Professionalization of academic developers: Looking through a North American lens

Abstract

North American academic developers continue to grapple with a myriad of concerns about setting standards, credentialing, and/or creating a PhD track for developers in higher education. While we might agree on the need for credibility in our work, status in our institutions sufficient to succeed in our mission to improve teaching and learning, and to advance ourselves in our careers, we do not agree about assuming a role of gatekeeper for the profession. Our reasons go to the heart of some of the fundamental issues in the North American academic enterprise. A subcommittee of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD) has been charged by its board of directors to devise guidelines for academic developers. In this paper, couched against the backdrop of a POD survey of its members, I present the positions expressed by the committee in response to this charge and I highlight the values and cultural characteristics which define the ambivalences towards adopting standards. Finally, I examine the opinions expressed in the discussion with the findings from a pilot questionnaire among POD members on self‐perception and professional growth. I compare the issues preoccupying the committee with the comments made by the participants in the questionnaire in order to determine whether together they can illuminate a direction for POD as it reexamines its role leading into the twenty‐first century.