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Afterword to "Writer Identity and the Teaching and Learning of Writing"
No full textAs editors of this volume, we sought a range of viewpoints, including examples of new empirical research, to illuminate the nature of writer identity and its relationship to the teaching of writing. In reflecting on the contributions published here, we draw a number of implications which, taken collectively, constitute a kind of call for action - for teacher education and research.
It is clear that all of us, who are members of literate societies, have histories as writers which contribute to the process whereby we construct personal narratives about what it means to write and be a writer. Some of these narratives are stories of struggle, classroom alienation, indifferent response and failure. Others are stories of writing as a portal to self-realisation, empowerment and mastery in relation to various domains of learning. There is, of course, a wealth of hard and anecdotal evidence linking the classroom experiences of students, the behaviour and practices of teachers, and the narratives of writing identity that form and reform in our students as they travel through the compulsory school sector and into adulthood – where some of them decide to become teachers.
These personal narratives matter for a range of reasons. They constitute the baggage that teachers take into their pre-service education, and will for good or ill impact on their formation as teachers of writing. They also matter because they will shape the predispositions of all adults, who have been subject to the formal education system, in respect of writing as an activity (personal or professional) and a potential dimension of their identity. These predispositions will inevitably have a role in determining the nature of the literacy practices in many homes, and in part may determine the relationship between these and local school practices.
Let us be clear that while all of us have writing identities of one sort or another, based on our personal narratives and our subscribed-to discourses or stories about what it means to be a writer that are implicit in our beliefs and practices, positioning ourselves as writers in our relationships with others, especially in our work settings, is a different matter – an assertion of a different order. We might call this our performed or enacted writing identity, it involves the subtle or overt claiming of a dimension of self that asserts that writing is a crucial element of who we are (ontology) and how we come to know (epistemology). It is also political, because it signifies that being a writer, and articulating my understandings as a writer, are a warrant for my claiming that what I say is valid and worthy of note
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Introduction to "Writer Identity and the Teaching and Learning of Writing"
No full textIn the light of increasing international interest in teachers’ and students’ literate identities and practices, this book addresses the under-researched area of teachers’ and students’ writer identities and in so doing seeks to advance the field. The volume is premised upon two key assertions, namely that writer identity matters and needs recognition and development in educational contexts, and that young people’s writer identities are influenced by the ways in which their teachers identify as writers. It brings together new empirical studies and scholarly reviews on writer identity and the teaching and learning of writing from researchers working in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. The volume explores what it means to identify as a writer, the issues which surround the concept of ‘being a writer’, and the consequences which arise when teachers and students do or do not identify as writers. Several contributors also conceive of and examine writing as a significant form of identity work.
It is only relatively recently that an identity lens has been employed by school-focused writing researchers such that teachers’ and students’ writer identity enactments have been studied in classrooms or professional learning contexts (e.g. McKinney and Giorgis, 2009; Locke et al, 2011; Cremin and Baker, 2010; 2014; Ryan, 2014). Teachers in many countries are expected to model writing and demonstrate their proficiency as writers, even though modelling certain techniques and strategies is a far cry from modelling being a writer in the classroom. Enacting the dual roles of teacher and writer is potentially problematic in school if, as research indicates, practitioners lack self-assurance and positive writing identities (e.g. Luce Kapler et al., 2001; Gannon and Davies, 2007; Cremin and Oliver, 2016). It is equally problematic if teachers are unsure about what it might mean to model a writer identity.
Such issues are compounded by the fact that historically in the high-school context many teachers report being drawn to teach English by a love of reading not writing, and whilst many associate reading with pleasure and satisfaction, few view writing in the same way (Peel, 2000; Gannon and Davies, 2007). In their Australian study, Gannon and Davies (2007) found that a love of literature or an inspirational English teacher prompted most of the respondents to teach the subject, not an interest in writing. Canadian research in the elementary phase also reveals that reading, not writing, forms the backbone of teachers’ literacy experiences and that this impacts upon their classroom practice where reading is profiled over composition (Yeo, 2007). In addition there has been a growing call for teachers of all disciplinary areas to view themselves as teachers of writing (Shanahan and Shanahan, 2008, Grimberg and Hand, 2009). However, there is widespread recognition that such teachers are reluctant to assume the mantle of either teacher of writing or disciplinary writer (Carney and Indrisano, 2013; Locke and Johnston, 2016). Alongside this it is argued that performativity discourses have distorted professional understanding of the nature and purpose of composition (Cremin & Myhill, 2012; Locke, 2013).
A recent systematic review of research into teachers as writers (from 1990-2015) underscores these difficulties. It suggests there are multiple difficulties and tensions including practitioners’ low self-assurance as writers, adverse writing histories, and limited conceptions of writing and being a writer, such that there is a genuine challenge in composing and enacting the positions of teacher and writer in the classroom (Cremin and Oliver, 2016)
The recontextualisation of architecture and accounting education: Views from the academy and the professions
No full textThis thesis reports on a study of the relationship between practice and higher education. It examines the nature of architecture and accounting professional disciplinary knowledge following the recontextualisation and shift of professional learning into higher education in New Zealand. This study set out to examine how and in what way architecture and accounting knowledge and professional identity are shaped by education policy, professional practice, and other contextual influences. In part, it was prompted by a paucity of research on the effects of recontextualisation on the construction of professional disciplinary knowledge, practitioners and academics, and the framing of curriculum content in New Zealand.
