Towards a pragmatic scholarship of academic development

Argues for an eclectic and pragmatic model of academic development. Such a model encourages inquiry into, and conversations about, academic problems and practices. The intention is to produce more or less useful, though tentative, suggestions for action and intervention. These would reflect Rorty’s pragmatic rationale for “nonideological, compromising, reformist muddling through”, or what Dewey called “experimentalism”. Examines each main term: “towards”, “pragmatic”, “scholarship”, and “academic development”. For example, “pragmatic” is characterised as wanting to promote a liberal, democratic, consensual, just, and even a Utopian society. “Scholarship” is examined as a broad conception following Boyer. “Academic development” is viewed as promoting useful (rather than, say, true or correct or best) approaches to teaching and learning, as encouraging experiments and inquiries, as being more anti‐managerial than managerial, as arguing for a conversational and contestational approach, and as claiming only “tentative responses, possible readings and suggested ideas for action and intervention”.