The educational development cake is sliced in wide variety of ways in different contexts, and many of those undertaking educational development would not describe themselves as educational developers (Gibbs, 2013)

Academic development (AD, also named ‘educational development’, ‘faculty development’ or ‘instructional development’, respectively, cf. Gosling, 2009) is an umbrella term to describe actions and activities undertaken at institutions of higher education in order to enhance teaching (cf. for example Amundsen & Wilson, 2012). AD initiatives and programs for a long time were located wherever they were suitable within institutions of higher education. This reflects in both the multiple underlying assumptions about the nature of teaching and learning prevalent in AD as well as in resulting practices of what is considered adequate or helpful in order to facilitate teaching. As a result AD shares a highly fragmented paradigm, which incorporates multiple disciplinary approaches (Shay, 2012).

As for the present, AD is rapidly evolving in universities across Europe, especially in countries where there is not a thick historical tradition, such as Germany, The Netherlands, and Flanders. This certainly can be attributed to new funding and organizational initiatives, which react to the notion that excellent teaching besides research is an important part of a university’s profile to attract further students(Lomas, 2006; D’andrea & Gosling, 2001). In a recent publication  Gibbs (2013) argues for some ‘trends’ of what is changing in AD, which he describes as shifts in focus such as “from the classroom to the learning environment”, “from individual teachers on course teams, departments and leadership of teaching”, “from teaching to learning” or “from quality assurance to quality enhancement”, to name only a few.

But how can these recent developments in AD be brought together and interpreted under a coherent framework?

One possible approach to solve this question is the discussion of current practices and developments in the area of AD under the aspect of professionalization. Is what we are doing in AD bound to professionalize higher education teachers’ teaching? And are we adequately responding to the professional demands of university staff in the way we administer AD courses or programs? What do professional trajectories of university teachers tell us about the way they see themselves as professional teaching staff? And, is there new evidence with respect to the previously disputed question whether AD in itself can be seen as an emergent ‘field’ or ‘profession’ (Macfarlane & Hughes, 2009)?

This symposium aims at gaining new answers to those questions by following three objectives:  First, it aims to show two examples for current practices in AD and discuss how these add to the professionalization of higher education teachers; second, it will reflect these ‘trends’ in the light of research done on the aspect of professionalization in AD, both on the teachers’ side as well as with a perspective on AD as a profession itself. The third objective, on a meta-level, is to infuse research on AD as a topic into EERA/ECER and Network 22 in order to make this dynamically evolving sphere more visible to both educational researchers, and academics in general.