Abstracts - Earli

trajectory was found to be determined by the particular configuration of communities of practicewithin each field. However the existence of these paradigmatic learning trajectories did not meanthat learning was unproblematic as they appeared to support the dominant relationships of powerwithin each field and posed particular challenges for those individuals who embarked onalternative trajectories. These findings point to the need for academic staff developmentpractitioners to help identify and make explicit the range of learning trajectories available withinparticular disciplinary fields, to work with the opportunities offered by these trajectories and toaddress the obstacles and challenges that they pose for new academics.Monitoring professional development of junior teachers in Swiss higher educationNicole Rege Colet, University of Geneva, SwitzerlandThe University of Geneva, like many other research-led universities, is constantly endorsing theidea that quality of teaching and learning in universities must be supported. Although the debatehas been going on for almost 15 years, there is no University policy that sustains professionaldevelopment for teachers. The only milestone in the landscape has been the creation of facultydevelopment centres in all Swiss universities who are now offering a wide range of activities thatencompass the traditional teacher training programmes, counselling and evaluation of teachingeffectiveness. None of these activities are compulsory and most centres are focussing their effortson junior teachers and lecturers. This presentation will discuss findings from a research carried outat the University of Geneva on how teaching staff develop their professional expertise. Theinterview-based research compares professional pathways and conceptions of teachers who eitherinvested time in teacher training programmes (individual workshops or a modular programme) ordevoted time to personal counselling. The purpose of the research was to understand how expertiseis built in an environment that does little towards acknowledging teaching and rewarding goodteaching. It also seeks to discuss the advantages of training programmes versus individualcounselling as a means of supporting professional development. Similar researches, for instanceKnight, Tait & Yorke, 2006, suggest that counselling might be more effective for professionaldevelopment than training programmes. The latter do have their virtues but tend to reproducemodels of teaching that are centred on content rather than competencies. Counselling is moreconsistent with learning theories that relate to professional development because learning iscontextualised. The findings suggest that professional development should equally favour trainingas a mean of introducing new thinking and personal coaching in order to promote sense-makingand bring to the surface the non-formal learning that has taken place.Formation for changing conceptions of teaching and learningAlenoush Saroyan, McGill University, CanadaWith changing demographics of university students, ever-decreasing resources, and different kindsof competencies required of graduates, now more than ever faculty need professional formation inteaching and pedagogy to meet stakeholder expectations and demands for quality education.Central to research into teaching and teaching improvement is the assumption that conceptions ofteaching and learning both underlie and motivate classroom actions. Based on their critical reviewof the literature on conceptions of academics, Kane, Sandretto, & Heath (2002) highlight thedistinction between "simplistic" (primarily focused on the teacher) and "complex" conceptions(multi-dimensional and sophisticated, and directed mostly on the learner, the learning process, andthe teacher as the mediating factor of learning). Two studies were carried out to determine theeffectiveness of a formal program on university course design and teaching in changingconceptions of teaching and learning and to map out the trajectory of change in conceptions. Study– 789 –