An aGENDER for developing professional practice in teaching and learning

Abstract

The Professional Standards Framework within Higher Education has provided academics with a benchmark, one that acknowledges their professionalsim by providing "the best possible learning experience for their students" (HEA 2007). The application process to acquire professional recognition requires academics to reflect upon the domains of their activity through which they evidence core knowledge and professional values. Evidencing practice through reflection is a useful process, for it offers an opportunity to pause, and explore the space for deep engagement in what it means to be professional. This paper addresses itself to the space 'in between us' and asks what of the 'personal' infiltrates the 'professional'. In other words how do academics locate their sense of self within the learning envionrment in which they work? A question that is explored in this paper is what impact does personal embodied experience have upon the way in which we present ourselves professionally, and how does acknowledgement of personal epistemology inform the ways in which we engage with students in their own learning. In order to unravel these questions it is fruitful to acknowledge theory that explores the experience of being embodied as 'ground of our being' and 'our first home' (Halprin, 2003)