In this #Take5 blog Steve Briggs considers how conceptualising a teaching and learning career in terms of eras, may benefit a practitioner in terms of personal development planning.
Designing our practice
During the May 2025 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (JLDHE) Reading Club Lee Fallin and Catherine Turton discussed their brilliant article: “The Transformative potential of Design Thinking in Learning Development”. This discussion has since led me to reflect on how teaching and learning practitioners may change pedagogic approach and thinking during distinct periods, or eras, within their career.
What is a career era?
A career musician or artist will typically retain their identity as a musician or an artist throughout their lifetime. However, within their working life they may self-identify distinct times or periods of time as associated with a particular creative style or approach. A western historic example is Pablo Picasso’s blue, rose or cubism periods. A current comparison is Taylor Swift describing her career in terms of ‘eras’. Picasso’s longest period reached close to twenty years whereas Swift’s eras typically last up to two years.
It is my experience that teaching and learning practitioners in higher education often conceptualise career periods differently. Rather than focusing on a particular teaching and learning style – or type of pedagogic creativity – periods are viewed in terms of job role, working at a specific institution, or by focus of research. It may be that such periods coincide with change in pedagogical thinking or approach; however, this will not always be the case. This has led me to consider whether teaching and learning practitioners might benefit from conceptualising their pedagogic thinking, approaches and development in terms of eras.
Pedagogic eras
I suggest a pedagogic era is different from a practitioner’s teaching philosophy. A philosophy is the sum of progressive learning and experience (across all pedagogic eras) and is therefore distinct from individual time-bound pedagogic eras that can each act as a frame in its own right. Eras could be broad or very specific in focus. Using assessment as an example, a broad era could be around exploring assessment per se, whereas a very specific era might focus on a particular element of assessment such as compassion, decolonisation or co-creation.
Potentially pedagogic era changes could be pre-planned whereby an individual seeks to challenge a conventional way of working and try something new, perhaps for a time-bound period. Such an intentional change could create time for safe pedagogical experimentation and playful thinking, analogous to a musician experimenting with a new genre. Similarly, I believe that this could be beneficial to a teaching and learning practitioners’ professional development.
Catalysts for change
A catalyst may result in an unplanned era change. Such events could be universal (impacting all), institutional (impacting those working within an institution) or personal (specific to an individual). An era change might be caused by a single incident or multiple factors combining.
In no specific order of significance, examples of external catalysts for pedagogic era change could include:
- Global event: A recent example being how universally all teaching and learning practitioners fundamentally changed approaches to teaching, learning and working in response to the pandemic.
- Institutional strategy: The development of a new university strategy will usually include new institutional priorities including approaches to teaching and learning. This will often include a renewed institutional focus on specific areas (such as employability) which in turn shapes how a teaching and learning practitioner will work.
- Sector regulation and government policy: New regulation or policy change can have seismic impacts on how higher education institutes operate and what is prioritised. Regulatory examples include the Office for Students B3 conditions, Teaching Excellence Framework and Access and Participation Plans. How institutions respond to such developments has significant potential to change the work of teaching and learning practitioners.
- Marketisation: There has been an increase in private providers who offer teaching and learning services (for example, in terms of providing formative writing feedback to students). A teaching and learning practitioner may find that the introduction of such provision at their institution challenges, and potentially changes, conventional ways of working.
- Financial challenge: Periods of higher education institution financial challenge will often require teaching and learning practitioners to explore ways of working to increase efficiency.
- Technology advancement: The emergence of the internet and more recently generative AI have had universal impact. Specific to higher education, the introduction of new software (such as virtual learning environments, originality checkers, online classrooms or e-portfolios) have created opportunities for teaching and learning practitioners to rethink and develop new approaches.
- Professional networking: Meeting with other teaching and learning practitioners provides a metaphorical sandbox for teaching and learning innovation and creativity. This could include networking with individuals working both within and beyond a practitioner’s own fields.
- Feedback: Receiving feedback from peers, students or reviewers has the potential to have a transformational impact on how teaching and learning is conceptualised and approached. Feedback may be through a formal channel such as a peer review process or student survey. Equally, feedback could be informal, sought from friends or when team teaching.
- Research and scholarship: Undertaking research could serve to fundamentally shift teaching and learning thinking and approach. Potentially research could be primary or secondary. Equally, reading others’ research and scholarship outputs could be transformational.
Putting into practice: Making your personal development review work for you
As I now reflect on almost 20 years of working as a teaching and learning practitioner, I have moved through several pedagogic eras which I can attribute to forementioned catalysts. However, until now I have not consciously reflected on the nature of changes to my pedagogic thinking in terms of periods (or eras) beyond changes to job roles/titles, departmental moves or foci for scholarship. Looking ahead, I plan to reframe my personal development planning, particularly in terms of purposeful pedagogic eras.
So how would this work? Considering that changes in pedagogic thinking are often embryonic and emergent I do not see pre-planned eras working in the same way as a five year research plan. Rather, on an annual basis I would see a practitioner revisiting three reflective questions:
As we approach the summer many will be embarking on their annual personal development review and this provides an ideal recurrent opportunity for reflecting on pedagogic era status. Before your review, use the prompt questions to critically reflect on your current pedagogic era and where you want to go next. Then use this insight to empower you to inform the co-creation of new personal development objectives that are aligned to a planned and purposeful pedagogic era journey.
Beyond the individual
As a final thought, reflecting further on the discussions at the JLDHE Reading Club, the concepts of eras transcend individual practitioners and can also apply to fields of practice. In terms of technology, a parallel would be made in relation to identifiable stages of internet evolution – Web1.0 – Web2.0 – etc. Whilst, unless working in the tech industry, these developments might be beyond our control, there are emergent fields of teaching and learning (including Learning Development) that may benefit from being conceptualised in this manner. This is an area that I plan to explore further in a future article.
Author profile: Dr Steve Briggs
As former Co-Chair of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education Steve led national work related to professional recognition and networking events including the introduction of the CEP and CELP scheme. Steve is a Chartered Psychologist, National Teaching Fellow (2020) and PFHEA.