This #Take5 is brought to you by Steve Briggs and Dr Ralitsa Kantcheva from the University of Bedfordshire who undertook an ALDinHE funded international research project between 2024 and 2025 to develop a taxonomy of Academic Language and Learning Development (ALLD) Practitioner roles. Their hope is that their research – and the various publications through which they have disseminated it – will offer Academic Language and Learning Development practitioners – and all discipline staff – a valuable tool to achieve a common understanding of this often misunderstood – or poorly understood – field. This #Take5 provides a bitesize overview of their project and where you can find more information.
About our project
Unlike other professions, including librarians (see CILIP, no date), there has previously been no recognised classification of LD job role types. In practice, this means that LD practitioners with similar job titles can often have quite different roles. This is a fundamental risk to the LD field because it can lead those less familiar with the nuances of LD to make incorrect assumptions or generalisations about the nature of work undertaken and associated specialist skills required. This is further discussed in Briggs (2025).
In summer 2024, we successfully applied to ALDinHE for funding to undertake a research project to support the development of a LD role taxonomy. In November 2024, with support of ICALLD, we administered an online survey to ALLD practitioners from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. This was completed by 92 respondents who provided details of their job roles and areas of specialism. Based on responses during 2025 we iteratively developed a taxonomy of common jobs, roles and areas of specialisms associated with academic language and learning development practitioners.
Sense checking emergent findings
We shared preliminary findings via presentations at the 2025 ICALLD Symposium overtime and ALDinHE Learning Development Conference, and invited verbal feedback from attendees. These inputs are reflected in the final version of the taxonomy. Engaging with the wider LD community in this way allowed us to triangulate that areas identified via the online survey should be included in the final taxonomy. The events also led to the inclusion of a ‘numeracy’ specialism despite this having low reporting amongst our initial sample.
The following are examples of anonymised feedback:
“I relate to the model. I like the idea of having an operational foci, which in my case would be skills teaching, with specialisms, which in my case would include writing and a new area to support students in overcoming psychological barriers to learning (academic confidence, anxiety, procrastination etc.)”
“What the taxonomy does really beautifully is allow us to define ourselves (as individual practitioners as well as collectively) and our practice as distinctive/ relational whilst in context. It will also be hugely useful in helping answer the question ‘what is it that you actually do, again…?”
“Yes, I very much recognise my role in this taxonomy. In our Student Development Team we do most of these things. I came to Learning Development via Research Communication/ Knowledge Exchange role – it was a bit of a sideways move but I brought some skills with me!”
“It not only gives us food for thought regarding our own identity, but it could help others better understand our roles. This is the bigger work I think – getting others outside LD to understand our work”
You can read more about our taxonomy development journey via our previously published article in the 2025 conference proceedings edition in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. We also published a blog related to our ICALLD session.
The final taxonomy
The taxonomy visual was designed with the support of a student designer who was employed using our ALDinHE research funding. This approach was intended to not only ensure that the final taxonomy visuals were of a high standard but also to provide a career development opportunity for a student. In practice, this approach worked really well in practice as reflected in the following is feedback from our student designer:
“As the University of Bedfordshire is all about Career Powered Education, working on this project for Dr Steven Briggs and Dr Ralitsa Kantcheva while being a full-time student made me feel acknowledged and appreciated. I was able to apply my designing skills that I had learnt in lectures only a few months ago to real-life practice and gain new skills during the process of designing the ALDinHE Taxonomy booklet.”
The following image shows the final Academic Language and Learning Development taxonomy.
Check out our new publications
On 11/12/25, we concurrently published a booklet that details the key elements of the taxonomy and provides examples of how the taxonomy can be applied. It is intended that readers will be able to use the booklet to map out their own taxonomy journey and to potentially plan future career steps. We have also published an article in the December 2025 issue of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education which details the research process that was undertaken. We hope that these publications will offer ALLD practitioners a valuable tool to achieve a common understanding of each other’s different job role focus areas.
More to come
Through this project we still have data to share with the LD community. This includes:
- Exploring the difference between respondents actual and preferred job titles.
- What factors were associated with reported opportunities to engage in professional development, professional recognition and access to internal promotion pathways
We hope to share further insights related to these areas with the LD community in 2026.
Looking ahead
We believe that our research is novel and provides a significant step towards a more formal classification of ALLD job roles. Given that finances are increasingly precarious across many parts of the HE sector (including in the UK, Canada and New Zealand) and many institutions are seeking efficiencies, such research is both timely and increasingly necessary in order to demonstrate the different qualities and perspectives offered by ALLD practitioners.
We however recognise that our work to date is based on a relatively small sample and therefore would welcome your feedback on how this applies to your particular context. This will help us to then plan future work to potentially further refine and expand the taxonomy.
Biographies
Steve Briggs is Director of Learning, Teaching and Libraries at the University of Bedfordshire. He was previously co-Chair of the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education where he led national work related to professional recognition including the introduction of the CEP and CELP scheme. Steve is a Chartered Psychologist, National Teaching Fellow (2020) and PFHEA.
Ralitsa Kantcheva is the Senior Learning Development Tutor at the University of Bedfordshire. Ralitsa is a Co-Chair of the ALDinHE Research Community of Practice and an active member of the Peer-mentoring ALDinHE Community of Practice. Ralitsa is a SFHEA and is actively engaged in research in academic literacies.
Hi – this is an interesting and useful model but I wonder how EAP practitioners fit in? At my institution our student-facing learning support team in the Library includes academic support librarians, learning developers (including numeracy and digital skills roles) and English for Academic Purposes practitioners, whose roles cross over with the learning developers ie they are teaching academic skills and literacies, but to a targeted audience of students (ie non native speakers). It would be great to include them in this model.