Counting and countering the opportunity cost of professional learning: a ‘care-full’ approach

The original publication is available from AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, Stellenbosch: South Africa.CITATION: Herman, N. 2016. Counting and countering the opportunity cost of professional learning: a ‘care-full’ approach, in L. Frick, V. Trafford & M. Fourie-Malherbe (eds). Being Scholarly: Festschrift in honour of the work of Eli M Bitzer. Stellenbosch: SUN MeDIA. 53-61. doi:10.18820/9781928314219/05.Introduction: Professional learning of lecturers for their teaching is a field in which Eli Bitzer did important work, specifically during the earlier years of his career in higher education. The hard work to establish the discipline of higher education studies and the related fields of teaching in higher education and professional learning for teaching is described by Eli himself in an autobiographical chapter dedicated to his mentor, Professor Kalie Strydom of the University of the Free State (Bitzer 2009). The focus of this contribution is on the opportunity cost involved in professional learning for teaching and the creation of ‘care-full’ (Milligan and Wiles 2010) environments to counter these costs. In writing this chapter, I mainly draw from my PhD, for which Professor Bitzer was the main supervisor.Publisher's versio