Associate Professor Andrea Bugarcic

Curriculum development is an aspect of professional development that is not considered a priority across the health and science professionals. The skill of curriculum development is integral part of becoming an academic but it is overlooked as part of the professional training. The gap in “teaching the teacher” aspect of health and science academic has been bridged in different ways – from short University-specific courses to full postgraduate qualification in higher education. While this approach allows the academics to develop their teaching philosophy, generic skills in curriculum development and basis of approaching research in education space, it is limited in developing these skills in the operational and education contexts of the specific curriculum development and institution operational environment.

Community of Practice (CoP) concept has been used to bridge practice and expertise centered around a specific issue or question across different professional contexts – from business to education. The concept is based on establishing a starting point and timeline for developing a solution for the issue at hand with regular collaborative touch points and deliverables. The major aspect of the CoP approach is bringing together relevant experts with those that are tasked with delivering the solution for the starting point within specified timeframes.

Within the Centre for Naturopathic Medicine we have recently developed a Masters of Advanced Naturopathic Medicine using a Community of Practice approach. Here, we brought together theoretical knowledge of curriculum development, inquiry- and case-based learning pedagogies and novel 6x6 delivery model at Southern Cross University to develop subjects in the first naturopathic medicine postgraduate course for 2021 launch. While our subject developers were experts in their respective fields, they had limited knowledge and experience in developing postgraduate curriculum nested in these specific pedagogies. To assist with bringing together curriculum development theory and their expert content knowledge within the new operational delivery model we designed the Community of Practice_Curriculum Development (CoP_CD). CoP_CD included weekly meetings across a period of 20 weeks with a 4-week upskilling in the theory of the curriculum development and pedagogies at the start, followed by introduction to the appropriate educational framework (ADVANCER) and specific deliverables and further upskilling in assessment design and delivery. The expertise team consisted of the academic developer, an expert in academic practice and library, in addition to the team internal to the Centre who were experts in content areas and educational design.

As CoP_CD was designed as a professional development setting to develop self-efficacy and confidence of subject developers, the developers were asked validated questions pre- and post-CoP_CD to ascertain development of these skills in the context of postgraduate curriculum development. The outcomes of these questionnaires and the focus group will be presented for audience to consider this focuses approach to collaborative and in situ curriculum development.