed-methods design, data were collected from 51 instructors who received consultations between 2023 and 2025. To integrate the findings, quantitative results indicating high satisfaction and a 92% intention to modify instructional methods (measured on a 5-point Likert scale) were first used to identify key patterns, and qualitative reflections were then analyzed to explain these patterns. This integrated analysis revealed how feedback from systematic observation supported instructors in navigating contextual constraints to implement tangible pedagogical changes, while also identifying Participatory Learning as the most impactful yet highly challenging component, second only to Pre-Assessment in reported difficulty. Addressing a critical gap in academic development, the study proposes the Consultation-Enabled Agency Model. This potentially transferable framework highlights how evidence-informed feedback and reflective dialogue can facilitate sustainable pedagogical change, offering teaching centers a promising approach to strengthening teaching agency and supporting context-sensitive pedagogical change.

ABSTRACT. Leaders of Centres for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) often face an unrelenting challenge: too many essential initiatives, programs, and stakeholder demands—but never enough time, staff, or funding to meet them all. This workshop offers a structured, collaborative method for strategic prioritisation that helps CTL leaders decide what to do next—and what to stop—in alignment with institutional goals and available capacity. Using an agile-inspired Business Value / Effort–Impact framework, participants will co-create decision criteria (e.g., strategic alignment, innovation, client value, reputational or societal impact) and apply them first through a hands-on case study and then to their own institutional context. Because the method can be revisited periodically, it supports institutional resilience—allowing CTLs to realign priorities as strategies evolve or external disruptions arise. The session balances analytical structure with participatory reflection, enabling leaders to act as proactive change agents who steer their portfolios strategically rather than reactively. Participants will leave with a ready-to-use prioritisation template and facilitation guide to support transparent, evidence-informed decision-making in their own contexts.

ABSTRACT. This collaborative space focuses on how shared leadership, collective efficacy, and human-centered design can transform Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) into resilient, sustainable systems for organizational learning. Drawing on parallel redesign efforts at two secondary school sites in San Diego, the session highlights how PLCs grounded in social–emotional research, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can cultivate psychological safety, belonging, and teacher agency. These conditions enabled general education, English Language Development, and special education teachers to break down silos, develop shared literacy goals, and engage in collaborative inquiry that improved instructional practice and student outcomes. The purpose of this collaborative space is to create a reflective and generative environment where participants examine their own institutional contexts and co-design strategies for building capacity-centered PLCs that endure beyond individual leaders. Through guided discussion, case analysis, and co-creation, attendees will explore how distributed leadership and equity-driven professional learning structures can strengthen organizational resilience. Participants will leave with adaptable frameworks, practical tools, and actionable steps for cultivating sustainable, empowering professional cultures within their own educational settings.

ABSTRACT. Higher education institutions are navigating increasing complexity due to technological change, diverse learner needs and evolving institutional priorities. Responding to these challenges requires not only pedagogical innovation but also governance structures that align local initiatives with institutional strategy. Educational developers operate at this interface, exercising agency across organisational layers through networked collaboration and strategic coordination.

This paper examines how such networked agency has been operationalised at KU Leuven (a comprehensive university with over 60,000 students) through the KU Leuven Learning Lab network. The case of IT-supported assessment demonstrates how digital assessment evolved from scattered faculty pilots into a coherent institutional strategy. Rather than emphasising technological rollout, this case foregrounded structured collaboration, cross-service alignment and evidence-informed decision-making. Through the creation of seed projects, institutional design scenarios and boundary spaces for negotiation, educational development shifted from facilitating innovation to shaping institutional conditions for readiness.

The paper argues that when embedded within networked governance structures, educational development can function as institutional design – enabling IT-supported assessment to move beyond fragmented initiatives toward sustainable and strategic transformation. In this trajectory, “going digital, staying human” operated not as a slogan, but as a guiding principle for designing human-centred digital assessment in higher education.

ABSTRACT. Academic Development (AD) has been extensively discussed in the literature from various perspectives, often focusing on its roles, identities, and contributions to higher education. However, a closer analysis seems to be missing of how the setting and enactment of higher education policy affects agency, defines roles and allows space to navigate for academic developers. In a recent chapter, we examined academic development in Germany as a case to understand how academic developers’ work and practices are being shaped by the policy framework and execution of a new national funding structure for innovation in higher education. Through a triangulated analysis, we explored the consequences and implications of this development in higher education policy setting. Based on this, in the present contribution we will extend this perspective by discussing how the self-perception and self-identification of AD and of academic developers intertwines with both policy setting and emerging practices. We aim to illuminate an underexplored aspect of AD work, share our reflections on the implications for the German case, and invite the session participants to discuss the relevance of policy, politics and governance of academic development in their respective local contexts.

