Tracy Hayes
Developing an academic identity - It’s not easy being ME!
Challenging behaviour in children can be really… well, challenging! Challenging behaviour amongst researchers can be even harder to handle – for their supervisors and colleagues - and for themselves! How do you ‘handle’ a creative researcher who is reluctant to use academic language, actively welcomes emotions in research, refuses to put away their toys and insists on playing at every opportunity? What about when they influence and inspire others to do the same? Perhaps most challenging of all is my preference for first-person language in recognition that I am embedded and embodied within my research.
I will be exploring what it means to be ‘different’. Some of the questions I will be asking:
· Different from what…?
· What role does emotion play in my research?
· Does this approach affect my credibility - is it wise to be ‘childish’?
· Will my research be perceived as insignificant if it is communicated in a playful way?
I will also be asking you some key questions for you to consider about yourselves – after all, despite the title, it’s not all about me!
· What about you, how different do you think you are? What does that mean for you?
Research has greater impact at every level (personal, social and cultural) when we have the willingness to take risks, to break with the safety of tradition and to creatively be ourselves – but who is that? Perhaps I’m not being different, I’m just being ME? Let’s explore this together…
Stephen Christopher
THE VOYAGE FROM PRACTITIONER TO RESEARCHER – STABILITY TO LIMINALITY
Having spent decades in practice, many professionals find the move into the world of academia challenging and problematic. Besides entering an unfamiliar milieu, the pedagogic demands of teaching and the pastoral care of students, there is the explicit academic expectation to engage with research. Prominent in the scholarly rite of passage (van Gennep, 1960) for the neophyte academic is embarking upon doctorate research and this paper considers the emotional and nuanced issues the passage from comfortable practitioner to challenged researcher has held for one retired detective. Whilst criminal investigation and academic research may have many functional similarities, a career embedded in a deep occupational culture cannot be shed overnight; the research process is sub-consciously influenced by the enduring emotional and cognitive imprint of practice.
Transition to the academic milieu should witness deep-rooted frames of reference transformed with a re-alignment of attitudes, understandings and points of view (Mezirow, 1991; Goffman, 1974). Empirical rigour and objectivity may conflict with profound subjective perspectives, motives and desire for personal catharsis, causing internal discords and tensions. These anxieties are unintended reflexive and emotional consequences (Merton, 1936) of the journey and it is argued that this constant turmoil of reflexivity (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2010) results in apprehensive liminality (Jewkes, 2005).
Proactive critical reflection (Schon, 1983; Fook, 2006) is one mechanism to ameliorate and facilitate effective emotional transformation and holds the prospect of bringing a balanced and independent perspective to the new research role. However, experience suggests it is difficult to completely eradicate an ingrained culture and personal history cultivated over a lifetime of practice leaving the researcher in a state of contested liminality.
Developing an academic identity - It’s not easy being ME!
Challenging behaviour in children can be really… well, challenging! Challenging behaviour amongst researchers can be even harder to handle – for their supervisors and colleagues - and for themselves! How do you ‘handle’ a creative researcher who is reluctant to use academic language, actively welcomes emotions in research, refuses to put away their toys and insists on playing at every opportunity? What about when they influence and inspire others to do the same? Perhaps most challenging of all is my preference for first-person language in recognition that I am embedded and embodied within my research.
I will be exploring what it means to be ‘different’. Some of the questions I will be asking:
· Different from what…?
· What role does emotion play in my research?
· Does this approach affect my credibility - is it wise to be ‘childish’?
· Will my research be perceived as insignificant if it is communicated in a playful way?
I will also be asking you some key questions for you to consider about yourselves – after all, despite the title, it’s not all about me!
· What about you, how different do you think you are? What does that mean for you?
Research has greater impact at every level (personal, social and cultural) when we have the willingness to take risks, to break with the safety of tradition and to creatively be ourselves – but who is that? Perhaps I’m not being different, I’m just being ME? Let’s explore this together…
Stephen Christopher
THE VOYAGE FROM PRACTITIONER TO RESEARCHER – STABILITY TO LIMINALITY
Having spent decades in practice, many professionals find the move into the world of academia challenging and problematic. Besides entering an unfamiliar milieu, the pedagogic demands of teaching and the pastoral care of students, there is the explicit academic expectation to engage with research. Prominent in the scholarly rite of passage (van Gennep, 1960) for the neophyte academic is embarking upon doctorate research and this paper considers the emotional and nuanced issues the passage from comfortable practitioner to challenged researcher has held for one retired detective. Whilst criminal investigation and academic research may have many functional similarities, a career embedded in a deep occupational culture cannot be shed overnight; the research process is sub-consciously influenced by the enduring emotional and cognitive imprint of practice.
Transition to the academic milieu should witness deep-rooted frames of reference transformed with a re-alignment of attitudes, understandings and points of view (Mezirow, 1991; Goffman, 1974). Empirical rigour and objectivity may conflict with profound subjective perspectives, motives and desire for personal catharsis, causing internal discords and tensions. These anxieties are unintended reflexive and emotional consequences (Merton, 1936) of the journey and it is argued that this constant turmoil of reflexivity (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2010) results in apprehensive liminality (Jewkes, 2005).
Proactive critical reflection (Schon, 1983; Fook, 2006) is one mechanism to ameliorate and facilitate effective emotional transformation and holds the prospect of bringing a balanced and independent perspective to the new research role. However, experience suggests it is difficult to completely eradicate an ingrained culture and personal history cultivated over a lifetime of practice leaving the researcher in a state of contested liminality.