Shows
The Learning Development ProjectCarina Buckley and Alicja Syska: writing as anchorWe’ve been thinking about the connections between professional identity and writing in the context of third space for a few years now, and it seems ever more pertinent in these times of uncertainty, transition and change. We see colleagues change roles or leave academia, not always of their own volition, and we experience it ourselves. With change inevitably comes loss, but some of the things we have been thinking and writing about might be of use in this turbulent context. Writing for publication acts as an anchor for identity, a trail of breadcrumbs of our thoughts and of wh...2025-07-281h 01The Learning Development ProjectSandra Abegglen: collaboration for social justiceSandra's secrets of collaboration:Openness to the experience and what it bringsRecognition of our human nature and the need for being with otherWe can - and must? - make time and space for each other. Hold onto the in-between spaces where we can come together; create meetings without agendas, where things can emerge.Collaboration is more than simply working with others. It’s more, even, than working successfully with others. It is, rather, a direct pathway towards social justice through its absolute commitment to equality. Universities therefore have a so...2025-06-1954 minThe Learning Development ProjectKaren Gravett: the value of careWhat matters to us and what do we value? These are two key questions posed by Karen Gravett as she explores ideas around relational pedagogies and mattering and how they can contribute to creating a more caring university. In a neoliberal HE context laden with metrics-driven performativity, the call to care can feel like another layer of emotional labour, one disproportionately carried by women. Indeed, when the notion of care generally is seen as ‘women’s work’, how can it become part of a system that is overwhelmingly structured and gendered in ways that make it seem impossible? The first...2025-05-2253 minThe Learning Development ProjectRebecca Lindner and Martin Compton: liberating learningWhat does it mean to liberate learning? Who is doing the liberating, and what do we think someone being liberated from? For Becky Lindner and Martin Compton, the answer to the first question is essentially to find, nurture, and celebrate the inherent joy of learning and teaching. For fifty years (at least), as they point out, we have been having these conversations about rekindling joy and love of learning, which, if nothing else, signals that we have been uncomfortable with some of the absurdities, constraints, and expectations of contemporary higher education for a long time. Yet that sense of...2025-04-241h 15The Learning Development ProjectJennie Blake: making space for belongingAs an American transplanted as a young adult to the UK, Jennie Blake knows a lot about what it means to belong somewhere. For her, belonging is an action: it is about having the agency to make choices, and for that to be realised, belonging cannot be something that we do for students; it must be enabled in all of our systems, structures and processes, so that we can recognise it by its presence and not just – as is all too often the case – its absence. And belonging, true ‘belongingness’, is unconditional. We must be prepared to embrace our own vuln...2025-03-2056 minThe Learning Development ProjectLucy Gill-Simmen: thoughtful learning design with AILucy’s interests in pedagogy have expanded over the last couple of years to draw AI into her work on learning design. Using AI in the classroom, in an ethical and responsible way, with learners with diverse needs and backgrounds, can level the playing field and support learners in doing things and thinking in ways that might not otherwise be available to them. For learning design to be thoughtful and effective, digital technologies - including AI - must serve a purpose and earn its pedagogic place in the classroom. We need to know what students will get from it, an...2025-02-2051 minThe Learning Development ProjectMaha Bali: troubling generative AIAt the moment, there is no evidence that generative AI is a transformative tool for higher education. Making something more efficient is not the same as being better for learners or learning, and efficiency is not transformation. If we come from a critical perspective, focused on social justice and care, rather than a neoliberal one, then AI currently has little to offer. But it is also important to say no to resistance. We need to resist the harmful uses of AI and drop the assumption that it should be incorporated into teaching; we should not allow students to use...2025-01-2353 minThe Learning Development ProjectSteve White: the trouble with academic literacies
