Tuesday, June 24
12:30pm - 1:30pm EDT
11:30am - 12:30pm CDT
10:30am - 11:30am MDT
9:30am - 10:30am PDT/MST
11:30am - 12:30pm CDT
10:30am - 11:30am MDT
9:30am - 10:30am PDT/MST
These concurrent sessions will take place in different Zoom rooms.
Session Description
In this session, we delve into the ways in which Standard American English (SAE) dominates US higher education. We begin by unpacking ‘native-speakerism,’ a concept borrowed from the English language teaching field. At its heart, native-speakerism is a pervasive ideology that posits language in terms of identity and ownership. For example, in spaces of higher education “professional” or “academic” English then becomes synonymous with White Anglo-born speakers. We then provide case studies to illustrate how native-speakerism shows up in our respective spaces for students, instructors, and researchers, and we consider how intersectional identities associated with so-called non-native speakers are acutely targeted in the current moment. We contend that native-speakerism is to the detriment of all individuals in our university communities - domestic, multilingual, monolingual, and international alike. Participants of this workshop will conclude by co-generating approaches to critiquing, resisting, and dismantling native-speakerism from within their loci of influence. After framing the session for the audience, participants will then move into small groups in breakout rooms. Then they will be prompted to do a virtual gallery walk, and we will conclude with major takeaways as a whole group.
Session Description
Cultivating joy in educational development work can serve as both a protective factor against and remedy for stress and burnout. Practices that engage us in creative and expressive activities directly related to and in support of our work are especially effective in this regard, as they allow us to “engage the innate intelligence of [our] bodies to support joyful learning” (Bayers, 2025). Creative practices also “ope[n] possibilit[ies]” allowing for growth and innovation (Berila, 2024). Having options to be guided through exploring various art forms, such as accessible movement, visual art-making, and creative writing, participants will have the opportunity to connect with the aspects of their educational development work that they most enjoy within a supportive community in service of their own professional growth and flourishing. Ideas and resources will be shared for cultivating and integrating short creative practices into participants’ work to renew joy whenever it may be needed.
Following a warm welcome, community introductions, and session invitations/agreements, participants will be invited to engage in a series of creative, embodied, and accessible practice options, such as playful accessible movement, visual art-making, and creative writing. Following these experiences, participants will be invited to share if they wish and in the way that they wish either independently or collaboratively in breakout rooms. Participants will be invited to share overall learnings and ideas for how they might incorporate creative practices regularly to support their own growth and cultivate joy in themselves and in their colleagues. The session will conclude with gratitude and resources, including an invitation to network and continue sharing ideas.
Key Takeaways
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
Reflect on the aspects of their work that generate the most joy.
Describe creative, embodied, and accessible practices that allow what is most joyful in professional work to emerge.
Brainstorm and share ideas for how creative practices can be integrated into their work to support their own professional growth and flourishing and that of their colleagues.
Session Description
Members of the presenter team, who engage in diverse forms of department-based change work, will briefly share their experiences and highlight some of the reasons they see this type of educational development as distinctive. Participants will be invited to share their experiences with department-based educational development (via the chat and/or speaking to the group, as they prefer). We will share a worksheet with key questions and considerations that are helpful to think about when engaging in department-based work. The worksheet will include “pathways” for developers at different career stages and institutional types, as well as for those who do and do not have experience with department-based educational development. Participants will have a few minutes to individually complete their version of the worksheet. Participants will then join breakout rooms where they have the option to discuss what they wrote, explore emerging questions, and/or listen to the conversation if they choose not to actively contribute. Breakout rooms will be facilitated by the presenter team members and will represent the different “pathways” outlined on the worksheet, so that participants can choose to join the discussion that feels most relevant and interesting to them. The breakout room groups will also contribute to a shared notes document. At the close of the session, we will invite participants who would like to share their contact information to be connected to ongoing community and professional development opportunities related to department-based educational development.
Key Takeaways
Educational developers support academic departments in a variety of activities: we might support a department as they revise a degree curriculum, or as they seek to understand their department climate related to equity and inclusion, or as they adopt evidence-based pedagogies at scale. Despite different aims, these forms of department-based educational development share many characteristics that are specific to change work at the department scale. We suggest that the field would benefit from considering department-based educational development as such; more importantly, developers working in this space would benefit from connecting with and learning from one another, regardless of the specific aims of their department-based work. We are designing our session so that participants can learn about and connect around department-based educational development, whether this is work they already do, work they would like to do, or work done by colleagues they would like to support.
Participants will come away from the session with:
An overview of diverse forms of department-based educational development, including key overlaps and distinctions across this subset of educational development.
An appreciation of the benefits of department-based educational development, including increased scale of impact, as well as the ability of this work to reach faculty who might not otherwise engage with educational development programming.
Strategies for identifying opportunities as well as barriers to department-based educational development in their contexts.
A community of colleagues who love the messy, complex, and long-term cultural work of department-based change and who want to connect with and support other people doing similar work–or even just those who are department-curious.