ABSTRACT
Until recently, there was little published evaluation of Lecturer Development Programmes (LDPs), and little research on their effects (Coffey and Gibbs, 2001). In fact, educational development activities generally suffer from a lack of systematic evaluation (Gosling, 2008). A survey of ninety-three UK higher education institutions (Bamber, 2002) found that evidence of the effects of LDPs was usually anecdotal. In this case provision cannot be justified or defended, beyond that it seems like a good thing. Perhaps more importantly, the existing literature on links between learning and teaching could be enriched if educational developers took a research-informed approach to evaluating their programmes, and published their findings. In the absence of such approaches, educational development may, indeed, be the ‘precarious business’ described by Gibbs and Coffey (2000).
