The complex transition to academic development: an ecological perspective

Abstract

This paper considers the process of professional becoming for an academic developer as a complex transition towards epistemological plurality. This is a necessary step to appreciate and support the lived experiences of teachers across the spectrum of academic disciplines. Viewed through an ecological lens, the complexity of the developmental journey becomes more achievable as it can be broken down into a series of adaptive cycles that move from ‘dependence’ to ‘independence’, and from ‘epistemologically singular’ to ‘epistemologically plural’. We suggest that the descriptive power of the ecological lens may be helpful to academic developers to contextualize their own professional development.