Roberto Di Napoli

Becoming and being an academic: the perspectives of Chinese staff in two research‐intensive UK universities

This article reports on an interview study investigating the experiences of academic acculturation (a process of mutual influence and enrichment with regard to academic practice) of a group of Chinese academic staff in two research‐intensive UK universities. Following a systematic content‐based analysis, three major themes emerged as salient, namely: (1) different perceptions of academic practice in the UK and China, (2) the importance of disciplinary identity, and (3) the role of English and original cultural affiliations in the process of academic acculturation. The study shows that, while these academic staff took active initiatives to orient themselves towards UK academic culture, they did not perceive that culture to have changed much through their acculturation. The study also reveals that the cultural affiliation of the academic staff, perceived norms in the new academic culture, and relative proficiency in English language all have an impact on the process of academic acculturation.

Value gaming and political ontology: between resistance and compliance in academic development

This introductory article aims to problematize notions of agency, compliance, and resistance in academic development, and brings into the arena the concept of ‘political ontology.’ This term refers here to the sets of values academic developers import into their work and how these values may or may not be enacted in their own institutional space. The article opens with an overview of the complex positioning of academic developers in current higher education systems, proceeds to examine notions of agency, value gaming, and political ontology in academic development, and concludes with an affirmation of the importance of political ontology for academic development.This introductory article aims to problematize notions of agency, compliance, and resistance in academic development, and brings into the arena the concept of ‘political ontology.’ This term refers here to the sets of values academic developers import into their work and how these values may or may not be enacted in their own institutional space. The article opens with an overview of the complex positioning of academic developers in current higher education systems, proceeds to examine notions of agency, value gaming, and political ontology in academic development, and concludes with an affirmation of the importance of political ontology for academic development.

The agency game in academic development: compliance and resistance

The seminal idea underlying this IJAD special issue came into being at the Amsterdam EARLI conference in 2009, when one of the co-editors presented on the idea of compliance and resistance in academic development. Some of the colleagues who were present at the session showed much enthusiasm for the concepts highlighted. They felt these were central to the work and identity of academic developers, as we try to interface our value systems and beliefs about (higher) education with institutional, national, and international imperatives in complex power dynamics. Some of these colleagues subsequently made contact to ensure that a follow-up to the conference presentation would take place. Eventually, a number of us, as a team, further presented on the same topic at the Barcelona ICED conference in 2010. At that event, during a very festive lunch break, plans for this special issue were firmed up. At that stage, the project took a life of its own and this issue is the result of all the thinking, reflections, and scholarly endeavours that have derived from the ongoing dialogue among several of us. Without repeating what is clearly stated in the introductory article by Roberto Di Napoli, this special issue is concerned with the mediating strategies that academic developers use in current higher education systems, where discourses about efficiency and effectiveness in higher education, as created in and by contexts imbued with marketability and accountability, mingle and struggle with those about the ‘goodness’ of education, as driven by principles of collegiality, empowerment, inclusivity, complexity, and larger time frames for dialogue about reform and innovation. We wish to clarify at this early stage that the conceptual lever for this issue is not inspired by antagonism between the two sets of discourses highlighted above. We have tried to avoid reification, as higher education realities are much too fuzzy and complex these days to allow for this. Discourses mingle, overlap, and impact on each other in ways that may be virtuous at certain times and pernicious on other occasions. The intention was to promote a healthy and helpful debate about the ethical standing of academic developers in current higher education systems. We wanted to look at emerging and evolving contextual forms of synthesis between compliance and resistance towards productive forms of collaboration between managers, academics, and academic developers; we wanted to focus on, in the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s own words, ‘the stability of dynamic development’ (Žižek in Young-june Park, p. 8) in our professional field. This unstable stability, so to speak, is investigated and reflected upon throughout the three sections of this special issue. The first section presents a number of international case studies that range from Scandinavia to Belgium to Poland. While these are to be considered illustrative of academic development in a particular time and specific contexts, they contribute, in

Conceptualizing Impact in Academic Development: Finding a Way Through.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the notion of impact in the context of academic development programs and considers how it can be described and understood. We argue that impact has a range of meanings and academic development programs such as graduate certificates have a broad group of stakeholders and hence the impact is different for each group depending on how the program aims and objectives are defined and understood. In finding a way through the difficulties of evaluating impact in academic development we point to the importance of clearly conceptualizing the notion of impact, a careful identification of the assumptions underpinning any program and an understanding of who academic development will benefit and how. We suggest that impact in academic development cannot be understood without taking account of the range of possible impacts and the difficulty of attributing simple cause and effect to a complex environment.