The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation:Academics’ writing practices in the contemporary university workplace

End of project conferenceLondon, 13 January 2017

Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK

Welcome!

Karin Tusting

David Barton

Mary Hamilton Ibrar Bhatt

Sharon McCulloch

Why study the writing of academics?

• Writing is at the heart of academic work– Research and scholarship– Teaching– Administration– Service– ‘Impact’

• > The everyday workplace literacies of academics can be studied as a ‘nexus of practice’ (Scollon 2002), on which all the forces shaping HE converge

The context: The changing Higher Education workplace in England

• Elite to mass system of higher education– More students– More institutions

• Changing funding structures – student fees– Competitive league tables– Marketisation– Changing relationships with students

• Internationalisation

The context: The changing Higher Education workplace in England

• Increasing accountability and managerialist approaches– Research evaluation exercises• Outputs• Impact

– Teaching evaluations: NSS, TEF

The context: The changing Higher Education workplace in England

• Transformations of communication through digital technology– Enabling distant collaboration– Virtual learning environments– Email as dominant medium for multiple practices– Ubiquitous personal digital devices– Social media – producing new genres and online

personae (professional / personal / both)

Existing academic writing research

• Much research focuses on student writing, teaching academic writing, and student academic literacies (Lillis & Scott 2008)

• Analyses of written academic texts – genre analysis (Swales 1990), metadiscourse (Hyland 2005), lexical bundles (Biber et al 2004)

• Audit, accountability and academic cultures (Strathern 2000)

Existing academic writing research

• Science and technology studies (Latour 1987, &c.)

• Disciplinary practices in Higher Education (Trowler et al. 2012)

• Digital technologies in HE (Gourlay 2012, Goodfellow and Lea 2013)

Studies of academics’ writing practices

• Swales (1998) “Other Floors, Other Voices” – comparison of different disciplinary practices

• Lillis and Curry (2010) – particular focus on non-native English speakers’ publication practices

• Lea and Stierer (2009, 2011) lecturers’ everyday writing as professional practice

Our theoretical framings

• Literacy studies (Barton 2007, Hamilton 2012): purposes; resources and tools; physical settings and activities; domains of literacy

• Sociomaterial perspectives (Fenwick et al 2012, Bowker & Leigh Star 2000): people and material artefacts in networks of activity; trajectories of texts; physical and information architecture of contemporary practices

Research questions

1. How are academics’ writing practices shaped by socio-material aspects of the situation?

2. How are digital communications technologies shaping socio-material processes of writing?

3. How are managerial practices shaping and co-ordinating writing work?

4. > How are academic scholarly and professional identities shaped by the above?

Phase 1: working with individuals

• Interviews with individuals about their writing practices: walk-around, techno-bio, day-in-the-life

Phase 2: detailed study of writing

processes

• Recording writing processes using screen capture, webcam, keyboard tracking, observational fieldnotes

Phase 3: understanding the community

• Interviews with managers, administrative staff, colleagues and collaborators

Participants to dateMaths Marketing History TOTAL

peopleUniversity A 7 7 4 18

University B 7 5 8 20

University C 3 4 7 14

TOTAL no. of participants 17 16 19 52

Plus pilot interviews with 9 people in our own disciplines, and auto-ethnographic work – 67 in total.

Data collected to date

• 97 interview transcripts• 240 photographs• 8 screencapture videos and videologs• 22 sets of fieldnotes

Distribution of writing activities

TeachingResearchAdminService

What have we found?

• Plan for today– Managerialism and its effects (Sharon McCulloch)– Space, place and boundaries (Mary Hamilton and

Karin Tusting)– Affect and digital technologies (David Barton)– Methodological innovations (Ibrar Bhatt)– Response and discussion (Theresa Lillis)– Summary, round-up and implications (Karin

Tusting)

Activity 1: Academics, writing

• Read the pen portrait on your handout• Discuss it with people around you. What do

these tell you (if anything) about:– Socio-material aspects of writing – space, place,

time, tools, networks?– The impact of digital technologies on academics’

writing?– Managerial practices and academics’ writing?