ABSTRACT. In this study we investigated how formal leaders of Academic Development (AD) units in Nordic higher education understand their leadership role and mission in relation to autonomy, service and academisation. Based on interviews with twelve AD leaders from four different countries our analysis shows how leadership entails a delicate "act of balance" between strategic level work and management of operations. We discuss the AD leaders’ enacted relational strategies—manifesting as the "Megaphone" (amplifying voices), "Spider" (weaving networks), or "Idealist" (visionary advocacy)—to sustain dialogue with university leaders, central administration, and faculty, with varying success. Our findings can inform the leadership of academic development units, sparking reflection and debate on successful strategies to enhance academic development capacity.

ABSTRACT. Internationalisation has become a normalised feature of higher education, although research into teaching strategies remains fragmented and the reverent review predominantly focused on English-language contexts. This systematic literature review synthesises 66 empirical studies published between 2015 and 2024, aiming to draw insights into effective research- based teaching strategies within internationalised higher education. This review, guided by institutional theory, highlights that teaching strategies are shaped at micro (classroom) and meso (institutional) levels through the interaction between institutions and educators' agency. The analysis reveals three key themes on research strategies in international higher education: (1) implementation, (2) perceptions and experiences, and (3) implications. From an institutional theory perspective, this review discusses that these teaching strategies are shaped by contextual institutional norms, rely heavily on individual agency due to limited structural support, and are constrained by persistent resource gaps that contribute to deficit narratives about international students. Theoretically, institutional theory's application within internationalised teaching contexts is broadened. Practically, findings underscore the need to enhance all stakeholders' experiences through resource allocation aligned with admissions policies, systematic professional development, and fostering an inquiring stance among teaching staff.

ABSTRACT. This study is part of a broader research project aimed at characterising the experiences of different actors in higher education (HE) (students, programme coordinators, and faculty members) from different programmes with active learning strategies and models. This paper reports on the first phase of this broader project, focusing on the development and validation of a matrix designed to analyse the envisioned integration of active learning strategies and models in undergraduate programmes. The design process followed a Design-Based Research approach, beginning with the conceptual clarification of active learning, which informed the structure and refinement of the matrix. The main contribution of this work is threefold: providing epistemological clarity on the concept of active learning, advancing its operationalisation for curriculum design and curriculum-level analysis, and offering a practical tool for academic developers and faculty to support the design, implementation, and evaluation of student-centred curriculum design in HE.

ABSTRACT. Many faculty development (FD) initiatives aim to promote innovative, student-centered teaching practices, yet lecturers’ pedagogical intentions do not always align with students’ perceptions of the resulting learning experience. This study examines perceptions of class sessions taught by lecturers who participated in a FD initiative at the BLINDED, where they learned and implemented an active-learning methodology. Equivalent surveys were administered to lecturers and students immediately after each session; quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative data through thematic analysis. Findings from 18 lecturers and 234 students show convergence in perceptions of innovation, satisfaction, reflexivity, and support for self-regulated learning. However, divergences emerged: students rated the impact on learning, motivation, and clarity slightly lower than lecturers, and a minority expressed some minor reservations. Lecturers reported considerably higher workload, greater ICT-related challenges, and more concern for inclusivity. These results suggest that while FD can effectively support pedagogical innovation, translating new methodologies into practice requires sustained support and clearer communication with students. The study highlights the importance of aligning pedagogical intentions with students’ lived experiences and ensuring that FD initiatives provide follow-up structures to help lecturers adjust to the complexities of active-learning implementation.

