This document discusses the limitations of current frameworks for recognizing collaborative work in UK higher education. It notes that while frameworks acknowledge teams, the focus remains on individual achievement and reflection. This fails to recognize increasingly collaborative academic practice. The proposed "collaborative pathway" would allow teams to apply together for recognition based on both individual contributions and team achievements/dissemination. However, the HEA found it difficult to determine how this could meet accreditation criteria based on individual claims. There is a need to make collaborative work newly visible in frameworks and recognize the blend of individual and group contributions to teaching excellence.

1. Can we have us on
here?
Recognising collaborative practice in professional
development frameworks: possibilities and
problems
Dr Ruth Windscheffel
City, University of London
The Open University
Images/text from The First Hippo on the Moon (HarperCollins, 2014) were reproduced under copyright
exception for instruction with an acknowledgment: Illustrations © Tony Ross 2014; Text © David
Walliams 2014. They are not reproduced for this shared copy.

2. Aims and outcomes
How should we develop collaborative pathways to
professional recognition?
• Recognise some of the limitations of current
frameworks for identifying and recognising
collaborative work in UK HE
• Evaluate the rationale for developing accredited
frameworks to recognise the work of teams and
groups
• Explore some of the difficulties of formalising
recognition of group activity from a critical
perspective and from our own experience
• Discuss how theory was applied to practice in a small
case study

3. What’s with the hippo?
[Image not shown for copyright reasons]

4. It’s all about me…
• UK Professional Standards Framework for
Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education (UKPSF)
• HEA and SEDA fellowships
• Institutional recognition schemes and
accredited programmes
• Reflection used as key tool
• The role of teams is recognised (D2: part
of one or more teams; D3-4:
managing/leading teams)
• Reflective practices can operate in
communities of practice (UKPSF D3-D4;
Lave & Wenger 1991 and Wenger &
Snyder 2000)

5. But…what about us?
• The active UKPSF
protagonist is always an
individual
Successful participants are described as: “Individuals”
“able to provide evidence of …” (UKPSF, 2011)
• Teams are ‘done to’ not
‘doing’
They are co-ordinated, supported, supervised,
managed, mentored, promoted, coached and led
• Collaborative teaching is
something associated with
the first category only (D1)
“This teaching and learning role may sometimes be
undertaken with the assistance of more experienced
teachers or mentors.” (UKPSF, 2011, p. 4)
• Academic support staff
explicitly named in D1/D2;
implied only in D3/D4

6. Why is this a problem?
Academic practice in UK is increasingly characterised by
team working and collaborative projects (often strategic,
time-limited and TEF-oriented)
BUT
• Pressure to gain individual recognition high and
increasing
• What time/space is left to develop skills in / reflect on
team-working?
Education development work less about helping
individual academics make sense of their unique teaching
and learning practices via considered reflection
BUT
• Staff development is still largely focused on the
individual
• Where do we find time for both?

7. How is the sector responding?
• The Open University has added an A6 to the areas of
activity:
“Work collaboratively within the distributed OU community to support the
learning of students, our colleagues and ourselves” (Available at
https://applaud.open.ac.uk/the-applaud-principles-and-the-ukpsf
(Accessed 14 Nov 2017))
• SEDA’s values:
“Working with and developing learning communities/ Valuing diversity
and promoting inclusivity / Continually reflecting on practice to develop
ourselves, others and processes.” (Available at
https://www.seda.ac.uk/core-mission-values (Accessed 14 Nov 2017)
• HEA’s CATE (Collaborative Award for Teaching
Excellence) (2016--)
“celebrates collaborative work in teaching and learning and captures the
creative and innovative practice that positively impacts on the student
experience” (Available at
https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/individuals/national-teaching-fellowship-
scheme/CATE (Accessed 14 Nov 2017).

8. University of Essex proposed…
To develop a collaborative pathway to
professional recognition as part of CADENZA
(PDF)
In response to:
• Challenges colleagues faced writing about
team-based experience within applications
for individual-based recognition
• Fewer numbers of applications (esp at D3
and D4 level) from professional services
staff
• The increasing amount of team-based
work supported by Staff/Education
developers

9. Collaborative Model
proposed
• Allow well-established teams of
colleagues to apply together for
recognition
• Reflection on both individual contribution
(individual review) and team
activity/achievement (team case study +
dissemination activity)
• The assessment would include a measure
of peer assessment (of the dissemination
activity and by references)
• Gain individual recognition and an award
for collaboration

10. Outcome
• HEA response
“unable to determine how this
pathway could meet the criteria
for accreditation” because the
four fellowship categories “are
awarded on the basis of an
‘individual claim’ which provides
evidence of personal teaching
and learning practices”.
• The University and HEA
are planning to work
together on a joint project
to explore ways forward

11. Final thoughts…
Opportunities:
• To make
communal/collaborative
endeavour newly visible
• Recognise effectively the blend
of individual and collaborative
activity that contributes to
teaching excellence in UK HE
• Democratise staff engagement
with development and
recognition

12. Challenges:
• No clear and concrete understanding
of how such recognition of
teamwork can be made formally
• OR how it can be related to
individual claims to teaching
excellence
• Is our reliance on individual
introspection i.e. reflection
problematic? (Bradbury et al, 2009)
• Would we, by shifting our focus in
the ways suggested, be undermining
individual autonomy even further in
academia (Olssen and Peters, 2005)?

13. Over to you…
Five-minute FREE WRITE…
In response to EITHER
• …Thinking about your professional
development role, in what ways has your job
changed over the past five years or so? Why
do you think this is?
• …What do you personally find challenging –
or liberating – about working with the UKPSF
(or programmes/frameworks based on
it…and why?

14. Questions for discussion:
• In what ways have your roles as Staff or Education Developers
changed in the past five years and to what have been the
impacts of these changes on your work with
individuals/teams?
• What barriers do you face/have you faced relating your
experience of collaboration/team working to the UKPSF?
• Does any professional recognition framework defined solely
in terms of individual success have sufficient flex to be able to
recognise collaborative activities?
• In assessing the achievements of staff groups and teams,
might we encounter similar issues to those assessing student
group work or are the challenges different?
• How do we engage a wider range of HE staff in professional
development frameworks and recognition schemes?
• How might we respond to the charge that such initiatives
promote an overly narrow, management-led model of
‘communities of practice’ in UK HE?

15. References
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Professional Lifelong Learning. Routledge.
Department for Education and Skills. 2003. The Future of Higher Education. DfES, January.
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experience, practice and change, London, Bloomsbury.
Grummella, B., Devine, D. and Lynch, K. 2009. The care-less manager: gender, care and new
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Higher Education Academy. 2016. Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence. Available online at
https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/individuals/national-teaching-fellowship-scheme/CATE. Accessed July
2017.
Higher Education Academy, et al. 2011. The UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and
supporting learning in higher education. Higher Education Academy, Guild HE and Universities UK.
Lave, J. & Wenger E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Olssen, M. & Peters, M. A. 2005. Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: from the
free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 20, 313-345.
Schön, D.A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: how professionals think in action. New York, Basic Books.
Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. 2000. Communities of practice: the organizational frontier. Harvard Business
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