Anna Flaming's article she co-wrote last year, “Embracing complexity: an inclusive framework for the scholarship of educational development” in the International Journal for Academic Development was unanimously selected by the panel of judges as winner of the IJAD “Article of the Year Award” for 2022. The citation reads: “Embracing complexity” provides a new thought-provoking framework for the theorization of the scholarship of educational development (SoED). Many can feel bewildered by the breadth of SoED, disparate because of the way it has been shaped by social and cultural conditions in different contexts. To address that scholarly “messiness,” the authors offer an organizing framework that helps consumers and producers of SoED locate studies according to four aspects of scholarship, oriented toward process, outcomes, theory, and systems. For new educational developers from another discipline, this framework can act as a scholarly form of stabilizers/training wheels that help build confidence and familiarity; for more established developers, it presents new jumping-off points for future studies – whether staying within the bounds of the four categories or playing at the edges between them. This inspiring article is a “must read” for anyone struggling to make sense of the educational development literature.

She and her co-authors will also be recognized at the next International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) conference in Nairobi in summer 2024.