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Three authors offer a methodological bricolage to explore visual, textual, and poetic archives that shape our identities as women academics. We draw on aspects of autoethnography, reflexively engaged, to explore these archives as they lend insight into the construction of personal identity. Understanding both the archives and identity as inseparable from culture, we take up cultural analysis as historical method as we examine, through archival metaphor, the historical struggles of women in academia. We believe that scholarly writing within disciplinary contexts is one way women constitute identity for ourselves and, in so doing, find pathways to write our way into existence. Keywords: Women scholars; academic identity; autoethnography; arts-informed research. Résumé : Trois autrices proposent un bricolage méthodologique pour explorer des archives visuelles, textuelles et poétiques qui ont façonné nos identités en tant que femmes universitaires. Nous nous appuyons sur des aspects d’auto-ethnographie, dans un mode de réflexivité, pour étudier ces archives et la lumière qu’elles jettent sur la construction de l’identité personnelle. Considérant archives et identité indissociables de la culture, nous utilisons l’analyse culturelle comme méthode historique pour étudier, par l’entremise de la métaphore archivistique, les luttes historiques des femmes en milieu universitaire. Nous croyons que les écrits érudits dans un contexte disciplinaire sont un moyen pour les femmes de construire leur identité et, par le fait même, d’identifier des avenues pour trouver leur véritable place dans la vie. Mots-clés : femmes érudites, identité académique, autoethnographie, Recherche fondée sur les arts.

Our group of early- and mid-career women faculty members in a mid-sized Canadian university examined the peer review process and our experiences of being reviewed. Using post-structural feminist li...

What do course evaluation questionnaires (CEQs) do to our teaching and to our perceptions of ourselves as teachers? We are all early- to mid-career academics at a midsized Canadian university who explore how course evaluation questionnaires have affected our academic identities. By using autoethnography and critical reflection, we examine how CEQs shape and restrict our teaching identities as well as the identities of our students. Alternative ways of assessing teaching excellence and promoting communities of inquiry are explored.

Engineering education has long resulted in professional engineers with the required technical skills to meet the profession’s needs. Yet in today’s rapidly changing, globalised world, engineers will need more than technical competencies to meet the requirements of their professional work. Incorporating different literacies in engineering education might help with this shift. We introduce the idea of including critical reflective writing practice on the idea of being an engineer into engineering curricula. Our study explored how fourteen engineering graduate students were mentored on how to reflect critically on their professional identities through narrative writing. The students wrote the narratives while attending a pilot co-curricular Institute that focused on developing leadership, communication, and professional skill-building. We analysed the narrative writing produced by participants using the constant comparison method of analysis. Key findings show that (a) narrative methodologies are valuable for tapping into the reflective non-technical, process aspects of the profession; and (b) critical reflective writing practice was challenging for participants and required comprehensive scaffolding. If scaffolded and embedded in engineering curricula, critical reflective writing practice could contribute significantly to a 21st century engineering identity. Depuis longtemps, l’enseignement du génie a permis de former des ingénieurs professionnels et des ingénieures professionnelles qui possédaient les compétences techniques requises pour répondre aux besoins de la profession. Pourtant, dans notre monde globalisé actuel qui change rapidement, les ingénieurs et les ingénieures vont avoir besoin d’autre chose que de compétences techniques afin de répondre aux exigences de leur travail professionnel. L’incorporation de diverses littératies dans l’enseignement du génie pourrait répondre à ce changement. Nous introduisons l’idée d’inclure dans le programme de cours en génie la rédaction réflective critique sur le fait d’être un ingénieur ou une ingénieure. Notre étude explore comment quatorze étudiants et étudiantes de cycle supérieur en génie ont été encadré(e)s sur la manière de réfléchir de façon critique aux identités de leur profession par le biais de la rédaction narrative. Les étudiants et les étudiantes ont rédigé des récits alors qu’ils et elles participaient à un institut pilote parascolaire concentré sur le développement du leadership, de la communication et de l’acquisition de compétences professionnelles. Nous avons analysé les récits produits par les participants et les participantes en utilisant la méthode d’analyse de comparaison constante. Les principaux constats indiquent que (a) les méthodologies de rédaction sont utiles pour aller puiser dans les aspects réflectifs non techniques de la profession; et (b) la rédaction réflective critique a présenté un défi aux participants et aux participantes et a exigé des échafaudages détaillés. Si la rédaction réflective critique est échafaudée et incorporée au programme d’études en génie, elle pourrait contribuer de façon significative à l’identité des ingénieurs et des ingénieures du XXIe siècle.