Academic Literacies (AL) is an approach to teaching and supporting learning that seems to be integral to Learning Development - but should it be? Apart from the focus of its purported transformational value on seeing and being but not doing, leaving it thin on practical pedagogical value, it bundles up tensions and contradictions that are difficult – some might say impossible – to reconcile. Rather than privileging these ideas of voice and power and rejecting the central role of knowledge in education, Steve suggests that a more useful way forward is to strive for nuance, without condemning anything that isn’t AL as...2024-12-121h 01The Learning Development ProjectTom Lowe: the complexities of student engagementStudent engagement is complex and multifaceted. Ten years ago it meant engaging the student voice. Since then it’s become much more about attendance, attention, motivation, presence on campus, belonging, engagement with the curriculum, and more; ‘student engagement’ covers all of these, so it’s important for us to be clear what we mean when we talk about student engagement. What’s already clear is that the more pressured a higher education system is – such as that of the UK – the more focus there is on student engagement. That pressure can come from a policy angle, a financial angle, or both. The o...2024-11-2158 minThe Learning Development ProjectJane McKay: tackling the destruction of perfectionism‘I’m a perfectionist’ is often a glib response given in job interviews when we’re asked to identify a weakness. We offer it up modestly, sure that it will be received as intended: a desirable trait, one showing dedication, commitment, and high quality. Yet what if that were not true? What if, in fact, perfectionism was rigid, unattainable, and damaging? Jane explains that the internal critical dialogue can be extremely destructive in its relentless messaging of not being good enough and, worryingly, her study reports that it is on the rise in students. The connection of self worth to acade...2024-10-241h 03The Learning Development ProjectEmily Danvers: critical thinking as a social actCritical thinking is one of those concepts that we teach and use with students, but Emily Danvers makes clear that it is actually much more complex, contextual and contingent than it might first appear. It’s a practice of asking deliberate questions about knowledge and claims to truth, and it can very much depend on who you are, what you’re thinking about, and why. It also involves a type of confidence - do you have the right to ask these questions? Do you feel you’ll be listened to? And this is where the moves to decolonise higher educat...2024-09-191h 00The Learning Development ProjectGordon Asher: in, against and beyond the neoliberal universityThe intensifying neoliberalisation of HE over the past few decades is all part of a long trend of universities producing who and what the dominant powers in society wish, according to Chomsky. However, the university has always been a contested space with emancipatory possibilities existing alongside domination and oppression. LD, as part of higher education, is also part of that contested space, and the notion of Critical Academic Literacies (CAL) is Gordon’s attempt to reinvigorate and strengthen the critical, explicitly political roots of LD that is focussed on equity, participatory democracy, and social justice.
The criticality of...2024-08-221h 09The Learning Development ProjectJulie Hall: taking third space centre stage
Third space, while rightly celebrated as a vital engine for collaboration in higher education, brings with it also the risk of becoming no space at all. Although working in the margins and between the cracks can bolster change and act as a point of resistance, there is also a danger of retreat, defence, and invisibility. Julie contends that it is our role as third space professionals to push into the centre - to exercise agency, to take or seek out opportunities, to be visible. It’s not always easy, but to have an impact on decision-making, we ha...2024-07-1854 minThe Learning Development ProjectRyan Arthur - race consciousness in LDRace is missing from Learning Development, but it is inescapably present in our lives and in the lives of our students. Why, then, this disconnect? Ryan’s proposal for a pedagogy of race consciousness (PRC) is a way for us to wake up to the realities of racial difference, to allow students the opportunity to not just bring their lived experiences into the classroom, but to value them. PRC, with its three-step process of intrigue, connection, and tangibility, takes an asset-based approach to learning, as opposed to a deficit approach, looking for and celebrating the differences that make each st...2024-06-131h 11The Learning Development ProjectNatalia Veles: third space in actionThird space. It’s a concept most of us will have heard of before, and many of us will identify with it. But what does it actually mean in practice? For Natalia Veles, third space is a space for collaboration and the building of collaborative capital. When the focus of a project is on the learning and the people involved, rather than outputs alone, everybody wins. It involves having a global mindset and the ability to make connections across boundaries and disciplines, drawing colleagues from other disciplines in and being curious about their positioning, and above all learning, and cr...2024-05-231h 12The Learning Development ProjectEd Powell and Georgia Koromila: decolonising LDShow notes
