Making a case for educational development in times of drift and shift

Abstract

Ten strategies are offered as collectively making a case for an educational conception of professional development in higher education. These strategies, it is argued, should help the system to resist the various forms of academic drift that are discernible, and especially those described as “research drift” and “teaching drift”, which could, unless stemmed, lead to a fragmentation of higher education. Educational development is also promoted as a set of conditions and as a series of strategies which could help higher education institutions counter the deleterious effects of “managerial shift” which is characterised as a more or less deliberate attempt to move universities away from the values of collegiality towards those of a contrasting ideology which strongly features bureaucracy and efficiency. By adopting an educational approach to professional development, higher education institutions would be helping to establish themselves more effectively as learning organisations and would be contributing to the Dearing aim of creating a learning society.