ABSTRACT. In this conceptual paper, I draw on the concept of musical improvisation and the developed research literature around it to argue that academic developers’ practice can be viewed much like jazz musicians’ work as an agentic practice in a constant state of becoming. I draw on my dual expertise as a musician/ethnomusicologist, studying the processes of improvisation and my work for the last six years as an academic developer in a large Australian university, developing the professional skills of educational and academic developers in preparation for institution-wide change initiatives. The article explores the cognitive and cultural perspectives of musical improvisation as effective frameworks for developing the skills and knowledge of academic developers to be applied in specific contexts that require human agency to lead individuals with expertise in making effective educational decisions and taking action to improve teaching. Auto-ethnographic reflections on improvisation and my experience in academic development ground the theoretical discussion of improvisation and the roles of academic developers as change agents in tangible scenarios. I argue that understanding the work of academic developers through the lens of musical improvisation could be an effective pathway to surface the expertise and evaluative judgment required to create educational change in teaching and learning communities in higher education, through concepts such as perceptual agency, temporal feedback monitoring and embodied knowledge.

ABSTRACT. Career-change teachers—professionals entering teaching after prior careers – have become an important focus of policy responses to teacher shortages. Pedagogical master’s programs increasingly serve as higher-education pathways for this group, offering accelerated routes into the profession. However, widening access does not necessarily ensure equitable participation or retention. This paper examines pedagogical master’s programs as institutional pathways shaping career transitions into teaching and explores their implications for academic development in higher education. Drawing on research on teacher professional identity, professional transition, and resilience, the study analyzes how institutional environments shape experiences of recognition, belonging, and professional commitment. The paper is based on qualitative doctoral research using semi-structured interviews with career-change teachers enrolled in pedagogical master’s programs and recent graduates, complemented by interviews with program staff and analysis of institutional documents. Data are analyzed thematically with attention to identity negotiation, recognition of prior professional experience, and institutional support. Preliminary findings suggest that these programs provide opportunities for professional reorientation but also create challenges related to compressed timelines, competing study–work demands, and limited recognition of prior expertise. The findings highlight the importance of mentoring, institutional flexibility, and peer communities in supporting successful transitions into teaching roles.

ABSTRACT. This study sheds light on the experiences of sessional instructors engaging in professional development and how these experiences prepare them for a shifting post-secondary environment. Utilizing a participatory narrative inquiry approach, informed by Knowles’ principles of adult learning, Tough’s self-directed learning framework, and the Developmental Framework for Teaching Expertise in Postsecondary Education, the researcher collected and analysed stories of sessional instructors through semi-structured interviews, a group story session, and reflective journal entries. Reflexive thematic analysis was utilized. Findings provide insights into effective support strategies for enhancing teaching expertise, contributing to sustainable improvements in teaching and learning cultures across the post-secondary landscape. Based on these findings, the researcher suggests an adapted multi-level framework which places the educator at the center. The researcher's proposed framework recognizes that institutions cannot rely solely on the self-directedness and intrinsic motivation of sessional instructors. It is neither fair nor sustainable. Instead, it must be a shared responsibility. Institutions should actively engage in co-creating structured, transparent, and sustainable pathways for teaching expertise. Making this process visible and structured, while explicitly outlining the institutional support available, ensures shared accountability and fosters greater equity in professional development.

ABSTRACT. Planning meaningful educational development for sessional instructors involves taking stock of their needs. Such needs stem from institutional and departmental teaching cultures and the reliance on contract academic work more broadly. But how much do we know about the types of development sessionals actually need? How do we begin to understand how sessionals approach educational development? Drawing from a larger study exploring educational development for sessionals, this paper presents a set of six qualitatively unique ways that sessionals might approach educational development. Through a series of phenomenographic interviews, 17 sessionals shared that their approaches toward educational development are informed by extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to participate, aligning with deep and surface approaches to learning. Implications for programming and community building will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. Faced with current challenges in higher education (such as the growing number of degree programs, competition from private universities, and the emergence of artificial intelligence in learning and assessment processes), the School of Industrial Engineering (ETSII) at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has launched a participatory process to redefine its educational model.

This process was structured around two strategic workshops: one for faculty and another for students, aimed at identifying critical areas and agreeing on common guidelines. As a result, four mixed working groups (faculty, students, and management team) were created around key axes considered essential for engineering education today: Assessment, Academic Integrity, Rigor, and Complex Problem-Solving.

Each group developed a set of guidelines that will serve as the basis for implementing the new educational model across all ETSII programs. This collaborative approach has integrated diverse perspectives, ensured institutional alignment, and strengthened the School’s academic identity.

The proposal illustrates how institutional collaboration among students, faculty, and academic leaders can generate solid consensus and innovative practices to enrich curriculum design and improve the training of future engineers.

