ABSTRACT
Whilst staff and educational development as a field for scholarly and professional practice is receiving more attention than only a few years ago, careers within staff and educational development receive far less attention. For example neither Prospects (2003) nor Blaxter et al. (1998), both concerned with careers in higher education, mention the field. Development is certainly a highly specialist profession, but then so are many other areas of work in higher education. Even within the specialist literature on staff and educational development, the tendency is to concentrate on becoming and being a staff and educational developer, and on establishing professional identity within the field (see for example Andresen 1996; Issacs 1997; Kapp et al. 1996; and O’Leary 1997), rather than on the range of careers that are possible within the field. Holmes (2003) provides perhaps the richest currently-available account of a career within staff and educational development, whilst Graham Webb in Chapter 10 of this book identifies some of the capabilities and qualities developed through working in development and shows how these can inform further work within and beyond development.