Decolonising the curriculum is more than diversifying the authors on a reading list. It’s about the nature of knowledge, and questioning where that knowledge comes from and why, so that we can better understand the history of the paradigms within which we work and live. As such, responsibility for it lies beyond the subject, extending into third space and Learning Development. But it needn’t be daunting. We can all reflexively consider our positioning and praxis, question our assumptions (without necessarily disagreeing with them - criticality can be positive as well as negative!), innovate, and...2024-04-181h 09The Learning Development ProjectEmily McIntosh and Diane Nutt: integrated and integrating practitionersShow notes
The term ‘third space’ is, these days, readily familiar and recognisable, the concept well rehearsed since Celia Whitchurch first applied it to those boundary-crossing ‘blended professionals’ in higher education, in 2008. However, its definition remains somewhat elusive, its apparent capaciousness also risking a loss of meaning through being too broad. Third space can therefore be discomfiting for some, the transformative and emancipatory possibilities it offers at odds with the threat it can pose to building an established, recognisable identity. These feelings were a source of tension for Emily and Diane, who explored alternative perspectives and critique in the creation...2024-03-211h 15The Learning Development ProjectSonia Hood: building strategic connections
Show notes
A previous career in Marketing has proven useful in helping Sonia advocate for Learning Development in her institution, and in doing so for the students who benefit from it. When we learn to speak the language of strategy, and to align what we do with our colleagues’ institutional priorities, it becomes easier to integrate LD provision by presenting it as a means for achieving goals and solving problems. Similarly, building connections with colleagues and articulating our expertise can boost our confidence by helping us shape the professional identity of LD, a skill that will be in...2024-02-2757 minThe Learning Development ProjectSteve Rooney: finding freedom in constraintsShow notes
In a values-driven profession like Learning Development, pedagogies and praxis must almost by necessity go beyond the activities and practices of the classroom, to embrace the socio-political structures in which those pedagogies are situated. By discussing agency (of students, but also of Learning Developers) in relation to structure – whether institutional, ideological, or both – Steve Rooney is able to explore the interplay between the two: how one is informed, constrained, and even liberated by the other, in an educational ecosystem conceptually much bigger than any classroom. Temporally, too, when we think about our own praxis, ‘the past lingers in the...2024-01-251h 02The Learning Development ProjectAlicja Syska and Carina Buckley: friendship through writingShow notes
Writing is magical. It can take your thoughts and ideas and spread them further than you could reach alone. It can unite a group of colleagues in pursuit of a common goal to build a field. And it can mediate and strengthen a creative and rewarding friendship. Alicja and Carina share their experiences of writing together and collaborating on the production of their book, How to be a Learning Developer in Higher Education - where the idea for the book first came from (a Greek beach), what their experience of editing a book was like...2023-12-141h 07The Learning Development ProjectTrevor Day: writing in the bonesShow notes
After a career as a marine biologist, Trevor washed up in London to discover a love of teaching and an aptitude for writing, which became something of a compulsion. Just as writing has become a fundamental part of his own identity, so he is also committed to helping students develop that writerly part of their own identities too, to think holistically about what they are writing and who they are writing it for. This kind of deep thinking about purpose is what he terms ‘writing in the bones’ - a part of who you are and...2023-11-231h 20The Learning Development ProjectVirna Rossi: designing for inclusive learningShow notes
As someone who has been passionately engaged in the craft of teaching for over 20 years - and who has practised at every level from primary to higher education in that time - Virna was keen to explore how to engage an increasingly diverse student body in interesting and relevant teaching. Her journey in producing this fantastic book was triggered by the pandemic, which suddenly made inequalities in access all the more pronounced. Her roots to shoots model, and the metaphor of the tree, emerged from the values that together summarised her understanding of ‘inclusive’ - at w...2023-10-231h 14The Learning Development ProjectHelen Beetham: designing for a hopeful futureShow notes
