Being a university teacher in a landscape of practice-A qualitative study of critical incidents

Acceptance of teachers' need for pedagogical training to maintain quality in health professions education has grown. However, to enhance interest in becoming a professional teacher, a better understanding of experiences related to initial contact with teaching is needed. The framework of landscape of practice (LoP) offers a perspective highlighting identification processes as academics and clinicians participate in and navigate across familiar and new communities. The aim of this study was to explore how boundary crossing into teaching practices is expressed in educators' narrative constructions of critical incidents from teaching situations at a medical university.

Teachers' written critical incident analyses (CIA) of teaching situations (N = 69), submitted during two iterations of a faculty development course at a medical university, were collected. The assignments were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

One overarching theme, Teaching appears as an individual venture, and four subthemes, Internalised self-blame and external attribution of responsibility; Encountering teaching situations marked by limited control and psychological safety; Relational dynamics and communicative challenges; Pedagogical commitment and professional agency, were identified. The findings mirrored strong reactions, abandonment and isolation, but also engagement and responsibility for high-quality education.

The findings show that engaging in educational practice, developing a professional identity as a teacher is a complex, often isolated endeavour, sometimes disconnected from primary professional practice. Relating these findings to identification processes described within the framework of LoP, demonstrates a need to support individual processes as well as the connections and collaboration between different communities in a LoP. To address this, three interrelated actions are needed: support from the teachers' primary communities of practice and the wider landscapes of practice; strengthening structural and cultural conditions that recognise education as a scholarly activity and an integral part of the university's LoP; and increased educational awareness and competence at management level.