Donna Hurford, Yan Ding
We are two academic developers, one at a Chinese university and the other at a Danish university. Through the ‘International Network Project’ (Danish Ministry of Education and Research) we are intent on developing a new intercultural research partnership by exploring shared professional and academic interests. We are interested in exploring how our collaboration on these authentic, international projects (Leask, 2009) contributes to our intercultural learning and to review the potential of such international partnerships for academic developers.
Whilst academic development and its associated learning culture or cultures has a longer history in Danish than Chinese universities, identifying opportunities to better understand and develop our respective learning cultures is applicable in both contexts. Fudan University in China aims to support peer universities to promote the growth of their academic developers through co-construction, sharing and dissemination of online teacher training resources supplemented by the establishment of the academic developer appraisal system. Academic developers in Denmark have access to a national network (Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Netværk) which provides support and dissemination opportunities through events and Special Interest Groups.
Our poster will focus on findings from surveys of Chinese and Danish academic developers’ perceptions of their roles and whether they map on to Land’s (2004) and Neame’s (2011) ‘orientations’ of roles or whether alternatives emerge; academic developers’ self-identified professional development needs and their current or potential contributions to their academic developers’ learning culture or cultures. In addition, we will share our considerations on the findings and offer questions for reflection and discussion on the international role of academic developers and how they could contribute to and benefit from international learning cultures.
Findings from such surveys at institutional or national level would of themselves yield valuable information, however including an additional international level invites critical discussion and intercultural perspectives. The increased diversity of teachers’ and students’ nationalities and cultures is a common outcome from universities’ internationalisation strategies (Spencer-Oatey and Dauber, 2015), which means academic developers are increasingly turned to for intercultural pedagogic guidance (Killick, 2015). Therefore, our international collaboration is well-placed to provide unique comparative insights into Chinese and Danish academic developers’ perceptions of their roles, their learning needs and to inform discussions on academic developers’ contributions to universities’ intercultural learning cultures.
