The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has given rise to diverse narratives about its transformative potential in higher education. Despite widespread speculation about how GAI might change teaching and learning, there is a significant gap in understanding how GAI artefacts are perceived in educational practices, particularly from the perspective of university teachers. This study investigates how GAI mediates teachers’ practices and reconfigures professional roles. Drawing on post-phenomenology and technological mediation theory, we focus on university teachers’ experiences and perceptions of GAI in higher education. Twenty-four university teachers participated in workshops involving assessment exercises with GAI-generated outputs, followed by focus group interviews discussing the challenges and opportunities posed by GAI. Findings reveal that GAI prompts teachers to reassess established practices, particularly in relation to assessment, while confronting ethical concerns regarding fairness, trust, and quality. Teachers described their initial engagement with GAI as transformative yet challenging, as they navigated uncertainties about their roles while prioritising students’ learning and development. By capturing teachers’ voices during this pivotal period, the study contributes to the growing body of research on AI's role in higher education and provides a nuanced understanding of its impact on teaching and learning.

Pedagogiska meriteringsmodeller har inrättats vid ett flertal svenska lärosäten, men många tvekar eller är negativt inställda. I detta kapitel analyserar vi de olika argument som vi uppfattar förs fram emot att inrätta sådana modeller. Vi resonerar kring själva syftet med pedagogiska meriteringsmodeller, hur syftet förhåller sig till forskning om motivation och identifierar sex incitament som vi menar kan fungera som drivkrafter för pedagogisk utveckling. Avslutningsvis ges exempel på aktiviteter vid Stockholms universitet som är tänkta att bistå lärarnas och lärosätets pedagogiska utveckling. Utifrån de sex incitamenten jämför vi i vilken mån dessa aktiviteter kan tänkas stå sig i relation till en möjlig pedagogisk meriteringsmodell. Vår slutsats är att man kan nå flera incitament utan pedagogisk meriteringsmodell, men att en sådan kan bidra till att fler av dem nås på ett mer systematiskt sätt. Vi noterar också att det kan finnas risker med för stort fokus på yttre motivation i relation till pedagogisk utveckling.

We introduce the special issue entitled ‘Beyond academic development as institutional practice: advancing community-led approaches’ and offer critical commentary that advances the concept and practice of academic community development. Through repeated readings of the 10 articles from diverse contexts included in this issue, we draw out four main themes highlighting why and how academic communities beyond single institutions support academic development. First, we revise the initial conceptual framework of ‘academic community development (ACD)’, which focused the call for papers, presenting six dimensions rather than the previous three continua. Then, we consider the degree of ‘institutionalisation’ of this range of initiatives. From that analysis, we derive a typology of ACD initiatives. We then consider a) what common interests have been served by these communities, and whose they are; b) the focus of these communities in relation to the revised conceptual framework; and c) the essential ingredients for success. We emphasise that communities leverage assets in ways that traditional needs-based academic development often does not. We conclude with implications for typical academic development work.

Background: Collegial conversations are important for sustainable learning to last beyond a course. Research on collegial conversations and peer learning in the workplace during psychiatric residency courses remains sparse, however. In this study, the aim was to explore residents’ opportunities for collegial conversations during and after national courses in psychiatry.

Methods: Residents in psychiatry completed an online survey including questions on opportunities for collegial conversations in their workplaces. Logistic regression was used for multivariate analysis and thematic content analysis was used for the open-ended answers where a theoretical framework of communities of practice was employed for the interpretation of the findings.

Results: The survey was completed by 112 residents out of 725 (15,4%). The participants reported few structured forums for collegial discussion. The results of multivariate analysis suggest that more women than men feel it is advantageous to attend courses with others from the same workplace or from the same group of residents, described here as a team. The analysis of qualitative data identified how opportunities for collegial conversations differ across contexts and the type of values that are attached to team participation in residency courses.

Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of collegial conversations as a way to sustain the learning from residency courses into the workplace. By learning about residents’ perceptions of collegial conversations during and after courses, teachers and directors may be more able to support residents’ lifelong learning and professional development.

AI chatbots have recently fuelled debate regarding education practices in higher education institutions worldwide. Focusing on Generative AI and ChatGPT in particular, our study examines how AI chatbots impact university teachers' assessment practices, exploring teachers' perceptions about how ChatGPT performs in response to home examination prompts in undergraduate contexts. University teachers (n = 24) from four different departments in humanities and social sciences participated in Turing Test-inspired experiments, where they blindly assessed student and ChatGPT-written responses to home examination questions. Additionally, we conducted semi-structured interviews in focus groups with the same teachers examining their reflections about the quality of the texts they assessed. Regarding chatbot-generated texts, we found a passing rate range across the cohort (37.5 - 85.7%) and a chatbot-written suspicion range (14-23%). Regarding the student-written texts, we identified patterns of downgrading, suggesting that teachers were more critical when grading student-written texts. Drawing on post-phenomenology and mediation theory, we discuss AI chatbots as a potentially disruptive technology in higher education practices.

