Bringing together casual academic employment with discipline standards

While there are numerous reports in the higher education sector about the rising levels of academic casualization in the workforce, there has been little research into the impact of casual teaching (including short term contract positions) on maintaining and contributing to discipline standards and graduate learning outcomes in the Creative Arts. At the meeting to inaugurate the existence of the CALTN, there was widespread acknowledgement that casual and sessional staff are a necessary and vital part of creative arts teaching. Yet what happens to the pedagogical framework and disciplinary standard if casuals are not mentored in learning and teaching processes? Who provides this mentoring? And how might this professional development enable the best or most appropriate casual teachers to be permanently employed in a competitive academic market? This paper, then, is about the outcomes of a learning and teaching pilot project that sought to establish a process and model within a creative arts department (Media, Music, Communications and Cultural Studies: Macquarie University) for the professional and pedagogical development of casual staff that would maintain discipline standards and graduate capabilities. This process was explored in order to not only improve the standard of casual teaching in general that benefits both the teacher and the department/University, but to provide invaluable professional development for a sector of the academic workforce often denied this development altogether. The study highlights the possibilities that come from providing professional development to this often marginalised sector of the creative art workforce.