The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner: Perspectives on Integrated Practice to Enhance Student Success

Abstract

What is integrated practice, and how does it apply to student success? In this article we focus on exploring what third space working and integrated practice means, and how it applies to understanding our identity and leadership in student success, in the context of a pandemic-disrupted academy. We consider the ever-changing nature of this important work, especially in the context of the events of the last two years, and discuss how we might lead into the future to effectively situate post-pandemic student success practice within international university strategies, structures and systems. In the context of integrated practice, we consider: how is our understanding of student success evolving? What are student success professionals doing at the moment, and what are the hallmarks of our leadership? How might our identity in this work be understood? What are the core skills/experience required for the future, and how might we lead in uncertain times? *The authors presented a keynote at the 2022 STARS Conference: The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner – Perspectives on Integrated Practice to Enhance Student Success. This feature article is an abridged version of the presentation written as a feature article. It refers extensively to contributions in their recent edited publication: The Impact of the Integrated Practitioner in Higher Education: Studies in Third Space Professionalism (2022) Routledge.

A Third Space Approach to Integrated Academic Student Success Advising (ASSA)

“…All staff interviewed for this project were operating within the third space (Whitchurch, 2012), transcending the boundaries and traditional hierarchical interpretation of their role. The work within this space is referred to by McIntosh and Nutt (2022) as integrated practice, "where skills, knowledges and identities are shared across professional and academic domains and are thus fused and assimilated in an integrated way" (pp. 1-2).…”

“…With the emergence of the third space in higher education, defined by Whitchurch (2012) as the dynamic space "between professional and academic spheres of activity" the past decade has seen a proliferation of activity that transcends the traditional boundaries of universities and has dismantled some of the silos of higher education (p. 3). Within the third space, traditional conceptualisations of advising roles have evolved from one-to-one advising functions that respond to student challenges, to dynamic and proactive contributions to learning and teaching, curriculum design, policy, and staff development as a more proactive mechanism of developing students' capabilities, skills and competence (McIntosh & Nutt, 2022). While this is relatively new work in Australia, it is nonetheless occurring, albeit in pockets rather than at a macro level.…”