Career paths of directors of academic staff development units in Australian universities: The emergence of a species?

Abstract

There is a rich diversity in backgrounds and career paths of directors of academic staff development units in Australia. Twenty‐five years ago there were very few such positions; now almost all universities in the country have a director, head, chair, co‐ordinator of some sort of unit providing developmental opportunities for academic staff. How well attuned is this group to meet the challenges facing academic staff development in the twenty‐first century? It is possible to identify approximately thirty individuals in Australian universities who currently have a responsibility for leading an academic development unit. But from where did these people come? What are their demographic characteristics? Are they ‘career academic developers’ or ‘itinerants’ who move in and out of the staff development endeavour? Is there a physical science, social science or humanities predominance in their backgrounds? To what extent has a formal pedagogical education played a part in their career development? Are there any patterns that emerge that would allow us to characterize the incumbents of these positions? This paper reports on research conducted in 1996 in which all heads of units were asked to provide details of their career paths to date. The findings have been derived from analysis of text‐based data, primarily extracts from the individuals’ CVs. Through inspection of the data, a demographic profile of this ‘occupational group’ has been developed, common characteristics explored, and the diversity of career paths elaborated. The research has been exploratory. Its findings are descriptive but they provide the first collective image of heads of academic development units in Australia. The paper concludes in speculative vein, reflecting briefly on the characteristics of, and the challenges facing, the directors of tomorrow.