This book highlights the importance of academic staff having focused conversations about teaching. The emphasis is on using this approach to build individual and team capacity and to bring about institutional change. It emphasises the distributed nature of expertise in teaching which exists at all levels in universities and how conversation can be harnessed to develop and share this. Drawing on research related to dialogue, coaching, communities of practice and building learning organisations, the text identifies simple yet effective ways to engage in learning conversations, develop educational practice, and achieve institutional goals.

Critical Practice in Higher Education provides a scholarly and practical entry point for academics into key areas of higher education practice. Each book in the series explores an individual topic in depth, providing an overview in relation to current thinking and practice, informed by recent research. The series will be of interest to those engaged in the study of higher education, those involved in leading learning and teaching or working in academic development, and individuals seeking to explore particular topics of professional interest. Through critical engagement, this series aims to promote an expanded notion of being an academic - connecting research, teaching, scholarship, community engagement and leadership - while developing confidence and authority.

Joy Jarvis is currently Professor of Educational Practice at the University of Hertfordshire and a UK National Teaching Fellow. She has experience in a wide range of education contexts and works to create effective learning experiences for students and colleagues. She is particularly interested in the professional learning of those engaged in educational practice in higher education settings and has undertaken a range of projects, working with colleagues locally, nationally and internationally, to develop practice in teaching and leadership of teaching. Joy works with doctoral students exploring aspects of educational practice and encourages them to be adventurous in their methodological approaches and to share their findings in a range of contexts to enable practice change.

Karen Clark is programme leader of a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at the University of Hertfordshire, which attracts colleagues from every academic school at the institution. She is engaged with a range of work involving professional learning and recognition, curriculum development and staff-student collaboration. She draws on conversations about teaching both formal and informal in many different contexts from peer review, programme development and teaching observation to lunch groups and chats fueled by coffee and cake.

Karen Smith leads collaborative research and development in the School of Education, at the University of Hertfordshire, where she engages in externally funded research and evaluation and supports teachers to develop scholarly approaches to their practice through engagement in practitioner research. Karen's research interests are centred around how higher education policies and practices impact on those who work and study within the university system. She is a Trustee of the Society for Research in Higher Education, co-convenes the Higher Education Policy Network and contributes to their professional development sessions with a workshop on publishing learning and teaching research. Karen was recognised as a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in August 2017.