I deliberately do not start this article in a traditional way – beginning with an introduction – as it would contradict the nature of the research design it is based on. As scholar of the educational-professional development of academic staff, the overarching research design that I follow is action research (McNiff & Whitehead 2006; Zuber-Skerritt 2000), following an asset-based approach (Du Toit 2012) that is cyclical and continuous. The article reports on a micro-cycle within the research process followed for more than a decade and is narrative in character – a story about an academic at the University of Pretoria, a professor, whom I had the privilege of meeting at a professional level. It tells the story of his educational-professional development journey as I came to know it. For a great part of the journey, I was a co-traveller. The micro-research study complementing and enriching my action research is ethnographic as it is concerned with a specific unit of analysis (Babbie 2013; Mouton 2001), namely the teaching practice of the academic in question. Typical of an ethnographic study is that it concerns itself with issues of social life – academic life in this case – at the level of individuals. Therefore, it may be relevant to classify this research study as micro-theory (Babbie 2013). As a qualitative research design, it is also more unstructured (Kumar 2014), which becomes clear in the narrative as the reporting is an account of a journey that was sometimes ‘unplanned’ – stemming from a self-initiated akademische Wanderlust.

Being the primary participant, I am not passive in making meaning (O’Leary 2014). Christensen, Johnson and Turner (2014:364) refer to this as ‘social “construction” of reality’ and the insider’s perspective, while Kumar (2014) mentions the importance of increasing the understanding of one’s own profession and advancing the professional knowledge base. My reality of which I make meaning while reflecting on my profession is my involvement in the educational-professional development of lecturers – in both a formal and an informal sense.

Fitting this research design is one overarching ontological research question: Who is Professor Graham Duncan?

And one overarching epistemological question is: What is the new meaning of teaching practice Professor Duncan constructed?

Graham Duncan introduces himself as follows in the title of a drafted article: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos guardians?’ (Who guards [nurtures] the guardians?). In the sub-title of the conceptualised article, he refers to developing a constructivist approach to learning within the context of ministerial and spiritual formation. Constructivism (Von Glasersfeld 2001) is a value that I hold in terms of the educational-professional development of academic staff in general, and one he holds in terms of all his roles as academic. As investigating my practice by means of action research is founded on constructivist epistemology, I claim that my curriculum development, facilitating and assessing of learning of my students and other roles I have to enact (Department of Education 2002) serve as exemplars for my students enrolled for the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE). For the purpose of gathering data for my action research, I use different data sets. Data reported in this article are qualitative in nature. A text analysis of a study manual of the module on Professional Development offers some insight into the purpose of Professor Duncan’s academic journey. This purpose is outlined below. I use this excerpt from the set of data with a view to showing how Professor Duncan aligned his scholarship of teaching with the focus on the PGCHE.

The overarching purpose of the PGCHE (University of Pretoria 2015) is the educational-professional development of higher education practitioners. It, inter alia, includes the following:

Apart from being the programme coordinator who oversees the implementation of the programme, consisting of nine modules, I am responsible for offering five modules. These include modules on Facilitating Learning, Professional Development and Research Supervision. Other core modules of the programme are Assessment Practice and Curriculum Development.

In terms of Professor Duncan’s taking responsibility for curriculum development, the following can be reported. Ministers for whose professional development he took responsibility are expected to fulfil a multitude of roles and become competent in enacting these roles. Therefore, any curriculum that focuses on the professional development of ministers should make provision for a life of service to the community – a real-life context (Slabbert, De Kock & Hattingh 2009) ministers will encounter on a daily basis, which Professor Duncan embraced as a challenge for his students as well as for himself. His real-life context as a lecturer manifested the highest quality of executing all the roles he had to enact. These roles are set out in the Norms and standards for educators (Department of Education 2002), a policy document that governs all levels of education, including higher education. It includes, inter alia, facilitating of learning, curriculum development, assessment, leadership and scholarship of teaching. Professor Duncan excelled in enacting these roles. This is a claim I make based on evidence from his practice, as McNiff and Whitehead (2006) propose, we do when we as scholarly higher education practitioners need to justify what we and our students – in this case, my former student, Professor Duncan – do.

The following email received from him on 28 June 2010 underscores his commitment to becoming a scholar of teaching and to act as leader who can mentor others:

As a scholar of teaching exemplifying an innovative practice, he was invited by me to act as respondent in an international research project – a project on peer review – with the University of Macquarie in Australia in 2011. He was also involved in a national project on quality enhancement initiated by the Council of Higher Education (CHE) in 2014 to which he contributed as a member of a task team focusing on ‘Enhancing academics as teachers’ under the leadership of Professor Manning, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences. This is mentioned here as I was aware of this at the time of execution of the projects and it is in keeping with the ethnographic nature of the research reported in this article.

