In this #Take5 post, members of the Learning Development community share reflections on how articles from the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (JLDHE) have influenced their practice, shaped their professional identities, and broadened their perspectives. This reflective blog post connects to a forthcoming special issue of JLDHE exploring the theme of the reach, value, and impact of Learning Development. We invite you to read on and consider adding your own voice to this conversation. For submission details, please visit the special issue’s webpage.
This blog post was brought to you by the following JLDHE Editorial Board members:
- Chad McDonald, Manchester Metropolitan University
- Steve Briggs, University of Bedfordshire
- Alicja Syska, University of Plymouth
- Katharine Jewitt, The Open University
With contributions from:
- Sandra Abegglen, University of Calgary
- Sandra Sinfield (with Tom Burns), London Metropolitan University
- Lutendo Nendauni, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
- Ralitsa Kantcheva, University of Bedfordshire
- Ursula Canton, Glasgow Caledonian University
- Steve White, University of Southampton
- Ryan Arthur, University of Warwick
The many voices of Learning Development
This multi-authored #Take5 outlines how Learning Development practitioners have used ideas and approaches published in the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (JLDHE). Each contributing author/authorial team provides a reflection on how a specific piece (or two!) from JLDHE has influenced their practice in terms of higher education teaching and/or pedagogic research related to Learning Development.
Collectively, these reflections demonstrate how Learning Development scholarship travels into practice, informing everyday pedagogical decisions, collaborative approaches, and research-informed interventions. The aim of the post isn’t only to evidence the impact of JLDHE on Learning Development practice, but also to support advocacy for Learning Development by making visible its intellectual foundations, professional value, and ongoing contribution to teaching and learning in higher education, including across disciplinary and national boundaries. In doing so, it seeks to inspire readers to recognise Learning Development as a vital, scholarly, and relational field; to draw on its research to inform their practice; and to continue building, sharing, and sustaining Learning Development knowledge within their own contexts and communities—and through publication in JLDHE.
We recognise that Learning Development practitioners will engage with JLDHE articles differently based on their academic background, work experiences, and professional values. Readers may have different perspectives related to the publications that are discussed. If so, please do share your thoughts (respectfully) in the comments.
Sandra Abegglen and Sandra Sinfield, with Tom Burns
Write yourself
Bowstead, H. (2011). Coming to writing. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (3), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.v0i3.128
Gale, K., & Bowstead, H. (2013). Deleuze and collaborative writing as method of inquiry. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (6), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.v0i6.222
For us—Sandra Abegglen, Sandra Sinfield, and Tom Burns—Bowstead’s ‘Coming to Writing’ (2011) and Gale and Bowstead’s work on ‘Collaborative Writing as a Method of Inquiry’ (2013) have been more than influential readings; they’ve been foundational texts that continue to shape how we understand writing, collaboration, and research itself. These works have offered us the language and permission to inhabit writing differently: not as a linear, individualised act of production, but as a relational, iterative, and deeply human practice.
Bowstead’s (2011) ‘Coming to Writing’ resonated strongly with our experiences as writers who arrived at academic writing through complex, non-linear routes. The paper’s emphasis on writing as becoming—rather than mastery—challenges dominant deficit narratives that continue to shape higher education. Instead of positioning writing as a skill to be acquired or corrected, Bowstead foregrounds writing as identity work, bound up with emotion, belonging, and lived experience. This framing has profoundly influenced how we approach writing with students, colleagues, and each other, encouraging us to create spaces where uncertainty, vulnerability, and partial knowledge are not only allowed but valued.
Equally significant has been Gale and Bowstead’s (2013) articulation of collaborative writing as a method of enquiry. Their work disrupts the assumption that writing merely reports on research, instead positioning writing itself as a site where thinking happens, relationships are negotiated, and knowledge is produced. This has legitimised practices we were already gravitating towards: writing together in messy documents, thinking aloud on the page, and responding to each other’s words in ways that blur authorship and destabilise hierarchies. Collaborative writing, in this sense, becomes both method and methodology.
In our work, these ideas have translated into writing practices that prioritise dialogue over polish, process over product, and relational ethics over individual ownership. We’ve found that writing together enables forms of thinking that wouldn’t emerge alone. It surfaces tensions, reveals assumptions, and invites care. Importantly, it also slows us down, forcing us to resist the pressures of productivity that often dominate academic life. Writing becomes a shared enquiry rather than a race toward completion.
These texts have also shaped how we think about research more broadly. By embracing writing as enquiry, we’ve become more attentive to whose voices are heard, how power circulates in collaborative spaces, and what it means to write with rather than about others. This has been particularly important in work that centres Learning Development, where relationality, care, and context are crucial.
Returning to these papers repeatedly over time, we’re struck by their enduring relevance. In an academic landscape increasingly shaped by metrics, automation, and efficiency, Bowstead and Gale together, and Bowstead alone, offer a counter-narrative—one that insists on writing as a deeply social, ethical, and embodied practice. Their work continues to give us conceptual grounding and practical courage: to write slowly, to write together, and to treat writing not as an endpoint, but as a way of coming to know, collaboratively.
