Educational development philosophy statements provide a framework to communicate the values and beliefs that guide the practices and approaches of individual educational developers across various career stages. This paper presents narratives to illustrate how seven educational developers conceptualize the one thing that guides our work through the process of reflecting on the beliefs that we articulate through our educational development philosophy statements. Although each narrative illustrates our diverse backgrounds and philosophies, common themes are revealed relating to reflective practice, scholarly approaches, and facilitating change, which lead to improvements in student learning. This exploration suggests further opportunity to conduct research on how educational development philosophy statements illuminate implicit definitions and beliefs about this diverse and evolving field.

Feedback is an expected and essential part of academic work; however, giving and receiving feedback often causes angst and distress, an aspect not often addressed. To foster conversations about feedback for teaching development, we developed an interactive event designed to explore and practice giving and receiving feedback. A mixed-methods pre-post-test design was implemented to examine and measure levels of distress when thinking about receiving feedback on teaching using (1) a distress thermometer, and(2) open-ended questions. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, means analysis, and thematic analysis of open text responses. Findings include an overall decrease in mean distress scores following the event and a shift in mindset between pre-and post-tests from fearing feedback to seeing feedback as an opportunity for growth and development. Higher education institutions are encouraged to provide opportunities to foster conversations about feedback and how it can be embraced to inform future teaching growth and development.

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