Participant data for this study were collected through one-to-one interviews with practitioners and focus groups with academics. This enabled in-depth accounts of the cases of architecture and accounting together through the lenses of a range of individuals. Analysis of participant data revealed convergence across the cases of architecture and accounting, particularly in relation to how professions engaged with higher education.
The recontextualisation of professional learning into the academy was identified by participants as having created issues of authenticity, autonomy and surveillance. As a result, new practitioners were viewed as struggling to develop skills, behaviours and dispositions expected of practising professionals. Critical factors were the lack of authentic practice within curriculum, and professional learning taking place in risk-averse, highly regulated contexts as mandated by the state. Professional degree designers and teachers struggled to adequately prepare practitioners for relational aspects of practice, and did not appear to easily foster classical notions of professional identity, namely expertise, altruism and autonomy.
A critical analysis of documents that shape and otherwise have a bearing on professional learning, practice and professional identity revealed discursive effects of neoliberal education policy and a preoccupation with measurability, surveillance and employability.
There are a number of implications for both practice and higher education that can be drawn from this study. At stake is the nature of professional disciplinary knowledge and the development of professionals as autonomous experts practising in New Zealand society. Recommendations are made that point to changes that might enhance professional education programmes within higher education and that call for imagination, criticality and a re-positioning by the state and the professions. To what extent this can occur within the national and global context is the challenge that is presented.
A number of future research opportunities are identified. Investigation could continue by examining architecture and accounting knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy in more detail. This study could be replicated to consider other recently recontextualised professional programmes and understand the influences being brought to bear. This study, then, adds to research that considers the legitimacy, power and nature of professional disciplinary knowledge, the discursive effects of a mediated, neoliberal education agenda, and relationships between the academy, practice and society.
Minding the aesthetic: The place of the literary in education and research.
No full textThe article discusses the significance of aesthetic as a mode of cognition and means of social cohesion. It notes the relation of aesthetic knowledge with the perception or intuition, the emergence of such awareness into something durable and the response to the embodiment. It describes the evolution of aesthetic delight in the human species, the sense of sense of beauty arising on one's realization of the formal qualities of something, through the poem presented by the author on achievement
Problematised History Pedagogy as Narrative Research: Self-Fashioning, Dismantled Voices and Reimaginings in History Education
No full textA growing disturbance with history’s identity in the New Zealand schooling curriculum disrupted my educational socialisation (curriculum, professional, academic) and inheritance of educational policy decisions. In turn, this disturbance shaped a critical stance in my research and practitioner work. Accordingly, problematised history pedagogy [PHP] emerged as the phenomenon and method of my doctoral study and was activated as a counterpoint to my experiences of normalised discourses of history curriculum and pedagogy. The PHP as narrative research was situated in my history curriculum programme in a postgraduate year of secondary teacher education. The research aimed to engage my history class (research participants as preservice teachers) in pedagogy that involved critique of and reflection on the things we do as history teachers in the secondary curriculum. The PHP was nested within my historicising and theorising of educational experience. Conceptualised as a reciprocal research process, the PHP involved the participants and me in theorising pedagogies, fashioning pedagogic identities, and engaging critically with curriculum conceptions of history. The PHP sought to reimagine history curriculum and pedagogy and identify pedagogic spaces of possibility.
The narrative research was layered as a bricolage of storying that reflected the interdisciplinary nature of my educational socialisation. Experiences as a teacher educator, curriculum and assessment developer and researcher, meant many voices, discourses, and theories were woven into the narrative. This complex conceptual work focused on understandings of narrative; policy, curriculum and pedagogy; critical pedagogy; history; history education, and notions of space. The narrative research was constructed in three parts. Firstly, my narrative selves and shifts to a critical pedagogy stance were historicised and theorised through an autobiographical approach. An original dimension of this storying has been the use of vignettes that illuminate the convergence of educational experience, theorising, and reimaginings as an aesthetic and critical narrative device. The second part of the research narrative arrives at the point of praxis whereby experience and theory came together to activate the PHP. The PHP was placed in the context of the national history curriculum, a review of history education literature, and situated in my teacher education work. The PHP has been represented as a system of meaning through its distinctive research processes of phenomenological inquiry, genealogical disclosure, and discursive self-fashioning. An original form of analysis was conceptualised to deconstruct the participants’ history thinking and their experiences of the cultural politics of the history curriculum. This was conceptualised as a dismantling analysis [DA]. The third part of the narrative recounts the history class’s year of reflexive engagement with PHP. Participants’ pedagogic identities, historical thinking and critique of history curriculum and pedagogy as PHP ‘cases’ in secondary classrooms were dismantled and discussed.
Emergent PHP findings of the participants’ thinking as beginning history teachers include such features as: discourses of embodiment (fears, failure and fraud) prior to practicum; uncertainties about historical knowledge that includes doubt and discomfort about dealing with ‘difficult’ knowledge; disillusionment with familiar historical narratives; scant exposure to Aotearoa New Zealand histories and limited engagement with historical research methods in school and university study; observations of uncritical teacher modelling of history pedagogy; questioning of a strong masculine focus in historical contexts and a recurrent theme of history as violent; history practicum experienced through the dominant orientation of history as inquiry. These findings illustrate the public, accountable and discursive production of the national history curriculum. Reimagined history curricula are glimpsed in the participants’ seeking of counter-orientations of history’s purpose and desired history pedagogy as inclusive and democratic, as social reconstruction, and as an evolving critical project. A reflective critique of the narrative research brings the writing to a close
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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