In this position paper, I address what I call the “returner problem”, i. e., the problem that participants in teaching and learning courses have when they return to their departments and are unable to make changes in their teaching practices. The returner problem is thus conceptualized as a sustainability problem, since a large part of educational development activities in universities tend to focus on courses and workshops – activities that risk not leading to the educational improvements they are intended to provide. I explain how I conceptualize pedagogical leadership and explore the reasons why pedagogical leadership is necessary to come to terms with the returner problem. From a teaching and learning regime perspective, I discuss how pedagogical leadership could help departmental heads and programme and course directors address the returner problem by offering a sustainable approach for universities in their efforts to improve quality in education.

Collaborative practice among teachers, where teachers collaborate around their teaching practice, is known to optimise student learning in primary and secondary schools, where they are encouraged to create shared conceptions of vision, purpose and means. In higher education, however, studies on teachers working as teams and abandoning traditional norms of isolation and individualism around teaching are scarce. This study examines law teachers’ perceptions about teaching collaboration and the value of the collaborative process, as well as how and to what extent their beliefs are reflected in workplace practices. The study adopts a mixed method approach with a survey questionnaire and follow-up interviews with course directors at a large research university in Sweden. The findings show a mismatch between the espoused values and tacit assumptions regarding collaborative practice in relation to teaching, and they are discussed in relation to systems theory and literature on teaching teams and collaborative practice in higher education. The study provides important guidance for future leaders of higher education who are interested in the development of teaching and learning.

Purpose: There is a disconnect between how healthcare teams commonly are trained and how they act in reality. The purpose with this paper was to present a learning activity that prepares healthcare students to authentic teamwork where team members are fluent and move between different localities, and to explore how this setting affects learning.Methods: A learning activity Call the On-Call consisting of two elements, workplace team training where team members are separated into different locations, and a telephone communication exercise, was created. A case study approach using mixed methods was adopted to explore medical-, nurse-, physiotherapy- and occupational therapy students and supervisor perspectives of the effects of the learning activity. Data collection involved surveys, notes from reflection sessions, a focus group interview, and field observations. Thematic analysis was applied for qualitative data and descriptive statistics for quantitative data. The sociocultural learning theory, social capital theory, was used to conceptualize and analyse the findings.Results: The majority of the students (n=198) perceived that the learning activity developed their interprofessional and professional competence, but to a varying degree. Especially nursing students found value in the learning activity, above all due to increased confidence in calling a doctor. Physio- and occupational therapy students lacked the opportunity to be active during the telephone exercise, however, they described how it increased their interprofessional competence. Authenticity was highlighted as the key strength of the learning activity from all professions. Concerns that team building would suffer as a result of splitting the student team proved unfounded.Conclusion: The learning activity created new opportunities for students to reflect on interprofessional collaboration. Constant physical proximity during training is not essential for effective healthcare team building. Splitting the student team during training may in fact enhance interprofessional learning and lead to progression in interprofessional communication.

Objectives: Many universities offer faculty development to support teachers in developing and improving clinical education in the health professions. Although research shows outcomes on individual levels after faculty development, little is known about its contribution to change within the organisation. To advance current faculty development and ensure that it can support wider educational change in healthcare organisations, a better understanding of educational change practices in these settings is needed. This study therefore explores the experiences of working with educational change in clinical workplaces from the perspective of clinical educators that have undergone faculty development training. The study adopts perspectives on change as influenced by context to include the impact from clinical workplaces on individuals' change work.

Methods: A collective case study design with a multi-institutional approach was applied and individual interviews with 14 clinical educators from two universities, one in Sweden and one in South Africa, were conducted. Data were analysed separately before a cross-case analysis was performed, synthesising the findings from both sites.

Findings: Participants shared experiences of having limited opportunities to work with educational change beyond their own individual teaching practices within their clinical workplaces. Also, participants appeared to refrain from leading change and rather pursued change on their own or relied on indirect approaches to change. They described several workplace aspects influencing their work, including the organisation and management of teaching, the resources and incentives for teaching and the attitudes and beliefs about teaching within the clinical community.

Conclusions: The study shows that clinical educators are part of communities and contexts that shape their approaches to educational change and influence which changes are feasible and which ones are not. It thus adds to the understanding of change as contextual and dynamic and contributes with implications for how to advance faculty development to better support change in practice.