Academic staff development needs at a South African institution of higher education

M.Ed.Academic staff development is seen as a vehicle of empowerment that focuses on assisting individual members of staff to acquire knowledge, understanding and skills needed to teaceffectively. A great number of South African Higher Education institutions have made inroads and advances with regard to academic staff development programmes. However many such programmes are usually general to all staff members including administrators and professionals and do not address the specific needs of academics. Managers often plan these programmes without consulting the envisaged participants or conducting any needs assessment despite the literature on academic staff development emphasising the importance of conducting a proper needs assessment. As a result academic staff members in these institutions still feel left behind when it comes to academic issues affecting them directly, such as an absence of continuous staff development and the development of their research and academic writing skills. Many academics feel that such programmes are irrelevant and boring and do not attend. Based on the above the aim of this study was to explore the needs of academics within the Education Department of Vista University Soweto Campus in order to arrive at an informed understanding of such needs for the purpose of informing future academic staff development programme planning. For the purposes of this study qualitative research was conducted using semi-structured interviews with a purposefully selected sample of eleven academics within the Education Department in order to ascertain their academic staff development needs. Data were analysed using the constant comparative method. The findings of the research reveal that the majority of the academics were dissatisfied about the manner in which academic staff development activities are planned and conducted. Among the factors mentioned, the following feature prominently: the need for continuous staff development; the necessity of conducting a proper needs assessment prior to planning academic staff developmental programmes, the needs of the academics in acquiring the skills for research and academic writing, and the availability of more funding for staff development activities. This report concludes with a number of recommendations for planning with regard to academic staff development programmes