In this article we argue that understanding the identities that teacher educators construct for themselves is central to effecting innovation within a changing policy environment. The article begins with a theoretical perspective on the nexus of change and identity. It then discusses the central features of identity amongst a group of teacher college educators who have been incorporated into a higher education institution in South Africa. The discussion focuses in particular on their new roles as researchers. We argue that the promotion of research needs to be based on what teacher educators already perceive to be their particular strengths and roles. The paper ends with some examples of strategies for research promotion in this particular setting.

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This study examines the chairside as an opportunity for teaching and learning. It sets out to understand how students learn in the dental clinic so that they can better be supported in their clinical learning. The study draws on current theories of learning to establish a rationale for effective chairside teaching. Current theories highlight the active role of learners in ‘constructing’ their own knowledge of a field, and emphasise the importance of active learning and reflection in this process. The study is practical in nature. It weaves evidence from empirical studies of medical and dental clinical teaching, as well as ‘best practice tips’ from the literature, with theory to suggest a strategy for effective teaching in the clinical context. The study concludes with a caveat, warning that effective clinical teaching requires an investment in time.

This paper uses Tronto's political ethics of care as a normative framework to evaluate a model of teaching and learning professional development. This framework identifies five integrated moral elements of care -attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust. This paper explicates on each of these elements to evaluate the piloting and implementation of a teaching and learning professional development model at a South African higher education institution. The political ethics of care was found to be a useful normative framework for a group of higher educators to reflect on the process of engaging in teaching and learning professional development in that it revealed the importance of differential power relations, the importance of working collaboratively and being attentive to the needs of both caregivers and care receivers. IntroductionWhile much has been written about models of implementing professional development on teaching and learning for university lecturers, there is not much literature on the use of normative frameworks to evaluate these models of professional development. By normative framework, we mean how things ought to be, and the values which underpin practices and policies (Robinson 1999). Models on professional development for teaching and learning in higher education, while making no reference to particular value positions, are in fact, unconsciously using dominant discourses of the time such as neoliberalism and its emphasis on efficiency, measurability and individualism (Bozalek 2013;Nicoll and Harrison 2003). There have been some contributions on how neoliberalism is affecting higher education as a sector (Boughey 2007; Olssen and Peters 2007), but little has been written about how these values are implicit in programmes such as professional development. This paper proposes the use of an ethic of care as a normative framework to evaluate the implementation of teaching and learning professional development in higher education. Our contention is that this normative framework provides valuable moral elements and perspectives on human interaction which can be used to evaluate processes and practices. The political ethics of care views humans as relational beings rather than disembodied, rational, autonomous and atomistic individuals (Tronto 1993). It does not assume that we are all equally positioned in relation each other and to knowledge and resources. The political ethics of care has been used as a normative framework to evaluate social policies (see Sevenhuijsen 2003) and to evaluate programmes and practices (Tronto 2010 ). We argue that there are specific gains in using this normative framework not only for deconstructing social policies but for evaluating institutional practices such as piloting professional development in teaching and learning. In this paper, we use a case study of our own experiences of engaging in professional

Background: Current literature calls for the explicit teaching to health-science educators of the skills, knowledge and dispositions that are required for successful teaching in higher education. Aims: This paper draws on evidence from an Oral Hygiene department at a South African university in order to illustrate these teaching-competency needs. Insights from the evidence are synthesised with current literature regarding best teaching practice, in support of an appropriate framework for the development of teaching competencies to health-science educators. Description: A qualitative approach, using a case study, was adopted. The cohort comprised fifteen students in the first-year Oral Hygiene cohort class and the ten educators who taught their programme. Data was collected through semistructured interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The topics that emerged from the combined analysis of the interviews and the questionnaires were organised into a grid so that common themes could be identified. Current literature regarding teaching and learning was used as a framework for interpreting the empirical evidence, from which three categories emerged. The first category included suggestions from students regarding what to do to teach better. A review of the literature indicates that these competencies can be effectively learnt from self-help guides. The second category included requests for skills development. Literature review suggests that these might effectively be learnt from single-event workshops facilitated by more able peers. Responses in the final category highlighted the need for an underpinning theory of teaching and learning, and signalled the need for a more theoretically grounded and detailed approach to teacher development. Conclusion: The framework developed from the empirical study and current literature makes it possible for individual clinical teachers, and staff developers, to construct teaching-competency development plans that are pertinent to individual teachers' needs, relevant and practical, educationally sound, and cost-effective in terms of time and effort.