ABSTRACT. Fictional scenarios are increasingly used in academic development to foster reflection, professional vision, and the transfer of pedagogical concepts into authentic teaching practice. Recent studies highlight the potential of generative artificial intelligence to support the efficient creation of educational scenarios and case materials. Building on this emerging body of work, this paper presents a multiple case study examining the use of AI-supported fictional scenarios in academic development courses for university teachers across diverse disciplines. The scenarios were collaboratively designed by educational developers using generative artificial intelligence as a co-creative tool, following iterative processes of drafting, curation, and pedagogical validation commonly described in recent research. Drawing on course artefacts, participant reflections, and facilitator notes, the study explores how fictional scenarios function as boundary objects that support dialogue, reduce perceived risk, and enable engagement with complex teaching challenges. Findings indicate that AI-supported scenario design enhances realism, diversity, and adaptability while reducing development time. The paper discusses the educational value, limitations, and ethical considerations of integrating AI-generated scenarios into academic development practice, with implications for educational developers designing scalable and reflective professional learning.

ABSTRACT. As generative AI tools reshape Higher Education, educators are grappling with a complex terrain of ethical uncertainty, professional anxiety, and shifting pedagogical norms. This empirical paper presents findings from a two-year study of 93 and 90+ (respectively) university educators participating in an academic development programme exploring the pedagogical integration of AI. Drawing on posthumanist theory (Braidotti, 2013), onto-epistemology (Barad, 2007), and critical realism (Archer, 2000), the study investigates how staff perceive AI’s role in teaching and learning, and how these perceptions intersect with identification, well-being, and institutional contexts. Data were gathered from qualitative reflections, AI usage protocols, declarations, workshop transcripts, and a confidence survey. Thematic and discourse analysis revealed educators positioned AI as simultaneously helpful and threatening, a tool for efficiency and access, yet also a source of moral unease and fears of deskilling. Emotional tensions, such as guilt, overwhelm, and imposterism, were prevalent. Staff described a reluctance to share their AI use with peers or students due to reputational risk and ethical dilemmas, and expressed a desire for reflective, values-driven professional development. This paper argues that academic developers must navigate not only technical upskilling but emotional and ethical labour, providing space for identity work and epistemic agency in the AI age. Implications for inclusive academic development and institutional strategy are discussed.

ABSTRACT. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into higher education, understanding teachers' attitudes and support needs is critical for informed institutional strategies. This study, framed within research of pedagogical change, examined university teachers' experiences and perceptions of AI in teaching at an Icelandic university. A survey was distributed to 2,003 faculty members, including sessional staff, with 79 items on a six-point Likert scale and open-ended questions. The response rate was 27% (33% among tenure-track faculty). Findings indicate that most respondents hold positive attitudes toward AI and view it as potentially useful in academic contexts. Teachers most often reported using generative AI to generate ideas for assignments and assist with course organization, while less frequently for designing full courses, creating content, writing exams, or grading. Some also used AI for rubrics, programming, data analysis, summaries, and translation. Ethical concerns were prominent, including misuse by students, irresponsible reliance, and data security risks. Respondents also noted worries about bias, inaccuracy, and the reliability of AI-generated content, alongside their own limited knowledge of AI tools. Teachers were most familiar with ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Over half expressed interest in professional development opportunities such as workshops on AI integration and how to guide students in responsible use. Recommended support included institutional guidelines, free access to software, instructional resources, online forums, and allocated time for teaching development. Findings highlight the need for universities to address teachers’ concerns and provide clear guidance, resources, and training to enable effective and ethical AI integration into pedagogy in higher education.

ABSTRACT. Educational developers are confronting a profound pedagogical and epistemic shift—one in which students’ ways of thinking and creating knowledge are being reshaped by generative artificial intelligence (AI). The Dialogic Catalyst Triangle, positions AI not as a content generator but as a dialogic partner in inquiry. Drawing on dialogic pedagogy and Mercer and Littleton’s concept of interthinking, the framework integrates interthinking, archetypal team roles, and AI as an epistemic agent within a third-space ecosystem of learning. By enacting archetypal functions such as skeptic, clarifier, and integrator, AI can catalyze exploratory dialogue and deepen collective reasoning while preserving human agency. For educational developers, the framework offers a scholarly lens to guide faculty engagement with AI and advance critical, evidence-informed approaches to pedagogy and epistemic practice in higher education.

