For a Special Issue on Agency in and through Academic Development
Abstract deadline :
Agency in and through Academic Development
Academic development, in some contexts referred to as faculty development or educational development, is a field committed to bridging scholarship, practice, and policy to drive meaningful transformation in universities. At the core of this process lies the concept of human agency, understood as the capacity to exert control over the actions, influence the environment and bring about change in our reality (Bandura, 2001; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Kusters et al., 2025; Priestley et al., 2015). In the context of academic development, agency is reflected in our role as change agents (Huat & Shunmugam, 2021), influencing learning, teaching, and institutional strategies at multiple levels. Exercising agency involves challenging limitations, reconciling conflicting demands, and aligning individual and collective aspirations with broader goals (Roxå & Mårtensson, 2017). Rather than understanding agency simply as an individual capacity, this Special Issue is interested in how it is developed, negotiated, enabled, and sometimes constrained through academic development practices, programmes, relationships, and contexts.
Building a strong professional positionality is key to exercising agency (Vähäsantanen et al., 2020; Santucci et al., 2024). This includes balancing research and practice, responding to the evolving expectations of campus leaders, researchers, teachers, and students, and building credibility in diverse institutional settings. As both creators and facilitators of knowledge, academic developers design and facilitate professional learning, support curriculum and programme development, create spaces for reflection and experimentation, and connect educational scholarship with practice. Through these activities, they can contribute to the development of individual and collective agency, while also negotiating their own agency and professional identities.
Academic development centres are navigating the strategic landscape of higher education, ensuring their work aligns with institutional priorities while responding to societal and systemic changes. This often places academic developers in dual roles: connecting academic leaders and faculty while balancing accountability and the freedom of intellectual exploration. These complexities call for strong communities of practice, interdisciplinary collaboration, and alliances within and beyond our institutions (Ghamrawi et al., 2025).
Finally, academic developers play a crucial role in helping faculty to empower students as active participants in their education (Fremstad at al., 2020). Student agency is understood as the capacity of students to influence their own lives and their environment through responsible decision-making and reflective action (OECD, 2024). Engaging students as partners in curriculum co-creation and learning innovation leads to more inclusive, relevant, and future-ready educational experiences. By fostering student agency, designing curricula that address real-world challenges, and adapting to emerging disruptions like artificial intelligence, we help shape a more dynamic and equitable higher education system.
The ICED 2026 Conference on “AGENCY AND ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT” invited us to explore this concept in depth to better understand the role of academic development centres and its academic and professional staff in transforming academic development and higher education.
For this special issue we invite submissions of scholarly work that address any of the questions in this call, including but not limited to:
- What conditions, practices and institutional structures support agency of faculty and students?
- When and how do we take up our agency to stand up against established systems and support change?
- How will the focus on agency shape the future of teaching, learning, and higher education systems?
- How do professional identity and positionality shape academic developers’ capacity to exercise their agency and strengthen that of others?
- How can research and scholarship enhance agency in and through academic development?
- How can interdisciplinary communities of practice, partnerships, and networks foster collective and epistemic agency?
- Why is agency imperative in responding to critical local and global disruptions and emerging transformations, and how can it be fostered in such contexts?
- How can strategic initiatives that shape policies and programs for teaching, learning and curriculum enhancement be specifically are designed to increase student and faculty agency?
- How can resilient academic development units navigate systemic disruptions and societal shifts while sustaining and strengthening agency?
- How can student agency enhance motivation, self-regulation, and engagement in learning?
- How can academic staff and teachers be supported to promote student agency?
- How can institutional collaborations among students, faculty, academic developers, and academic leaders enrich student agency?