Professional development practices and preferences in Irish Higher Education: insights from a regional survey

The character of professional development offered to those who teach in higher education is changing. There is a shift towards the adoption of more flexible, work-based, apprenticeship models, where experiential routes are increasingly valued. This paper seeks to understand the factors that impact engagement in academic professional development. A quantitative study reveals that experience, years of service, and discipline have little impact on educators’ professional development preferences, nor on the recognition of individual needs and contextual nuances to ensure optimal engagement in academic professional development. We demonstrate that it is not possible to profile professional development pathways in these ways, thus strengthening the evidence base for a flexible approach to it.