Are We Asking the Right Questions?: A Conceptual Review of the Educational Development Literature in Higher Education

Source: Review of Educational Research, 82(1), March 2012, p. 90-126.

This is a conceptual review of the literature variously referred to as faculty development, educational development, instructional development, and academic development in higher education.
The authors used different questions that queried the nature of educational development practice and the thinking underlying practice.

Their conceptual review yielded a framework with six foci of practice (skill, method, reflection, disciplinary, institutional, and action research or inquiry).
This framework was drawn from an analysis of the design elements of the educational development practices in the research they reviewed and from an analysis of the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical literature cited by those articles.
This six-cluster framework provides a new way of thinking about the design of practice and a more meaningful basis for investigating the effectiveness of educational development practice.