Looking Back, Living Forwards: Academic Developers Responding Positively to Higher Education Changes

Universities are experiencing serious challenges: constant funding problems, staff and student mental health and wellbeing issues, deep inequities, revolutions in technology, and serious questions about the whole meaning and purpose of higher education (HE), to name a few. Universities are not new to challenges, and HE staff have a long record of dealing with change. In reflecting on 40+ years of such changes, this paper builds on a keynote delivered at a SEDA conference, and on the contributions of academic developers who were invited to give their views on the issues raised. From their responses, it is clear that, notwithstanding the very grave problems afflicting the sector today, academic developers can have some hope for the future. Generations of academic development have evolved in parallel with sectoral changes over the decades, and developers have proved that they have the capacities to face with justified confidence the undoubted challenges which are approaching in the next stage of HE development. This paper looks back in order to support the process of living forwards, when academic developers will continue to use those capacities and play key roles in what is to come. This is important for active learning, in which academic developers have long played, and will continue to play, a key role.