Decolonizing involves dismantling deeply entrenched colonial systems of knowledge and power by disrupting colonial patterns of thought, questioning how teaching and learning occurs, and critiquing the colonial practices that are merged into the fabric of higher and adult education. Within this process, scholars and practitioners engage in interrogating teaching and learning approaches and developing a critical consciousness regarding what knowledge is valued and how this value is acquired. Within higher and adult education, limited research has explicitly considered the ways in which conceptions of andragogy and its accompanying instructional approaches might be deconstructed within the context of decolonization. The purpose of this chapter is to deconstruct and decolonize foundational higher and adult learning conceptual and theoretical frameworks that are routinely embedded within courses and programs. The conceptual and theoretical frameworks selected and analyzed include self-directed learning, transformative learning, and action learning as conventional examples of individual and collective instructional approaches employed within higher and adult learning settings. Maōri scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith's (2012) nine characteristics of theory that contribute to colonizing discourses and 25 Indigenous projects/principles are employed as the lenses that frame this analysis. These lenses include social science and methodological approaches and strategies that decolonize populations and promote Indigenous epistemologies.

Research conceptualization is challenging for doctoral and master’s writers, particularly multilingual students engaging in thesis writing or writing for publication. In doctoral and master’s student writing, research conceptualization appears in three genres: problem statements, research proposals and introduction sections or chapters. Swale’s (1990; Feak and Swales, 2011) CARS model is most often used to analyze conceptualization in these genres. While very useful as an analytical tool, the CARS model does not translate well to pedagogy. I argue that Merriam’s (2009) problem/purpose statement and questions (PPS&Q) format provides a flexible and accessible technique to make the process of research conceptualization visible and to help students focus their research throughout the writing process. Navigating problem formulation and gap spotting requires highly complex literacies and Merriam’s method allows students to begin simply and build complexity. While genre visibility provides a way for doctoral and master’s students to access high-level literacies demands, it can also be formulaic and constraining and needs to be taught with critical awareness.

We are teacher-educators who use poetry and drawing as ways to evoke the aesthetic dimensions of care and to encourage the expression of vulnerability and perspective-taking in ourselves and ultimately within our classrooms. This piece describes an auto-ethnographic process surrounding the exploration of teacher-writer identity through the use of “scribble-portraits” and poetry. We created self-portraits and shared poetry related to our conceptions of ourselves and of our personal and professional identities. Central insights related to how poetry and image allow for dialogue and reflection related to a productive space where new identities and aesthetic experiences can enhance the practice of teaching and learning.Keywords: Auto-ethnography; writing identity; self-portrait; academic writing; imagery and the symbolic.Résumé : Nous sommes des formateurs d’enseignants qui utilisons la poésie et le dessin pour évoquer les aspects esthétiques de l’attention et pour promouvoir l’expression de la vulnérabilité et de la coordination des points de vue, d’abord par rapport à soi puis à nos étudiants. Cet article décrit le processus auto-ethnographique entourant l’exploration de l’identité de l’enseignant-rédacteur par le biais de « portraits dessinés » et de poésie. Nous avons créé des autoportraits et partagé de la poésie en fonction de notre conception de nous-mêmes et de nos identités personnelles et professionnelles. Aperçu fondamental de la façon dont la poésie et l’image nourrissent le dialogue et la réflexion en fonction d’un espace productif dans lequel nouvelles identités et expériences esthétiques peuvent améliorer la pratique de l’enseignement et l’apprentissage.Mots-clés : auto-ethnographie, identité rédactionnelle, autoportrait, rédaction universitaire, imagerie et symbolisme.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore Master’s students’ literature reviews to better understand the literacies required for engaging in complexity in this genre and to inform graduate student pedagogy.Design/methodology/approachIn this qualitative study, data were collected in the form of student literature review papers (23 drafts and 23 final versions) from students attending a research seminar course in an all-course Master’s program. All papers were analyzed for citations patterns, genre awareness and levels of complexity.FindingsResults highlight the nature of complexity in this genre – that this complexity is underpinned by discursive issues such as “truth”, “claims” or “facts” that often mislead novice academic writers, and recognizing that knowledge contested in academic contexts is important to understanding and teaching students about complexity in writing.Originality/valueOne of the most challenging writing tasks graduate students face, is the literature review. Literature reviews require sophisticated conceptual maneuverings. Despite being analytical in nature, many students find it difficult to engage with the layers of complexity required in this genre. How do we make the complexity in literature reviews more visible and accessible? The argument in this paper is that understanding the nature of complexity in literature reviews can enhance writing processes and intentional explicit pedagogy.

Literature reviews are a genre that many graduate students do not fully understand and find difficult to write. While the genre, language and rhetorical moves of literature reviews are widely resea...

