Harnessing the power of change and uncertainty to see our practices differently: developing a new model to inform our ongoing EdDev and TEL roles

USW’s Centre for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) frames its practice around five themes which, as tramlines, create a schematic of our educational development, TEL and administrative support offers, and anchor our annual review and reflections. In 2019/20 we began an evaluation project to explore how data could evidence the impact of our work, with outcomes planned to strengthen the evidence-base of our roles in USW’s successes and enhance individual CVs, CPD and personal professional recognition.

Building the project on the team’s experience and confidence using adaptations of Popovic and Plank’s (2016) and Kennedy’s (2005) evaluation models, we injected fresh ideas from a national expert, explored the notion of professional identities (Kreber 2010) and arrived, by July 2020, at a focused, Covid-19 relevant project question. The presentation will share how cycles of ‘making visible’ through staff surveys, adhoc conversations, Covid-19 response support feedback, discussions, critical conversations and reflection identified ‘Community Building’ (CB) as the core of our practice irrespective of role. Conceiving CB as the weave of our work rather than a separate workstrand was a major ‘ahha’ moment. Drilling into the data, we identified brokerage (Jackson, 2003) as our common expertise. Having this expertise made visible through our peers’ descriptions of the impact of our work on their well-being and sense of belonging during the challenges of lockdown has been hugely empowering. Seeing our individual and collective roles in new ways, we are redeveloping CELT’s practice model placing CB, enabled through the ethos and skills of brokerage, as an explicit aspect of all our work. We will share our journey in developing and using the model to inform the refreshed ways we are thinking about sharing and celebrating how, as we look to the future, we work with each other and our colleagues at USW.