Expanding conceptions about academic development: mediate effects of a researchtraining process with academic developers from a Chilean university

Abstract

This contribution reports part of the results of a qualitative doctoral research, which aimed to analyze the trajectory of change in the conceptions about the academic development that triggers a process of inquiry-training with Educational Developers (ADs). Here we present the results regarding the permanence and transfer of the conceptual change produced by the inquiry-training, one year after the end of this process. The group of participants corresponds to eleven ADs who exercised this role in an Educational Development Unit (EDU) of a Chilean public university. We used the focused interview technique to follow-up on the effects of the implemented process in permanence and transfer of the conceptual change. The results highlight the positive effects of the inquirytraining in strengthening the professional identities of the participating PDEs, as well as in the permanence of global and academic approaches (SoTL), which involve a comprehensive approach to the complex nature of university teaching and educational change in higher education. However, the transfer of conceptual change to the performance contexts of the participants was limited by adverse institutional conditions.