Academic development as distributed cognition and practice

Abstract

Like a tree, academic development keeps changing, developing, and growing in interaction with the academic environments it intends to cultivate. Since the International Consortium for Educational Development was established 30 years ago, academic development has changed as well as not changed. Although the changes are not ubiquitous across higher education institutions, there are matching patterns. Ten years have passed since Graham Gibbs (2013) wrote his seminal piece in this journal describing the changing nature of academic development. In his article, he described the activities in which we engage as academic developers (ADs) to develop teaching and learning within universities, as well as visible trends of change. When reading the contributions in this issue, it is evident that they collectively reflect the movement described by Gibbs. None of the papers focus on activities Gibbs suggested we are engaging in less, such as individual teacher development, change of classroom practice, small scale tactics, and quality assurance. Instead, today’s academic development practice, as represented in the contributions to this issue, focuses on creating environments for learning, building communities of practice, developing change strategies to ensure quality enhancement, and understanding educational leaders. However, we see a new evolvement of academic development: academic development as distributed cognition and practice. The idea of learning as an individual’s acquisition of a set of theories or tools has been questioned and discussed by many researchers. One of the most frequently referenced researchers on this topic is Anna Sfard and her article ‘On two metaphors for learning and the danger of choosing just one’ (Sfard, 1998). In this article she presents two metaphors for learning as guiding principles for learners, teachers, and researchers: the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor. By scrutinizing the theoretical underpinnings as well as the consequences of giving up one metaphor for the other, she argues for the existence of and need for both perspectives. Returning to Gibbs' description of the ways in which academic development had developed since the start of ICED in 1993, we see many similarities with Sfard’s two metaphors. Academic development trends seemed to transition from a metaphor of acquisition to one where participatory practices are favored in collaborations, negotiations, and environments. Heeding Sfard’s advice, however, we need to be mindful not to give up the first metaphor. We might therefore ask the following questions: What is the next step? Do these two metaphors capture all there is to know and do in academic development? After reading the contributions in this issue, we suggest that they do not – there are new trends and evolvements in academic development. The concept of ‘distributed cognition’ as introduced by Hutchins (1991) offers a way to frame what we see in the contributions to this issue specifically, but also in our work as IJAD editors reading a large number of manuscripts. Distributed cognition acknowledges that INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT 2023, VOL. 28, NO. 3, 235–239 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2023.2241221