Literacy practices, academic identities & development

Literacy practices, academic identities & development SRHE Academic Practice Network 13th February 2009 Lesley Gourlay Coventry University

Background • Funded by ‘Preparing for Academic Practice’ CETL , Oxford University • Focus on experience of early career academics • To gain understanding of how literacy practices, roles & identities are interrelated • Questioning dominant models of transition

Transitions • Development tended to focus on generic principles of teaching & learning • Assumption: academic practices known from PhD / communicated in discipline. • Research into academic role: Trowler & Knight 1999, Barkhuizen 2002, Knight, Tait & Yorke 2006 • Transition theorised in ‘apprentice-master’ or ‘communities of practice’ model (e.gWarhurst 2008) assuming novice will learn via ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave & Wenger 1998). • However, transition more challenging & complex in contemporary HE, identities increasingly fluid & contested (Barnett & Di Napoli 2007, Clegg 2008, Archer 2008)

Tacit knowledge & practices • Transition experiences often characterised by confusion • Tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1966) of disciplinary norms (Becher & Trowler 2001) • engagement with valorised literacy practices of discipline tend not to be explicitly developed (Murray & Moore 2008) e.g. writing journal articles • But also normally overlooked everyday literacy practices (Steirer & Lea 2008) • Linked to identity work & presentation of self in transition

Archer 2008 • Investigation of nature & formation of contemporary academic identities • Semi-structured interviews • 8 younger academics • 6 female, 2 male • 4 Russell group, 1 pre 92, 3 post 92

Boundaries of ‘authenticity’ • Archer: ‘authenticity’ & legitimacy central to formation of social relations in academy: • Bourdieu 2001: • HE particularly dependent on how it is represented by its agents, so is both object and subject of rival / hostile representations • Looks at how boundaries of authenticity / legitimacy are set up, enacted, policed by powerful actors • Archer: less powerful social actors position themselves in debates around ‘authenticity’ • (Literature of authenticity reviewed by Kreber et al 2007)

Nexus of competing discourses • ‘Younger academics …at nexus of competing discourses around what it means (or might mean) to be an academic’ (Archer 2008: 387) • Uses Colley & James’ (2005) notion of professional identities as disrupted processes involving ‘becoming’ and ‘unbecoming’ • Emphasis on context, role of age, ethnicity, class, gender & status

Inauthenticity • Experiences of inauthenticity were exacerbated by: • Dominant performative ethos, need for fabrication (Ball 2003) • Age, ethnicity, class, gender & status • Struggles for authenticity and success: a desired yet refused identity • Attempts at ‘becoming’ / threat of ‘unbecoming’

Inauthenticity & performativity • Archer: pressure to produce the right outputs • Neoliberal surveillance, audit & assessment (Davies & Petersen 2005) • Self-governance (Butler 1997) • ‘Governmentality of the soul’ (Rose 1990) • 4 RAE-able publications, bids & subject as ‘set of outcomes’ (Archer 2008: 390) • Unfulfilling & soul-destroying, symbolic attacks • Threatening to authenticity, marginalising &‘unbecoming’ of subject

Personal projects • ‘…they constructed their academic identity as a form of ‘principled’ personal project (Clegg 2008: 17) underpinned by core values of intellectual endeavour, criticality, ethics and professionalism. Professionalism was evoked as the embodying of a principled, ethical and responsible approach to work and work relationships, and they all espoused collegiality and collaboration’ (Archer 2008: 397)

‘Feeling academic’ involved: • ‘Being’: intellectual, critical & knowledgeable; ethical, professional & respectful; collaborative, collegiate & part of wider community • ‘Having’: insider knowledge, credentials • ‘Doing’: research-related activities, writing publications & delivering conference papers

To explore… • How do literacy practices in particular relate to this process (particularly ‘doing’)? • How they relate to emergent identities? • Issues different for mid-career ‘new’ / lecturers in practice & professional disciplines in post-92 context? • What are orientations towards literacy practices, academic discourses & symbolic artefacts?

Methodology • 5 new lecturers recruited via PgCert at UK post-92 university, to recruit 5 more • Initial interviews: career histories, feelings & experiences of transition • Audio journals over 2 two-week periods, focused on day-to-day practices, experiences of new post & identity. • Audio likely to be less onerous than text, may combine with further evidence • Journals basis for two semi-structured qualitative interviews to provide participant perspective. Case study thematic analysis. • Volunteers offered transcripts to edit, can use as evidence in Pg Cert portfolio. • Small-scale opportunity sample. However, hope depth of qualitative data & semi-longitudinal nature will generate implications/ resonances beyond context / with literature.

