Writing as Academic Practice

On Friday the 13th February I attended the Society for Research into Higher Education Academic Practice Network workshop at the SRHE HQ in London.  This workshop had two elements:

• Barry Stierer (Westminster) and Mary Lea (Open University) led the morning session reporting on their project on everyday academic writing.  Their project Writing as Professional Practice (papers available online).
• Lesley Gourlay

Barry & Mary asked academics to provide examples of writing as professional practice.  They received a wide range:

• E-mail communication with colleagues.
• Business plans and applications for funding.
• Reports, outlines and proformas for both internal
• and external audiences.
• Newspaper articles.
• Letters to students.
• Powerpoint conference presentations.

Often the ones sent were very well finished documents and usually intended for an outside audience.  They followed this up with interviews with the academics.  One of the interesting questions they asked was ‘How did you learn to write like this?’  It proved very difficult for most participants to answer.  it seemed there were implicit requirements, often they cribbed from earlier documents.  They suggest that the documents chosen appear to indicate that the function of writing expresses crucial aspects of their identities as academics.  The interview transcripts indicated that academics are accutely aware of the audience for whom they are writing and this seemed to enable them to switch more easily between genres.

The respondents’ ability or access to work practice around documents is uneven within academia – suggesting power relations are a key part of this.  They seemed to be detecting that academic practice that is not captured in some way by writing is becoming invisible “if it is not written it doesn’t exist”.  The social or collaborative approaches to writing were integral to their workplace relations.  There also appears to be changes in approaches, which appear to be partly facilitated by the introduction of IT but which are difficult to capture

Barry & Mary were careful to point out that none of the issues that were raised in this research can easily be addressed with ‘training for writing’ in a traditional sense.  New academic literacies approach is needed that approaches academics as professionals who are aware of the ‘skills’ – they do teach many of them after all.  However, many have to work through the application of these skills to the particular writing tasks they have and to the complex relationships between the tasks, their identities, their collaborative relationships.

What can this work tell us about writing for publication?  Are there links, contrasts?

Lesley Gourlay reported on a project following early career academics as they grappled with the establishment of their careers.  This was a fascinating project. Lesley has linked in a wide range of theory to in-depth analysis of a small cohort of academics.  In a nutshell she argues very strongly that the traditional model of master-apprentice is breaking down as the nature of higher education broadens and changes.  The transition experience and the nature of academic identities are so complex, that actually the transition is about establishing what kind of academic they want to be and how to match this with their practice, time management and priorities.  These struggles for legitimacy or authenticity as academics resulted in success for some, while others left the profession.  Research was described by some as ‘clever and scary’, while others had political or philosophical objection to the nature of the research publications that were available – ‘indulgent and selfish’

Lesley suggested that the nature of ‘certainties’ of academic life were being contested, raising questions about the traditional routes into academia and and the nature of academic development.

Think about the kinds of writing you have done in the last 7 days

• To what extent does this represent your identity as an academic – is it evidence of you professional performativity?
• Have you examined your own writing practice?  As a way in to the ‘invisibility’?
• Where does your own everyday practice fit into this?
• Are there disciplinary differences in writing – everyday writing and writing for publication?
• Are there institutional differences?

Kenny

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