Collaboration or competition? This question is at the centre of this editorial, which explores the importance of sector-wide approaches to research into educational technology. This has become particularly relevant in recent years in response to a range of significant challenges or disruptions the tertiary education sector has had to face, for example, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic or the emergence of new generative AI tools. To address these challenges, we have taken a collaborative approach to writing this editorial, with contributing authors from across the world responding to four key questions. The responses to those questions were then arranged into four key themes: collaboration in response to disruption, individual benefits from collaboration, communal benefits from collaboration, and ensuring collaborative wisdom. The editorial concludes with a section that situates the preceding discussion in a broader context and challenges us to consider our wider impact on the world as a sector and, in particular, as related to educational technology. We conclude that collaboration is a must and has the potential to empower us to push the boundaries of what is possible.

In this chapter, the authors situate an approach to PTC programs in the context of similar programs nationwide, discuss the institutional considerations that led to the development of these programs, provide an overview of how these programs are run, and present evaluation data regarding the impact these programs have on the TAs and the PTCs themselves. Today, the central PTC program employs 14 graduate consultants from 13 different UM departments while the engineering PTC adds another 10 consultants from across 12 College of Engineering (CoE) departments. All graduate students who receive an MSF from Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) are surveyed regarding their satisfaction with the process, the changes they have made as a result of the feedback, and whether they would recommend the MSF to others. CRLT has also assessed the extended impact that involvement in the GTC and EGSM programs has had on the PTCs themselves.

This chapter begins with a review of the literature on evaluation of faculty development work. It then describes how Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) documents and evaluates its instructional development work and how it uses these inquiries to refine its practice and highlight the value the center brings to the university. The development of ''guiding principles, clear goals and assessment procedures'' is one of the best practices for creating and sustaining teaching centers. Most faculty development centers keep very good records on the number of people who attend their programs, probably because evidence of participation is necessary to justify existence of a program. Like all teaching centers, CRLT must market its services to administrators and faculty. Although documenting impact of teaching and learning centers is critical, the literature provides few comprehensive evaluation models for faculty development professionals to do so. Teaching centers play a key role on campus, and evaluation data can document their contributions most effectively.

Although initial descriptors vary globally, terms such as educational development, academic development, and faculty development are joined by the common word, ‘development’. The idea of development implies a function oriented towards growth, encouragement, and professional support. Land (2001, p. 6), focusing on the individual academic developer, titles this orientation the ‘romantic (ecological humanist)’, which is ‘concerned with the personal development, growth and well-being of individual practitioners within the organization’. Others, looking at academic development organisations, have labeled this function the ‘incubator’ role (POD Network, 2018; Wright, 2023). As an incubator, academic development units support individual growth and development through one-on-one initiatives such as consultations and coaching, as well as programmatic approaches such as orientations and mentoring. In both cases, the romantic (ecological humanist) orientation and incubator strategies are presented as approaches that individuals and academic units might intentionally occupy. For example, in Land’s work, romantic is one of 12 possible orientations. Similarly, an incubator approach is one of four change strategies that an academic unit, such as a centre for teaching and learning, might leverage. Therefore, what are the affordances of this particular orientation or strategy, compared to other possibilities? There are compelling reasons to implement romantic/incubator approaches to academic development. As Timmermans et al. (2018, p. 370) write, ‘Care is arguably part of the underlying ethos of our work as educational developers’. This core value is embodied in these supportive and developmental orientations. An additional foundational component of the work of academic development is change (Grupp, 2014; Timmermans, 2014; Weston & Finkelstein, 2017). Critically reflective change or reflection-in-action are guiding threads woven through many of these approaches, with the objective of promoting transformation or self-realization. Finally, at the level of the group or institution, these approaches contribute to institutional enhancement, by enabling career success and pathways to leadership, in ways that align with definitions of the field (Felten et al., 2007; Sutherland, 2018) The articles and book review in the current issue illustrate the romantic/incubator approaches in various endeavours. One important form of these initiatives is mentoring. Bojko and Kowalczyk (2023) found that mentoring enhances the growth of early-career academics in Poland and enables them to make steady scientific progression. However, Bojko and Kowalczyk also highlight that mentoring in their context was found to be in a rather traditional form, with senior scholars passing knowledge to their junior counterparts. Alkhatnai (2023) discovered that a year-long mentoring programme for university administrators across eight Saudi universities benefited mentees when trust is established. Like in Bojko and Kowalczyk’s study, certain cultural biases were found to limit INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT 2023, VOL. 28, NO. 1, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2023.2178705

Action research is a powerful tool that can be used by teaching centers to improve teaching and learning. This article describes an action research project conducted at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at the University of Michigan. The project concerns retention and attrition in science gateway courses, with particular attention given to the role of the Teaching Assistant. The article concludes with a discussion of six principles for teaching center staff who wish to conduct their own action research projects.

This chapter describes an evolving narrative inquiry into the use of formative sustainability assessments in teacher education for elementary and secondary level education. Framed within a postmodern approach to education, we describe the efficacy of using experiential, performative, discursive, graphic, and reflective assessments to bolster critical and creative holistic understandings.