Well, I’ve been going through the data again, and I think actually that EDUs try and work in a very collegial way – the more successful ones seem to listen to what their client groups want and try to meet their needs. That’s not to say they don’t challenge outdated practices where they see them. In some cases, I found they can take quite sophisticated approaches to this “challenging” -Well, they have to because laying down the law about what colleagues should and shouldn’t be doing would never work anyway. But I remain convinced that they (well, we, I suppose) have to get out into the disciplines. I like the notion of a permeable membrane through which developers and academic staff feed off each other while remaining separate. You need the separation because Educational development seems to be  becoming a discipline in its own right, and developers can’t take on every aspect of every discipline, otherwise they’d be physicists or historians or whatever, and not ed. developers.

While on this theme though we had an awayday yesterday and one of our principal teaching fellows made the (I thought) quite telling observation that we, as a development unit were doing a fantastic job in helping the academic department do the things that it didn’t really want to do. That wasn’t a criticism of CERD but I think of the external pressures on the University – for instance we were doing a great job in helping them deal with large classes. But they’d rather not be teaching large classes at all. It’s a good point and something I need to work into my own research somehow. Anyway I’m breaking my own rule about not working after 9 p.m. now, so that’s enough for today.