This post was written as an article for ALDinHE’s LoveLD magazine (Issue 3 July 2023), and is reposted here with permission. Go have a look at the magazine- there’s lots more good stuff there! (many thanks to Katherine Jewitt who has done an amazing job of editing and typesetting the article, but I also wanted … Continue reading Embedded or integrated?
Webster, H. (2023). The five Ps of LD: Using formulation in Learning Development work for a student-centred approach to ‘study skills’. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 20 (4). https://doi.org/10.53761/1.20.4.07 Webster. H. (2022). ‘Supporting the development, recognition, and impact of third space professionals’, in McIntosh, E. and Nutt, D. (eds) The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in … Continue reading Publications
Well it’s been Quite A Year, hasn’t it? My last posts here were a year ago, I realise – both a very long year, and also one in which so much has happened that the time has just slipped away. I’ve missed blogging hugely – it’s such a useful way for me to reflect, work … Continue reading The Scholastic Rat is Back!
I’ve written before about emancipatory practice being the core, defining value of Learning Development, and about how this is at the same time a problematic concept, neither students nor learning developers having the power to overturn the cultural norms of academic discourse or disciplinary communities of practice. If, as Academic Literacies theory tells us, students … Continue reading An Emancipatory Approach to LD: Student options and choices
This post follows on from the previous one on Decolonisation and LD… Decolonisation is, to use the current phrase, about ‘doing the work’, and it’s difficult, uncomfortable work which for many of us will feel threatening, as it’s a de-centring of dominant cultural values, discourses and practices, a dismantling of a system created for the … Continue reading Decolonising Learning Development: Doing the Work
Learning Development is in many ways spoken of in the abstract, as a set of values, principles, theoretical approaches to supporting students. One of my abiding interests in this field is about taking those abstractions and working out ways to make them concrete, practicable, doable. This interest extends also to the material realities of Learning … Continue reading A Manifesto for Learning DevelopERs
Back in 2011, the book Learning Development in Higher Education was published. Over five sections and nineteen chapters, it explored various facets of the newly emerging field of Learning Development – what it was, how it was practised, the benefits it could bring. In one of these chapters, Judy Turner made the case for one … Continue reading The Case for One to One – Turner Revisited
Today’s post is more of a messy, confessional, washing-the-dirty-laundry-in-public kind of post, because this is the time of year when we LDers are up to the eyeballs in demand, the start of term is forever ago and it’s too long til Christmas! My old ballroom dance teacher used to say that when you’re practising and … Continue reading Embedded workshops – the good, the bad and the ugly
I posted last time about emancipatory practice, why I feel it’s a core and indeed defining value in Learning Development, and what that might mean in practice. Emancipatory practice arises out of the implications of academic literacies, the main underpinning theoretical basis for Learning Development in the UK. Theory helps me critically examine my practice – … Continue reading Biting the Hand that Employs Us
I was at ALDinHE’s annual conference last week, and have been digesting all the rich, fascinating papers and conversations I encountered- material enough for several blog posts! One session in particular jumped out at me as something I wanted to work through more in a blog post. Rosie MacLachlan, from St George’s, University of London, … Continue reading My Conceptual Model for Learning Development
rattus scholasticus 