We might see predominantly our own little slice of the higher education sector but something we all have in common is a concern with the knowledge ecology and how we think with students about their learning. For this, writing matters. Writing is a way of thinking and being; it is a form of dialogue, and conversation matters too - with each other, and with our students. By writing long-form essays on her Substack, Helen has found a lightening of voice and a closer connection to an audience. For her, writing is a commitment to writing...2023-09-261h 04The Learning Development ProjectJulian Edwards: writing as a frame for insightAfter an eclectic career that has involved extended stays in vastly different countries, Julian Edwards is familiar with the need to find a way to integrate his experiences into his sense of who he is. He is also familiar with how easy it is for students to feel bamboozled or at the mercy of something they don’t understand, and the detrimental impact that can have on the curiosity so vital for truly widening – and deepening – participation. Julian’s goal, in what he calls this ‘kitchen sink’ book, was to help students get through a complex and complicated assignment by helping t...2023-08-2457 minThe Learning Development ProjectLee Fallin: technology and its humans
Show notes
Lee would be the first to admit he’s a tech nerd (in fact he does at least twice, in this conversation!) and has been since building his first website as a child. However, he never loses sight of the person in front of the screen, and he has never forgotten what it was like to be the only one of his school friends not to have access to a computer. That sense of inclusion has driven him ever since, culminating (to date, anyway) in the Designing for Diverse Learners poster now in the National Te...2023-07-201h 10The Learning Development ProjectCelia Whitchurch: locating LD in third space
Show notes
The concept of third space is one that most Learning Developers have probably encountered at some point, whether in their reading, their writing, or how they understand their role. Celia Whitchurch has a long relationship with LD, first invited into the fold by Janette Myers in 2015. She outlines for us how the idea of third space has developed, from attempting to define what someone is not, to positively recognising and legitimising a new way of working in the university. Third space professionals are adept at networking and negotiating, crossing boundaries and creating new pathways, and...2023-06-221h 04The Learning Development ProjectDave Middlebrook: Unrolling the textTexts encountered on screen, printed off, or bound in books can only ever be confronted one or two pages at a time, a situation which Dave Middlebrook contends is detrimental to a complete understanding of the whole text. His solution is to take the pages of the text apart and bring them together into a single continuous scroll, allowing its entirety to be comprehended in a single look. However, a single look is by no means the extent of this action, but only the beginning. The text can be mapped, dissected, demarcated and understood, by an individual or by...2023-05-2551 minThe Learning Development ProjectUrsula Wingate: Bringing genre pedagogies into academic literaciesAlthough the concept of academic literacies introduced by Lea and Street in 1998 has been transformative in helping us understand the sociostructural context of student writing, it has never put forward a pedagogy. This is where the concept of genre, the signature pedagogy of EAP, can step in, marrying a concrete teaching practice to the theoretical stance of academic literacies. There is a tension between the two approaches yet both aim to be transformative - in the mindsets of those working with students, and in the learning experiences of those students. Yet arguably this transformation has not gone far enough...2023-04-2851 minThe Learning Development ProjectThe Collaborative Writing Group: creating a writing communityWriting a doctorate can be a lonely experience, but when compounded by a global pandemic, the desire for connection and community became almost overwhelming for one group of people. Their solution lay in writing together. Despite never having met before, the 10 authors of this paper decided to join forces and create something together that was far richer as a result than anything they could have produced on their own. This act of writing worked to shape their identity as a group, by providing a point of contact, allowing individual voices to be heard, and building a trusted space for...2023-03-231h 08The Learning Development ProjectHelen Bowstead: the joy of writingThere is joy in writing - real joy! - in its immanence and its ‘nowness’ and its ability to collect and articulate thought. We often see writing as the means to an end, a way of conveying a message, but for Helen, writing has its own identity and its own reason for existing. As Foucault argues, what we do is who we are. We may even write a friendship into existence. Through writing, Helen encourages us to blast the academic discourse open so we can fully work with ideas and respond to the world in which we find ourselves.
