Quality teaching and sessional staff

Sessional staff make significant contributions as members of the teaching communities at Australian and international universities. These staff are diverse in their backgrounds, their career paths and their skills. New frameworks are needed to firstly acknowledge the diversity of sessional staff and then to determine the policies, processes and structures that support sessional staff and their universities in achieving quality in teaching.

One Sydney metropolitan university has undertaken an action research project focusing on supporting quality teaching through professional development for sessional teaching staff. This paper reports on the first stage of that project, piloted within one department of the university.

The pivotal role of the departmental working party and the university wide steering committee to this project will be outlined. Methodology for data collection about sessional staff including journals, focus groups and surveys is also presented. Outcomes are summarised with an emphasis on the need to initiate processes that are self-sustaining at the departmental level and that can be transferred and disseminated to other academic divisions.