Additional resources

Smart Casuals Handbook

This handbook provides a good resource for sessional staff and has been developed by the National Tertiary and Education Union (NTEU). Many versions of this free handbook are available as it has been customised for multiple universities across Australia.

The BLASST project

The BLASST website Links to an external site. is an outcome of an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) National Teaching Fellowship. The website provides many resources, including good practice examples on how quality teaching with sessional staff is achieved at different institutions, the Australian national standards framework as an online interactive tool, an annotated bibliography, and more.

HERDSA Guide

The HERDSA Guide: Quality Learning and Teaching with Sessional Staff Links to an external site. provides advice and practical strategies to assist institutions to work towards systematising good practice for learning and teaching with sessional staff across all institutional levels. Each chapter targets a specific audience, focusing on the subject convenor, department, manager, faculty, institution, and individual sessional teacher. The guide, which draws on more than 10 years of research in Australia, provides evidence-based criteria for good practice and good practice strategies supported by authentic case studies, reflective prompts and checklists. This guide will be of use to the many groups within the institution, from human resources to Deans of faculties as well as sessional staff themselves.

Journal readings

Two recent special issues of journals have delved into professional development of sessional staff.

The Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice is an online and open-access journal. Refer to the 2013 special issue which focuses on Setting the Standard – Quality Learning and Teaching with Sessional Staff Links to an external site..

The following article is also available through the International Journal for Academic Development (check your institution’s library journal subscriptions):

Harvey, M. (2017). Quality learning and teaching with sessional staff: Systematising good practice for academic development, International Journal for Academic Development, 22(1).

The CLASS project

The CLASS (Coordinators Leading Advancement of Sessional Staff) project was another national project funded to support subject leaders who, in turn, support sessional staff on their teaching teams through professional development. Resources include a set of video triggers, and a series of good practice exemplars. The video triggers focus on:

Cyber communities of practice

One challenge of supporting good learning and teaching with sessional staff is the lack of data or communication strategies that exist in some institutions, making it difficult to communicate effectively with, and support, sessional staff. Cyber communities of sessional staff have evolved as one way of supporting sessional staff. These have been led by both sessional staff and by institutions.

Technological development means that these communities can be located at an institutional level, nationally or even internationally. They are often easily located by names that identify with sessionals, such as adjunct, casual and precarious. Websites, blogs and Twitter provide the foundation for many such communities.

An example of group blogging is that of CASA - Casual, Adjunct, Sessional staff and Allies in Australian Higher Education.

Case example - CASA

CASA brings sessional academics together as an “organised presence” in a “safe and neutral platform” where they can “share experiences and information on the academic career realities”. Created by two academics who consider the casualisation of the academy as “a serious factor [that] we don't know enough about”, this community of practice invites community engagement by supporting sessionals to “speak candidly about their working lives and put forward ideas for change”. As CASA grows, it is moving beyond national discussions to include the voices of colleagues in the US, the UK and Canada (adapted from Luzia & Bowles, 2014, pp. 32-33; in Harvey & Fredericks, 2017).