Thank you John for your article.
It picked up on something that I feel is quite important to us as
practitioners, the notion of building a community of practice. I've been
wondering though whether we might not be thinking of ourselves as a
community of practice which spans the boundaries of several
communities of practice. This is something that's been identified in the
work of learning technologists - there's an interesting article on
http://www.ascilite.org.uk/conferences/auckland02/proceedings/pap
ers/121.pdf which raises the idea. My experience is that we have to
be chameleons that move from student adviser to academic to staff
developer by way of disability support and learning technology to
pick up on just a few hats in no particular order.
Another train of thought that I've been following is that of the
learning adviser/developer as the reflective practitioner and have
been rather taken with a model from an education college in the US
of the professional educator. Reflection is underpinned by an
understanding of assessment, diverse needs and the use of
technology, which in turn are underpinned by liberal education,
pedagogy and academic discipline. I feel that this is quite
descriptive of our professionality. There's a diagram available on
http://www.fhsu.edu/coe/edlogo/
What do people think?
Have a good holiday John.
All the best,
Ann
*******************************************************************************************
Ann Barlow,
Assistant Director,
Centre for Continuing Education,
The University of Manchester,
Oxford Road,
Manchester
M13 9PL
0161 275 3274
[log in to unmask]
*************************************************************************************************
|