Abstract
Chapter 6 reports on a study of how an academic developer (AD) plans and leads a seminar in university pedagogy on constructive alignment by the means of deliberative communication. The overriding purpose is to deepen our understanding of the promises and challenges of deliberative communication as a means of leading and teaching as, and for, public good. To fulfil this aim, the three authors of the paper use a combination of self-reflection, deliberative communication and insider-outsider perspectives to examine if, and how, such an approach opens up and stimulates collective learning between the AD and the two critical friends. The paper concludes by emphasising how fruitful it is to reflect and collaborate among colleagues in a structured way. Raising awareness of the limitation of all models, tools or approaches, like constructive alignment, may help academics to acknowledge that the improvement of leadership and teaching needs be far more of a collective endeavour than at present. An important issue for further exploration therefore, is how creative meetings between individual professional and inter-professional skills, through communication, can contribute to raising awareness of what teaching as, and for, public good might mean, and how it can be enacted.
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