Participants • Sophie: experienced healthcare practitioner, going back to practice as experience of HE so negative. • Patrick: was senior manager at another university in UK, now lecturer in practice discipline. MA in humanities subject, MSc by research in practice discipline. • Joanne: was healthcare practitioner in another part of England. • Grace: was specialist nurse. Has Law degree and MSc in Nursing. • Jane: East Asian engineering professional, has MSc & PhD in her specialist field. Lived in UK several years.

Academic literacy practices • RAE / bidding for funding not mentioned • Research reading & writing not engaged in except by Jane • ‘Clever’ and ‘scary’, something to be tackled • Desirable but ‘indulgence’ or ‘selfish’: • time away from family needs (Patrick) • should be married with kids instead (Grace) • should be 100% devoted to patients instead (implied by Grace) • Some interest in pedagogic research • Reading & writing practices orientated to providing good teaching / materials • Emphasis on minimal / skim reading to keep up with good practice, using theory to enhance practice

Data handout • Transitions & crises • Transition & calling • Reactions to academic discourses • Sophie’s article

‘Boundary’ literacy practices • Patrick: reads & publishes fiction, competes with demands of academic reading & writing. MA on literature & themes of exile, he identifies with due to working class background ‘educated away from my roots’ • Grace: ‘Always having a book on the go’ lead to marginalisation & resentment in practice setting. Published ebook for patients: 'It was a cathartic exercise for us because we sat, and you know we stood on our soapboxes so long that we decided we needed to do it’ • Jane: struggles with academic reading & writing in English threaten her sense of legitimacy as an academic

Textual enactments of academic life • ‘The authoring and authorising of text is the issue in education’ Ruth (2008:99) • Account of production of portfolio, preparation of CV and submission of research assessment report as ‘textual enactments of academic life’ (99) • Illustration of the ‘terrors of performativity (Ball 2003)

Exiles, imposters, traitors, intermediaries? • Isolated, alone in rooms, not seeing anyone all day: ‘lost’, ‘exiled’, ‘in a halfway house’, ‘at the bottom of the tree’, ‘in the dark’, ‘in this glass bowl’, ‘on the moon’, ‘at sea’ • Not clever enough, ‘How did I get here?’, ‘sink or swim’, ‘need a guidebook’, ‘there aren’t any rules’ • ‘Selfish’, different, stuck-up, ‘special’, family pride • Liminal intermediaries between practice & academia • Translators of terminology & specialist discourses • Interpreters of academic literacies to practitioners

Hybridity / ambiguity • Data highlights issues for mid-career, practice discipline lecturers • Hybridity: • Motivations for taking up roles • Values • Complex, situated, personal pressures • Fragility of identities / authenticity • More subtle forms of performativity/governance at play • Roles, practice values vs. academic values • Comfort with practice discourse vs. ‘academic speak’ • Orientation towards / presentation of self via range of literacy practices (research writing/ teaching writing / boundary literacies/reflective writing…)

Academic literacies & wider theory • Maybin (2000) literacy practices & Foucauldian concepts of discourse (1980), Bahktin’s notion of intertextuality (1980) & Faircloughs’ Critical Discourse Analysis (1992) • Bartlett & Holland (2002) literacy practices & linguistic habitus (Bourdieu 1993) • Collins & Blott (2002) practice-based forms of analysis & link them to wider social contexts

Models/lenses on transition • ‘Communities of practice’ inadequately theorises writing (Lea 2005) • Liminality & thresholds: purchase on role ambiguity /struggle in transition (Van Gennep 1909, Turner 1969) • Educational habitus strong explanatory framework for social class (Bourdieu 1993) • Framing (Goffman 1974) & notion of structures of expectation (Tannen 1993) may hold potential for transitions (Penman & Gourlay 2007)

Implications for development of academic practice • ‘Certainties’ / cognitive focus in much HE research increasingly contested (e.g. Malcolm & Zukas 1999, Hussey & Smith 2002, Haggis 2003) • Meaningful academic development: socially situated & sensitive to variation & hybridity of lecturer identities • Orientations to literacy practices - how new lecturer constructs self in relation to institution / field / power / communities? • Issues of literacies, discourse, power & identity foregrounded? • Avoid managerialist / audit discourses • More recognition of increased staff diversity? • Reflective portfolios – more ‘governance of the soul’?

Thank you • Any questions?

Literacy practices, academic identities & development