“Paradoxically, it seems that although academic development centres to an increasing degree support academics in avoiding burnout, support structures to hinder burnout of academic developers are almost non-existent.” (Bolander Laksov & McGrath, 2020)
In their IJAD editorial on failure as a catalyst for learning, Bolander Laksov & McGrath (2020) write about how “success stories are quickly a thing of the past, and new challenges always lie ahead.” But since we as academic developers don’t typically talk about our failures, we often run the risk of re-inventing the wheel or repeating mistakes. But maybe we could avoid that through “deliberate reflection”, in which we engage in a double-loop of learning, where we not only reflect on our own reasons for acting in certain ways and how we might do things differently next time, but also on the environment we do things in, and how it is influenced by possibly other goals or values. And this is best done in dialogue with others. which implies that it would require not only reflection on the individual (micro) level, but also within the local community (meso) and globally (macro). Sounds great, but getting back to their quote at the beginning of this post, demands on academic developers are constantly increasing as all teachers they are working to serve are near burnout and they try to help support them, and some articles in the issue address this explicitly.
Kolomitro et al. (2020) identify factors that negatively affect educational developers’ well-being: Colleagues (in addition to normal people-problems this is especially when there is professional jealousy involved or people aren’t contributing), manager/director (especially when micro-managing or taking employees for granted, when there is a lack of communication or clarity of expectations), institution/senior administration (when organisational values are not aligned with actions, if there is constant restructuring, not enough resources), and lastly the work-place itself (high workloads, being over-scheduled, too many meetings and too little time for professional development, lack of time to think).
They also identify coping strategies, which include activities like exercising, healthy eating habits, sleeping enough, being creative. Within the workplace, reported coping strategies are for example to conduct research related to the job, read scholarly literature, engage in intrinsically motivating projects, and engage in professional development. How I wish I had time for all of those during my work day rather than on a Friday evening like just now! Other strategies are to focus on social connection within and outside of the workplace, self-care (scheduling vacations after intense periods of work prioritising work tasks, …, taking mental health leaves!) and help-seeking (e.g. with leadership coaches).
1/5 of the respondents report no strategies for support on the employer’s side, and the strategies that the other respondents report are mostly fighting symptoms rather than underlying causes, along the lines of “3 free sessions with a psychologist” or “lunchtime yoga” (fun fact: we currently have a puzzle and some sweets on one of the conference tables in our office). It is interesting, and sad, to see that there is so little support throughout the board.
In a very interesting article, Boman & Yeo (2020) discuss that we are much more likely to read and hear about “best practice” than “what doesn’t work”. They investigate their own experience of failures as academic developers, what they learned from it, what are still open questions to them, and why those experiences are interpreted as failures. They find that they place the highest value on relationships between themselves and the participants, and that the failures they most prominently remember are those during facilitation where relationships seemed to be at risk.
They end with this paragraph that I just love so have to quote directly:
“Finally, having adequate time for processing and reflection is also essential to our work. We have a professional responsibility to set boundaries and preserve space in our schedules so we can debrief, reflect, be creative, and grow. As developers, we often preach the importance of reflective practice to our participants but sometimes fail to prioritize this practice in our own work and development. We have observed that allocating time can feel difficult because it often involves saying ‘no’ in the moment, but that in the long run this time is essential to sustaining our practice and that ultimately it benefits our participants.”
This resonates with me so strongly, but I have no idea how to actually do it.
Bolander Laksov, K. & McGrath, C. (2020) Failure as a catalyst for learning: towards deliberate reflection in academic development work, International Journal for Academic Development, 25(1), 1-4, DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2020.1717783
Boman, J., & Yeo, M. (2020). Exploring and learning from failure in facilitation. International Journal for Academic Development, 25(1), 19-30.
Kolomitro, K., Kenny, N., & Sheffield, S. L. M. (2020). A call to action: Exploring and responding to educational developers’ workplace burnout and well-being in higher education. International Journal for Academic Development, 25(1), 5-18.