Literacy practices, academic identities

1
Literacy practices, academic identities
development

• SRHE Academic Practice Network
• 13th February 2009
• Lesley Gourlay
• Coventry University

2
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

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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.g Warhurst
  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)

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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  

5
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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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

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Data handout

• Transitions crises
• Transition calling
• Reactions to academic discourses
• Sophies article

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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

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Textual enactments of academic life

• The authoring and authorising of text is the
  issue in education Ruth (200899)
• 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)

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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 arent 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

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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)

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Academic literacies wider theory

• Maybin (2000) literacy practices Foucauldian
  concepts of discourse (1980), Bahktins 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

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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)

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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?

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Thank you

• Any questions?