Lutendo Nendauni
Learning about, through, and for
Loder, L. (2025). Trauma-informed human rights teaching in higher education. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (36), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi36.1368
I first turned to Louise Loder’s ‘Trauma-informed human rights teaching in higher education’ at a moment of professional unease. As a writing centre practitioner at a university in South Africa, I was increasingly aware that many student writing challenges couldn’t be reduced to skills deficits. In a multilingual, post-apartheid context, academic writing often reactivates deeper histories of linguistic marginalisation, epistemic exclusion, and educational trauma. I needed a framework that could help me respond pedagogically rather than punitively.
Loder’s articulation of trauma-informed pedagogy, grounded in SAMHSA’s six principles and the UN’s ‘learning about, through and for’ human rights framework, offered exactly that. What struck me most was her insistence on values clarification and dialogic learning spaces that reframed teaching as a relational, ethical practice rather than a neutral technical exercise. I adapted these principles deliberately to writing centre work, where trust, safety, and collaboration are central.
In practice, this meant rethinking how consultations were structured. I trained three writing consultants to prioritise rapport-building, recognise students’ linguistic repertoires as resources, co-create consultation agendas, and use reflective debriefs to process moments of vulnerability. The shift was subtle but powerful: consultations became less about ‘fixing’ writing and more about restoring confidence, agency, and voice.
Did it work as expected? Largely, yes, though it also revealed how emotionally demanding this work can be for the consultants themselves. My next step has been to extend trauma-informed thinking to consultant support and research, leading to my own recent study on trauma-informed writing centre practice.
The key learning I’d share is this: Learning Development work is never neutral. Loder’s article reminds us that humane, contextually responsive pedagogy is not an add-on, but a responsibility, and that’s where JLDHE’s impact is most powerfully felt.
Ralitsa Kantcheva
Linking sustainability and Learning Development
Winter, J., Barton, G., Allison, J., & Cotton, D. (2015). Learning Development and Education for Sustainability: What are the links? Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (8), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.v0i8.256
In early 2015, I was struggling to connect with the postgraduate Engineering and Mathematics modules that had been assigned to me. The students found their Learning Development workshops ‘too generic and woolly’ to be worth their time. This is when I came across an article with the unassuming title ‘Learning Development and Education for Sustainability: What are the links?’ by Jennie Winter, Graham Barton, Joseph Allison, and Debby Cotton. As I read the article, I realised how subject‑specific research can be used to teach more generic skills: starting with the specific and then moving to the general, rather than the other way around.
Following this approach, I developed in-class activities based directly on academic publications in respectable Engineering and Mathematics journals. The students preferred these workshops to the ones developed around generic academic literacies. Using a specific example in an area the students were already familiar with helped them to develop their ‘whole systems-based world view’ (Winter et al., 2015, p. 5) and enhance their metacognition.
Ever since that early experience in my practice, I’ve always based learning activities on a subject-related example (e.g., a YouTube video or a media post by a famous person in this field) and then linked it to general academic literacies.
Although reading this article didn’t shape my research, it sparked my interest and regular engagement with Education for Sustainability literature. Having this knowledge resulted not only in numerous successful teaching collaborations, but also in a #Take5 blog post with Ian Johnson about grading systems in higher education. As a consequence, the tangible reach, value, and impact of engaging with this one journal article has been immense over the past decade.
Ursula Canton
What happens when a submarine pilot walks into a bar and meets a geologist?
Denham, J. (2025). Perspectivism: A new theory for Learning Development. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (38), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi38.1661
If you are intrigued and wonder why this question has anything to do with Learning Development, I’d urge you to read Jonathan Denham’s opinion piece in Issue 38. In reading it, you will find the background to the (purposefully) cryptic title above. You will also find one of the potentially most exciting new ideas I’ve seen in the JLDHE over the last few years.
It’s a short read, but one that manages to connect fairly big philosophical questions about ontology and epistemology to our daily work in a way that’s easy to follow (see the analogy with the submarine pilot he borrows from his reading), but also conceptually neat and, most importantly, incredibly relevant. In a field that focuses on ‘learning’, how we conceptualise knowledge has profound implications on our practice. Assuming that such questions are too complex for time-poor Learning Developers is misguided. It’d be like someone in a healthcare profession who never even tries to define what ‘health’ means (and I happen to know that undergraduate curricula force them to contemplate exactly that!).
Denham’s suggestion for a possible answer is so exciting because it synthesises extensive reading from a number of thinkers who had the time to consider such questions in great detail. At the same time it’s very specific in spelling out how their answer applies to one kind of interaction Learning Developers have with students on a daily basis. That’s a really promising start—but as a short opinion piece, it’s inevitable that it raises more questions than it answers. I hope Denham’s work will get many of us to continue the line of thought begun here.