A narrative approach was adopted to explore the experiences of 13 women who pursued academic careers. Analysis of the personal reflective narratives uncovered themes common to the participants, also the authors of this study, which focused on striving to have work-life balance, personal and professional costs associated with being unwell, and the impact of academic work on families. Findings highlighted suggestions for being well in academia such as choose to engage in work and leisure activities that are enjoyable and maintain relationships. Suggestions for universities included: provide clear promotion and tenure processes, examine workload expectations, promote wellness, and facilitate mentorship. About Memorial University’s Faculty of Education Writing Group In 2009, a group of members from a Faculty of Education began meeting to share their writing and discuss the writing process. We meet regularly and each member takes a turn hosting the meeting. There are no strict deadlines and action items for the meetings; instead, each member takes a turn checking in with the group and asking for feedback or advice on their writing. It is a relaxed and open setting where networking and socializing are as welcome as producing results. The group deliberately set forth to create an environment of non-criticism—we can give feedback but not criticism and we agree to promote support, rather than competition. Through this process, the writing group has served to foster a sense of belonging.

This qualitative research project explored the experiences of women who juggle the demands of family or parenthood while engaging in academic careers at a faculty of education. The researcher-participants consisted of 11 women; 9 women provided a written narrative, and all women participated in the data analysis. The data consisted of the personal, reflective narratives of 9 women who participated in a faculty writing group. Analysis of narratives uncovered 5 themes common to the researchers and participants in this study: genderspecific experiences surrounding parenting, second-career academics, pressure surrounding academic work, human costs, and commitment to work and family. Implications of the findings are discussed with particular emphasis on how a faculty writing group framed by a relational model of interaction can be used to support untenured faculty who experience difficulty balancing the demands of family and academia.

Writing a literature review requires highly sophisticated academic literacies. Many postgraduate students find this genre a challenge. While there is a growing awareness of the need for explicit pedagogy to support students writing this genre, many pedagogical interventions fail to move beyond a focus on citations as a stylistic convention or as a way of avoiding plagiarism. What is missing is a pedagogy that relates citing to the more complex, fluid conceptual and ontological practices that are implicit in academic contexts. The purpose of this paper is to explore the citation patterns, complexity and discursive practices in master's students' literature reviews, and to inform pedagogy.

This paper argues that fostering subjectivity in engineering education will aid engineers in understanding the connections between their own life values and motivations and their career choice and development. By fostering subjectivity in engineering education, we mean linking the person who studies with what they are studying, a definition that can be situated within the philosophy and methodology of Bernard Lonergan. This paper also presents evidence for pedagogical strategies to foster subjectivity based on our definition of subjectivity in engineering education. We analyze data collected during a pilot offering of a co-curricular course for engineering graduate students (the Lead by Design Institute) to determine to what extent the Lead by Design pedagogy fostered subjectivity. The paper concludes with reflections on implications for future engineering education, from the philosophical framework of Lonergan’s model of the human subject, and from our analysis of the Lead by Design pedagogy.

School children and their desks enter into sustained relationships from the moment they connect. No longer restricted only to the teacher or the learner, pedagogical interest has been increasingly turning to the materiality of schooling (Fenwick & Landri, 2012; O’Donoghue, 2010; Rasmussen, 2012; Roehl, 2012; Taylor, 2013). The situatedness of material objects is a dialectic of performative agency. As such, the school desk stands as an innocuous and often taken-for-granted familiarity.

Graduate writing is receiving increasing attention, particularly in contexts of diverse student bodies and widening access to universities. In many of these contexts, writing is seen as ‘a problem’ in need of fixing. Often, the problem and the solution are perceived as being solely located in notions of deficit in individuals and not in the broader embedded and sometimes invisible discourse practices. An academic literacies approach shifts the focus from the individual to broader social practices. This research project emerged out of an attempt to develop a graduate research-writing pedagogy from an academic literacies perspective. We present a detailed case study of one Masters' student to illustrate the results of a pedagogy that moved beyond notions of deficit and support. We argue that to be successful research writers, students need to (1) become discourse analysts; (2) develop authorial voice and identity; and (3) acquire critical competence.

For doctoral students, publishing in peer-reviewed journals is a task many face with anxiety and trepidation. The world of publishing, from choosing a journal, negotiating with editors and navigating reviewers’ responses is a bewildering place. Looking in from the outside, it seems that successful and productive academic writers have knowledge that is inaccessible to novice scholars. While there is a growing literature on writing for scholarly publication, many of these publications promote writing and publishing as a straightforward activity that anyone can achieve if they follow the rules. We argue that the specific and situated contexts in which academic writers negotiate publishing practices is more complicated and messy. In this paper, we attempt to make explicit our publishing processes to highlight the complex nature of publishing. We use autoethnographic narratives to provide discussion points and insights into the challenges of publishing peer reviewed articles. One narrative is by a doctoral student at the beginning of her publishing career, who expresses her desires, concerns and anxieties about writing for publication. The other narrative focuses on the publishing practices of a more experienced academic writer. Both are international scholars working in the Canadian context. The purpose of this paper is to explore academic publishing through the juxtaposition of these two narratives to make explicit some of the more implicit processes. Four themes emerge from these narratives. To publish successfully, academic writers need: (1) to be discourse analysts; (2) to have a critical competence; (3) to have writing fluency; and (4) to be emotionally intelligent.

