Shaping practices: An embedded approach
to professional development of tutors

There is considerable focus on the scholarship of teaching and the professionalisation of teaching practice within the higher education sector. At the same time, it is to the casual 'academic' that faculties now routinely turn, all within increasingly dynamic teaching environments. It is argued in this paper that professional development programs that are sensitive to discipline specific needs, and embedded in discipline specific contexts are better able to assist casual tutors in fostering quality student learning outcomes, including the development of key generic capabilities.

The model for professional development of tutors as described in this paper takes seriously disciplinary specific models of practice, and is innovative in that it moves away from generic 'one size fits all' approaches, and locates professional development within the specific disciplinary teaching environment of the faculty. In terms of bringing about change in the quality of the learning experience for students tutors play a central role, since the approach that a student adopts is strongly influenced by the conception and approaches (Kember, 1997; Trigwell and Prosser, 1996) and intentions (Martin et al., 2000) that tutors bring to teaching. As tutors develop theories and have their pre-existing beliefs open to critique, they are more likely to facilitate real change in approaches to teaching, and therefore engender in students the deep learning strategies that will be valuable to lifelong learning.

This paper shows how professional development has the potential to (re)shape conceptions, intentions and practice and explores the theoretical basis upon which this model was developed.