Go on, find out what the submarine pilot and the geologist are all about and, while you’re at it, can you spell out further implications perspectivism can have for Learning Development practice? This could be the beginning of a long and important conversation among Learning Developers. Please chip in!
Steve White
Oh the irony: making the meaning of Academic Literacies discourse a bit more transparent
Wrigglesworth, J. (2019). Pedagogical applications of academic literacies theory: A reflection and case study. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (15), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.v0i15.552
I’ve always found it difficult to get to grips with Academic Literacies theory, even though it’s often seen as core to understanding and practising Learning Development. What do scholars mean by ‘meaning making’ when discussing Academic Literacies? What are we hoping our ‘transformative’ interactions with students will transform them into? And, to paraphrase Sunny Dhillon, do we need to wind our necks in a bit from claims of the ‘emancipatory’ effects of our Learning Development practice?
One JLDHE article that helped me was John Wrigglesworth’s ‘Pedagogical applications of academic literacies theory: A reflection and case study’ (2019). In the article, Wrigglesworth summarises Academic Literacies theory and practice in universities. He reviews relevant publications and outlines his ideas for how Academic Literacies can provide a ‘toolbox’ for Learning Developers, helping us to:
- question notions of student deficit and language standards,
- reveal how language use and meaning aren’t always transparent or uniform, and
- demonstrate how terms like ‘argument’, ‘structure’, or even ‘clear’ can be contested between and even within academic disciplines.
Wrigglesworth outlines how other researchers and teachers have put Academic Literacies into practice, and how he developed a successful ‘Introduction to Academic Language’ module at his institution. He describes both the overall module content and how he’s designed learning activities to meet the module aims, while helping students gain a deeper (some might claim ‘transformational’!) understanding of what lies beneath communication conventions in various contexts.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that such in-depth, practical applications of Academic Literacies theory are often reported in communication-oriented academic subjects. In this case it’s English language/communication studies, but I’ve also seen work in EAP/applied linguistics contexts. These contexts tend towards academic staff and students who possess the skills and motivation to fully engage with these ideas. Nevertheless, I find the article useful in the irony-laden task of making the meaning of Academic Literacies discourse a bit more transparent.
Ryan Arthur
Reclaiming power: White and Webster’s response to the marginalisation of Learning Development
White, S., & Webster, H. (2023). Hey you! They’re calling you Tinkerbell! What are you going to do about it? Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (29), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi29.1120
I once attended a lecture in which Corey Stayton reminded us that while knowledge is powerful: Power is Power. He implored us to recognise that true power has the capacity to restrain, redirect, or distort any gains that knowledge will give us. In a similar way, White and Webster’s article transformed this abstract principle into an immediate professional concern. They implore us to recognise that critiques against Learning Development are more than merely quarrels; these critiques speak to powers that can restrain, redirect, or distort our practice of Learning Development: ‘These criticisms gain traction with senior leadership and academic colleagues, and cannot be ignored, avoided, or dismissed if we’re to promote our ethos (and preserve our jobs)’ (p. 1). This latter point is particularly salient. At the time of writing, the devastating news emerged that my alma mater, where I first entered university as a student and first applied my craft as a Learning Developer, will exercise its institutional power by eliminating its Learning Development provision.
Importantly, White and Webster remind us that we must assist them in their exercise of power by diminishing our own power (p. 5):
How often do we unintentionally allow ourselves to be de-professionalised? How often do we tell students that we are not subject specialists (rather than just not experts in their specific disciplinary content)? How can we reframe our approach, so that we encourage students’ agency without accidentally implying we lack expertise?
Lastly, in demanding a ‘collective response’ (p. 2) and highlighting the discontent within the Learning Development community, White and Webster blurred the line between abstraction and reality. Their article is an urgent call to action that resonates with the lived experiences and vulnerabilities of practitioners confronting institutional precarity.
Not a conclusion – sparking the conversation
Across these reflections, we can see how the research published in JLDHE acts as an active catalyst that sparks new practices, reframes challenges, and nurtures the intellectual and ethical commitments that underpin the work of its readers (both within and beyond the international Learning Development community). Each contributor has demonstrated how JLDHE has shaped their thinking, whether that’s how they understand writing as enquiry, trauma-informed pedagogy, sustainability, epistemology, Academic Literacies, or the very essence of the work we do. Learning Development practice shapes research and, in turn, research shapes practice. As we close, we invite readers to join this ongoing conversation: to read, to experiment, to reflect, and to contribute to the shared endeavour of building and sustaining a vibrant, critical, and compassionate Learning Development community.
Final reminder!
JLDHE is currently inviting proposals for inclusion in an upcoming special issue on the theme of the reach, value, and impact of Learning Development. For more information, please visit our special issue webpage. The closing date for proposals is 31 January 2026. We look forward to publishing the special issue in March 2027.