ABSTRACT. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has started to influence every aspect of people’s lives. Applications of AI have begun demonstrating their potential to improve many aspects of teaching and learning in all academic disciplines, particularly in education, especially higher education. Initially, faculty had debatable attitudes towards AI use for educational development, although some pioneers adopted it immediately, others ignored it. While some concerns may arise as higher education institutions, faculty, and students increasingly utilize AI, the fact remains that AI technologies are beginning to transform the way teaching/learning are designed, delivered, and assessed. As the main educational influencers in the classroom, are faculty receiving sufficient support from AI to help manage educational development? Although faculty needs are investigated in literature, there is a need to look beyond the box and investigate whether the support needs of faculty from AI in extreme dimensions are scarce. This qualitative study explores the evolving educational development via AI, emphasizing how AI integration can enhance teaching effectiveness and quality from the wishes, needs and expectations of faculty members. The participants are higher-education faculty members from diverse disciplines with varying levels of experience in AI. Faculty are asked to respond to open-ended questions using the metaphor of rubbing a magic lamp of AIaddin, and to share three wishes/needs that indicate what they would expect most, as a faculty member, from AI. The responses to this questionnaire will help educational developers envision a future in which faculty development and AI interaction coexist in a dynamic, reflective, and values-driven partnership.

ABSTRACT. This symposium focuses on how place-based pedagogy fosters student agency, critical thinking and transformative learning. The speakers are four professors who create and teach writing courses that bring students from their home institution in the U.S.A to destinations abroad (Spain, Italy, France, and Australia). By learning in these destinations, the professors and students co-create experiences and develop insights which could not be replicated in classrooms at their home institution.

This place-based learning abroad re-configures the writing pedagogy in several innovative ways: by disorienting rigid/previous mindsets, by grounding writing and thinking in the body and physical action, by cultivating global thinking to reimagine local problems, and by centering creative labor in assessment and learning. In developing these practices, the instructors and students find meaningful ways to address societal challenges such as climate change and artificial intelligence, while also enriching student agency and motivation to explore further areas of interest.

ABSTRACT. For two decades now, higher education institutions aim at increasing global perspectives into their study programs by means of different approaches to curriculum internationalization (Beelen & Jones, 2015; Leask, 2015), nowadays especially by the so-called internationalisation of the curriculum at home (IoCaH) (Eftekhari, Yousefzadeh, & Coelen, 2025; Leask, 2025). Yet, the success of these endeavours is still fragile due to the missing support structures for academic teachers to engage in IoCaH and the lack of organisational embeddedness of educational developers (ED) in these processes (EQUiiP, 2019; Killick, 2015). The question is, how the institutional environment for both of these crucial stakeholders can be influenced for them to develop a sense of agency that makes them engage (more). It is this question that lies at the heart of our symposium. The three symposium papers offer focal points for EDs to use in order to increase their own involvement in IoCaH processes. The papers are underpinned by findings of two research groups and four doctoral theses. The first two papers share recent findings about what academic teachers as well as ED actually need to (be able to) get engaged in internationalisation. The third paper offers a comprehensive summary of the analysed factors that could support both stakeholders in increasing their agency as ambassadors of IoCaH. Each paper is grounded in the presenters' empirical research, drawing upon multiple, methodologically diverse projects in four European countries. All studies were externally funded and rigorously peer-reviewed.

ABSTRACT. This symposium explores how technology can meaningfully enhance student agency across diverse learning contexts in higher education. Three universities—National Taiwan University (NTU), Taipei Medical University (TMU), and National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)—will present special initiatives that integrate technology to empower learners as active, reflective, and creative agents in their educational journeys. NTU will share innovations within its Learning Management System NTU COOL, which enhances student agency and learning effectiveness through purposeful feature design. TMU will highlight its AI Literacy Lab, designed to build essential AI competencies through lectures, workshops, competitions, and self-directed learning activities. NCKU will demonstrate its Student Learning E-Portfolio System, an AI-driven, personalized navigation system that leverages competency diagnostics and data analytics to help students build individualized learning pathways and career identities. Together, these contributions demonstrate how universities can design technology-enabled ecosystems that promote student autonomy, competence development, and collaborative innovation. The symposium will share our vision and invite participants to reflect on how technological innovation and learning experiences can nurture motivation and empower learners.