In a metaphoric sense, I would like to draw on the views of Professor Duncan when he writes about the professional development of ministers, as is explicated in relevant curricula designed for this purpose. When it comes to lecturer professionalism, I would like to use the construct ‘formation’ that he uses. Lecturers are subjected to the stresses and anxieties of those whom they serve – students and the university community at large. Despite the professional development of ministers that Professor Duncan considers as ‘training in the academic domain’, he opted for enrolling for the PGCHE, which is innovative in the sense that it combines scholarships of teaching and research. It is practical in all its facets – as represented by the different modules – and offered Professor Duncan real-life challenges that he executed with passion and great success. The fact that he was awarded the qualification Cum Laude is proof of his achievements, although obtaining high marks was never his goal, but rather excellence in what he was doing as lecturer. Figure 1 represents the narrative of his PGCHE journey – attending the graduate ceremony. Visual 2 represents the narrative of his zest for life in general and his academic career in all its dimensions.

In his leadership capacity, he acted as mentor (discipling scholar) to other colleagues in his department and faculty – indeed custodiet ipsos guardians. He excelled as mentor and received accolades relating to his innovative teaching practice. He, inter alia, was chosen by the students of the faculty as the best lecturer in 2013. He shared this enthusiastically (typical of him) with me in an email on 26 May 2014 – not as a self-accolade but as an acknowledgement of the impact of the PGCHE on his educational-professional development:

His scholarly formation as academic represents the principles expected of contemporary educational-professional development opportunities he engaged from an intrapersonal point of departure. He opted for becoming a life-long learner and embraced scholarship of teaching in a self-regulated fashion – evidence of a metacognitive stance on his educational-professional development. This requires greater adaptability, critical evaluation and innovation as integral factors in teaching practice.

In terms of adaptability, the theory on whole brain learning that in its application entails accommodating students according to their thinking preferences (De Boer et al. 2013; Du Toit 2013; Herrmann 1995, 1996) became prominent. As an individual, Graham Duncan has his preferred ways of solving problems and executing tasks. Tasks pertaining to his teaching practice that had to be executed – such as facilitating and assessing learning – challenged him in terms of adapting. He realised that he could not facilitate learning and assess student learning in ways he preferred and had been used to in the past. He indicates that, as someone with a preference for logical, fact-based and rational thinking and being in control, organised and methodical he realised that he was not accommodating students with thinking preferences other than his. He had the following to say in this regard:

To address this concern, the following idea that I coined became relevant: He had to start ‘thinking out of his box’. He had to unlearn some of his ways of doing of the past and had to become more diverse in designing and offering learning and assessment opportunities – something he acknowledges in the quote above.

Analogue to the ideas that Graham Duncan expresses in terms of ministerial candidates, he journeyed on a path to deeper knowledge and experience of teaching in higher education context – a life-long learning of higher education, especially in terms of practice. This is a novel way of expressing the constant (semper reformanda) transformative process (Duncan 2010) of disciplining others. Further, it concurs with the active constructivist learning approach in which professionals (as students) construct knowledge for themselves and that there is no knowledge independent of meaning attached to experience (constructed) by the professional (student), or community of practice (Von Glasersfeld 2001). It also aligns well with the process of action research (Du Toit 2014) that is experimental – with a focus on implementing innovative ideas in practice – and that is constructivist in its epistemology. It is a process of reflection and meta-reflection on one’s own teaching practice in which the lecturer adopts an insider perspective – practitioner-research as proposed by McNiff and Whitehead (2006). This makes it different from traditional research as it becomes living theory and a process of new meaning making.

The conclusion of this article is dual in purpose. Firstly, Professor Duncan concludes his self-reflection on practice; secondly, I offer an overarching conclusion of the ethnographic study reported.

He has the following to say:

My conclusive remarks: Adequate evidence of self-enquiry into the teaching practice of Professor Duncan is offered in this article. It includes the reporting of his journey of educational-professional development. He passionately and honestly applied the principles of relevant learning theories studied as part of the PGCHE and from other professional development opportunities in practice. In addition, he introduced and extrapolated the same principles to his students’ professional ministry formation – ensuring that they became constructivist, self-regulated professionals who can monitor their own professional life-long learning. This has been done, amongst other approaches, by means of using the process of action learning.

I consider Professor Duncan a constructivist scholar of teaching. His contribution in terms of new meaning making and contributing to our current understanding of higher education praxis is commendable. My scholarly view of higher education praxis in particular was enriched through my engaging in conversations with him and reading his work.

This ethnographic account is, however, not an accolade to the people in question – subjects of the research – but a deep understanding and acknowledgement: creabunt scientiam divinitus inspirata (creation of knowledge is inspired by God).