ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by expressing concerns about how orientation(s) of contemporary universities move the academy away from a critical engagement with the purpose of higher education as public good. The chapter explores how an academic developer practises and reflects upon her experiences with deliberative communication as a pedagogical approach to stimulate “deliberative academic development” among academics in a university pedagogy course. Her aim is to encourage course participants to articulate and deliberate on the societal role of higher education and to critically investigate how to teach societal responsibility in their own disciplines. The case study demonstrates that deliberative communication as a pedagogical approach stimulated participants to articulate more taken for granted assumptions of the purpose of higher education, and they became more aware of how their teaching tends to miss questions about societal responsibility. The case also revealed that using deliberative communication requires time, and the capacity to identify and exploit “teachable moments” as well as having the confidence to meet the unforeseen articulations and multiplicity of values and interests in higher education; that leading and teaching involve negotiating legitimate compromises in the tensions between different commitments and conceptions of public good.
