Our new Educator Development Framework

As you are aware, last month we launched Develop at Essex on Moodle housing all things development, and on which our new, co-created Educator Development Framework sits.

Our vision is to put student success at the heart of our thinking. To realise this vision, we place great importance on nurturing and connecting our community of educators, to enable them to be at their best so they can support and promote that student success. The Educator Development Framework is a key aspect of supporting our educators to create a personalised career development journey, whilst it also provides multiple opportunities to connect and collaborate to share expertise, experiences and best practice.

We are proud of this Framework we have developed with input from our Educator colleagues at Essex. Its content and design have also been informed by the Advance HE’s UK Professional Standards Framework, so we are confident that we are meeting the national higher education standard.

The framework consists of five core areas of education practice which will provide consistency and build on our reputation for education at Essex. They are:

• Developing your education practice
• Role-specific career stage support
• Awards and recognition
• Disseminating your practice
• Accessing funding opportunities to develop your practice

The Educator Development Framework exploration tool appears in the ‘Plot your Pathway’ section and will help our educators to explore and identify relevant resources dependent on what is needed at the time.

All educators are also encouraged to develop a short profile on the Peer Mentoring database so that other colleagues can approach them in relation to useful areas of practice that could be useful to share. As you prepare your profile, you are also encouraged to declare your interest to support the continuous enhancement and delivery of the framework by offering to deliver or co-deliver workshops, facilitate group coaching for educators or support the continuous evaluation of the framework itself.

Please take advantage of this resource which will continue to evolve to support your needs. If you’d like to hear more, I’ve recorded a short video and if you have any queries related to how you could engage with the framework or would like to declare your interest as mentioned above, please email develop@essex.ac.uk or myself.