Promoting lifelong learning: Academic developers and the university as a learning organization

Abstract In the past few years, higher education has undergone dramatic and far‐reaching changes. This has had major implications for all aspects of academic work, and for the role of academic staff. These changes have impacted on staff and educational development, which has moved from being marginal and relatively low profile in many institutions to a more central and influential position. However, much of the increased attention to academic development has been based on an inappropriate industrial model of academic work. This paper argues that higher education institutions can profitably learn from staff development practices adopted in other knowledge‐based organizations. Because of the rapid rate of political, social, economic, educational, legal, epistemological and technological change, it is argued that staff and educational development are ongoing and lifelong processes; and, in particular, that the concept of the self‐renewing or continuously improving learning organization is especially relevant to universities. Within that context, it is suggested that an effective programme of staff development in universities would need to be: comprehensive, anticipatory, research‐based, exemplary, embedded and reflective (the CAREER model). The paper concludes with an acknowledgement of the pivotal role of staff and educational development in institutional change, and above all, with the recognition that, because academic developers must exemplify and embody the values and practices they enjoin in others, theirs is a meta‐professional, rather than a para‐professional, area of practice.