What does 'academic practice' mean?

Here we invite comments on 'What we mean by Academic Practice: Unpacking the meaning" (see http://www.learning.ox.ac.uk/cetl.php?page=263).

As a starter, here is one section of the full text - What is Academic Pracitce?

There are multiple representations of academic practice. However, globally, there are commonalities, shared notions of how academic work is distinct from other kinds of work (e.g., business, industrial, governmental, voluntary sectors). In other words, this practice is academic partly because it takes place in institutions with mandates to provide higher education, and usually to contribute to knowledge. This impacts their structural nature, which is distinct from say a business. Further, the fact that most academics have strong loyalties to their discipline, in some cases, stronger loyalties than to their institution also makes the practice distinct. At the same time, there are diverse disciplinary, departmental and institutional cultural-historical traditions that underlie the variation in what is understood as academic. However, across this diversity, academic practice has been traditionally understood to encompass three forms in varying degrees:

(1) forms of inquiry, from scholarly examination of documents to empirical research – whether applied or pure, commissioned, individual or collaborative

(2) forms of teaching, working with undergraduates, postgraduates and postdoctoral fellows in the broadest sense - including, for instance, planning, assessment, supervision, advising and mentoring

(3) forms of service to the institution, the discipline, profession and larger community, e.g., chair/member of an institutional committee, organizer of a disciplinary conference, consultant for a charity.

Please feel free to comment on this or any part of the full document. We hope to stimulate a lively online debate, and particularly welcome perspectives from particular disciplines.