2023-02-231h 09The Learning Development ProjectAmanda French: Writing in the rhizomeAfter a long and varied career teaching in a range of educational contexts with a diverse student population, Dr Amanda French is troubled by our relationship with writing. It’s a task often approached as a neutral operation but trying to teach it in this technical, mechanistic way - with all that potential for seeing it as a skill in deficit - is closing off for students that sense of writing as a social act. It’s a part of who we are and how we think; it allows us to be part of and develop the discourse and to c...2023-01-261h 10The Learning Development ProjectAlison James: fellow explorer and companionProfessor Alison James, free range educator, coach and play enthusiast, describes herself as a fellow explorer and a companion to those wishing to explore play and creativity in higher education. Academic identity can often resist play because of traditional conceptions of what academia is or should be, and it can take real bravery and courage to try something new and playful. People find their way to play through various routes: encountering it in a training session, through curiosity, by trying and failing with traditional methods, and that visceral feeling that comes from experiencing something themselves and wanting to do...2022-12-141h 19The Learning Development ProjectSunny Dhillon: pedagogies of discomfort and the neoliberal universityIn this podcast, Sunny Dhillon takes us on a long journey, through philosophy, pedagogy and personal training, in a testament to the power of metaphor. Although wellbeing sounds like an innocuous, even desirable goal for students and for higher education to pursue, Sunny’s thesis is that it is ill-advised to be well adapted to a society that is so sick. In our individualised, neoliberalised form of responsibility, it can be difficult to see that ‘wellbeing’ might in fact mean deliberately discomfiting ourselves and embracing the ambiguity of true inquiry. This pedagogy of discomfort is all about having difficult conver...2022-11-2458 minThe Learning Development ProjectDebbie Holley: equity and belonging in Learning DevelopmentThroughout a chequered career, Professor Debbie Holley has striven to make a difference for students, with a strong thread of belonging and wellbeing running throughout all her roles. Her overriding interest in technology has led her to challenge and investigate the inequalities of the digital divide, particularly since nothing seems to have changed much in the last ten years. Disadvantaged students still struggle with access, not necessarily because of the technology itself but as a result of the structural inequalities that determine who uses what and how, and how confident they feel in doing so.
For us...2022-10-2745 minThe Learning Development ProjectSandra Sinfield & Tom Burns: on the joy of being a learning developerHow do you prepare students for the mysterious world of university? Sandra and Tom used their own experiences and the stories of other students to create strategies that empower learners to have a meaningful learning journey in HE. Learning Development is about demystifying practices so people can navigate them on their own terms. What Sandra and Tom want to add to that is happiness – helping students learn how to enjoy learning and find their voice in a creative, reflective space, because when students write about their learning for themselves in their own voices, they become confident in writing itself, an...2022-09-231h 20The Learning Development ProjectKate Coulson: impact in LD and why it's okay to hate writingHow do you write when you hate writing? The answer might be to support others in writing and hope some of it comes back round to you!
Kate Coulson, Head of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at the University of Northampton, is driven by the desire to show that LD is central, important and has an impact on students - for their sake, and for ours too. Impact is a broad and slippery concept, difficult to define, making it all the more important that we consider it and work towards it. But there’s no point having data an...2022-08-2547 minThe Learning Development ProjectJohn Hilsdon: the origins of LDA group of people working together can create great things.
We are delighted to welcome Dr John Hilsdon, until recently Associate Professor and Head of Learning Support and Wellbeing at the University of Plymouth. John was one of the founders of ALDinHE following a successful symposium at London Metropolitan University in 2002, and in 2005 he was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship for his invaluable contributions to LD.
We talk here about the classic 2011 book, Learning Development in Higher Education, co-edited with Peter Hartley, Christine Keenan, Sandra Sinfield and Michelle Verity.
Collaboration and co-working has been a feature of John’s life as...2022-07-2954 min
The Learning Development ProjectPodcast trailerA brief introduction to the Learning Development Project podcast.2022-06-0901 min