Abstract:
Contemporary academic workplaces are characterised by change, complexity and
diversity. With the ‘enterprise’ university presenting new and varied demands on
university teachers, conceptions of teaching expertise and teacher identity as stable
and enduring are no longer sustainable. In this paper we argue for a contextualised
view of teaching expertise that acknowledges both the dynamic and relational nature
of expertise and the social and cultural positioning of university teachers.
Selected findings are presented from a narrative study conducted with award winning
university teachers. Using identity as a framework for analysis, attention is given to
the shaping and reshaping of teacher identities in a changing higher education
environment. Discussion of teachers and teaching practices moves beyond adapting
and responding to ‘situations’ to a more complex view that focuses on how teachers
handle the multiple frames of understanding, action and identity that Barnett (2000)
argues are increasingly a feature of professional life. Mastery of subject knowledge,
while still an important foundation of teaching expertise, must be supplemented by a
teacher’s capacity to be reflexive and to manage both the self and the social
encounters in which teaching and learning take place. Viewing teaching expertise in
this way parallels a more general trend in assessing educational outcomes.
Increasingly the focus on outcomes is as much on the characteristics, subjectivity and
orientations of students as on skills and knowledge (Chappell, Rhodes, Solomon,
Tennant and Yates 2003).
This view of teaching expertise throws up a range of challenges to existing
professional development programs for university teachers. To conclude, we
speculate on how professional development for academics can be reconceptualised to
address the complexity and diversity of the contemporary university workplace.
