Approach: Philosophy.

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." (Robert Louis Stevenson).

The task of the educational developer is not unlike that of the traveller: it is to move, and not to arrive. Besides enjoying panoramic landscapes of institutional cultures and diversity in which learners learn, this traveller is engaged with understanding the minutiae of how such learning takes place. When learning doesn't take place the educational developer is concerned with all those who travel with him, to find out how to change both culture and landscape. This role seeks to widen access to learning through negotiation with and development of, novice and expert, researcher and teacher, academic and administrator.

Besides requiring an exploration of culture and diversity, the task of those in my role is to 'move' learners closer to the disciplines they seek to master and to move academics closer to making explicit the rules and conventions by which such learners will access these disciplines.

To achieve this, I have spent considerable time persuading academics of the value of thinking about teaching from the perspective of the learner, rather than from that of the teacher. This requires that the teacher in higher education has insight into learners themselves, of their unique approaches and problems. Learner context is important too, since learning is systemic, and learners respond to environments.

It seems appropriate to encourage the professionalisation of teaching by development strategies that encourage academics to inquire into the assumptions and traditions embedded within their own teaching styles, and the discipline cultures to which they belong. In practice this means that equipping the university teacher is more than checking competencies of 'how to' but appropriately honours the uniqueness of each learner-teacher interaction, by stimulating critical reflection of practice.

I advocate the use of inquiry research to enhance teaching success, measured by learner improvement. By nature, such research is a collegial exercise, and cannot be done in private, just as teaching is never a private affair. Closing the door of the lecture theatre, does not keep at bay the world the learner brings, nor the impact of cultural mores.

I aim to create learning contexts in which academics can explore together the nature of learning, the influence of culture, the impact of local, national and international political climates and the influence of social change, on both himself, and on his learners. This interaction therefore, between expert learners from diverse academic cultures mirrors the complexity of diversity that academics will find in their own interaction with learners.

My role is to stand between learner and teacher, encouraging teachers to move beyond their gate-keeping role of maintaining 'standards' to providing keys by which novice learners can achieve those standards.

Having worked in contexts of political upheaval and social transformation, I do not hold that teaching is a neutral enterprise, without values. Fundamentally I value the idea of criticality and of engendering critical-beings, certain of their own intrinsic value, autonomous in their search for truths, balanced in their perspectives of themselves and of others and yet interdependent in their efforts to delvelop and achieve. This is travelling for travel's sake, to move and rarely to arrive.