科研成果详情

Policymakers in most countries have positioned higher educators at the epicenter of delivering quality in education in both content and teaching, identified as essential for achievement of global participation and competitiveness. International education is dominated by discourses of the pre-eminence and prestige of institutions located in the Northern developed nations, and this extends to the value attached by Southern universities to academic staff with study/research credentials linked to such institutions. Implicit in these discourses are linear models of professional learning and development (PLD) that idealize the ‘importation’ of quality teaching practices. With international travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic excluding overseas academic sojourns, we have an opportunity to reorient thinking about development of quality teaching practices and educational research, and to explore ‘home-grown’ alternatives that can deliver not only professional learning and development focused on quality and excellence in teaching, but also productive engagement with the international research community in the field of education. In this paper, we present arguments for embracing local professional learning and development for higher educators based on well-known principles of reflexive practitioner action research (PAR). Not only can it align with current thinking on the nature of effective teacher learning demanded for delivering quality teaching and learning, but it can also overturn linear models of PLD and can build the research skills, profile and output of higher educators, connecting them with their international peers in making needed contributions to teaching and learning scholarship.