In the 21st century, practicing engineers are working under conditions of rapid change, both in the technologies of engineering as well as in the contexts in which engineering is practiced. The “grand challenges” of today and of the future require a broad range of knowledge and skills, and the capacity to connect engineering with other sectors. To respond, universities must educate engineers who understand engineering principles at fundamental levels, but who also have nimble design and process skills. This paper presents findings from a research project that developed, implemented and evaluated new diversity-attracting integrative pedagogies intended to tap into the motivations and values that engineering students bring to their work and study. Our initiative, named Lead by Design, responds both to the changing demands on engineers and to ongoing efforts to increase the retention of women in the profession. In this paper, research findings are presented from the Lead by Design project that show the importance of narratives in fostering the reflective practice that can underpin both a sense of identity as an engineer and professional sustainability.

For many academics, the challenge of traversing the competitive discourse demands of conducting research and publishing journal articles while navigating teaching and administrative loads often leads to anxiety and stress. Becoming an academic is often an implicit process where one is left alone to find one’s way. Located in Canada, the Faculty of Education, Memorial University, Newfoundland, has over the past six years, hired a number of professionals: educators and counsellors. Many of these new faculty have less experience in conducting research than new faculty in non-professional disciplines. To counter these difficulties, some new academics decided to form a faculty writing group. The writing group had limited success until members set aside a period of five months to devote to reflective practice. Our qualitative analysis of the data shows that the written reflections were crucial for learning the professional practices of becoming an academic. The data indicated that group members found this method enabled them to reflect on the shifting boundaries between personal/professional, work/home, and novice/expert. The weekly writing also allowed members to explore emotions not often voiced in academic spaces. The purpose of this chapter is to show how reflective writing supported the professional development of group members.

Graduates often find conceptualizing and writing long research projects an arduous alienating process. This paper1 describes a research writing intervention conducted at Memorial University in Newfoundland with two groups of graduate students (Engineering and Arts). One small part of the workshop was devoted to creative "sentence activities." Our argument is that these creative activities contributed to re-connecting students to themselves as researchers/writers and to others in the group. The activities engaged students in language literally, metaphorically, and performatively.

We are new academics involved in the process of becoming researchers. We believe that gathering, reflecting, sharing and producing knowledge are important parts of constructing a strong identity as a researcher that we produce and own rather than being produced by the prevailing academic discourse. We decenter research as a product and bring into focus how as researchers we understand our selves, our work, and our processes. We interweave our stories with those of our research participants who are also new to the professoriate. Our experiences transcend our academic world and we believe that the narratives we discuss may help inform others.

This paper is about the links between culture, leisure and social control on South Africa's gold mines. Based on a series of reports commissioned by the Chamber of Mines in the 1940s, it explores attempts by the industry to retribalise migrant workers using sport and leisure and thus forms one chapter in the broader attempts by the state and capital to shape the culture of Africans in twentieth century South Africa. The paper also makes a contribution to an under‐researched area of inquiry: the relationship between culture, social control and sport in urban South Africa. The first section of this paper sets the scene of recreation on the mines by examining the early efforts of WNLA and a few mines in recreation. The second section explores the emergence of a new phase in the Chamber of Mines’ policy on sport and leisure following the Lansdown Commission and the 1946 strike. In the final section of the paper, a series of reports which were produced in the aftermath of the 1946 strike are considered. Here, ...

A key attribute for success in graduate studies is the ability to conduct research and to communicate research effectively. However, many researchers in engineering do not identify as writers, regarding research writing as the end product of a static template. Novice and experienced researchers alike encounter problems common to all writers such as writer’s block and procrastination, and struggle for clarity of thought and brevity of message. Conventional, skills-based support for research writing exists at many universities, but an interdisciplinary research team at Memorial University has been investigating more integrative and innovative ways to break down barriers to thinking and writing clearly about research, particularly for engineering graduate students. Using the lens of academic literacies, this paper presents “Thinking Creatively about Research,” a research project that developed and piloted a multi-day, co-curricular workshop for engineering graduate students at Memorial University. Preliminary findings indicate that the workshop pedagogy can transform student perspectives of research and writing.