ABSTRACT
In the last few decades, the practice of staff and educational development has been the subject of more scrutiny, research, investigation and debate than ever before, as the extent of development activity has also grown. Publications such as this book have benefited from, and aim to contribute to, this continuing growth. A significant component of the contribution has come from investigations of staff and educational development by staff and educational developers. It is this topic that we have taken as the focus of this chapter. (Approaches to investigating the impact of staff development programmes are considered in Chapter 6.) We acknowledge the contribution to investigating of staff and educational development made by those outside staff and educational development, and also by those within who have conducted investigations in related fields, but these are not areas we pursue further in this chapter.
