For most universities employing good practitioners to teach on vocational courses such as business, social work, nursing or teaching, is part of business as usual.
But are we taking for granted their ability to settle in and make sense of their new environment?
There are huge difficulties faced in the shift from practitioner to academic/pracademic and there are things we can do that will affect that transition in a more coherent way, avoiding academic staff attrition.
The emphasis on knowledge exchange and impact in academia means that it is more vital than ever that our vocational courses are delivered by recent or current practitioners. Law, business, social work, nursing, teaching and policing, are just some of the fields HE draws upon when staffing vocational modules.
