Success!
I have managed to write my second case study (1,700 words) for the Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy claim that I'm preparing way ahead of schedule.
There is an ease associated with writing from a scholarship rather than a research orientation that I'm thoroughly enjoying.
I didn't know I could be so productive.
Scholarship definitely suits me.
Today I’m attending a writing retreat. First off, we’ve been told about the upcoming REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2021. I found the presentation both inspiring and daunting. In my head, I have moments of thinking I can do high quality research and moments of thinking I can’t do this. So I was swinging from one extreme to the other throughout.
During the presentation, something caught my attention that I’d like to share here. ‘REFable’ work should reflect ‘scholarship of teaching’ rather than ‘scholarship for teaching’. I think I understand the distinction and it seems to be a valuable one: practice-based scholarship is seen as being more valuable than for-practice scholarship. I’m not sure but the idea seems to be that the significance of scholarship should go beyond the classroom and the institution and be useful for practitioners more generally.
This is related to the need to answer the oft-cited ‘so what’ question. Whatever we do as scholars, ideally, should have implications for others in our field. A less often used question is ‘and then what’, which I am taking from my preparation to claim Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy here in the UK, meaning what is to be done about the knowledge gained through our scholarship work.
Throughout the presentation I kept thinking about how scholarship sits within this research framework. We were told, and I believe this was said in good faith, that scholarship counts as long as the work is significant and original in our field, and has been done rigorously. For instance, the seminal 2009 Worton report of modern languages in the UK would now get four starts, the highest ranking.
And, since I’m at it, what is my field? The presenter described hers very clearly as being at the crossroads between inclusion, educational technology and special needs. Mine is languages and education, though I’m interested in so many other things (leadership, translation, counselling, technology…). The ingredient I’m missing, I was told at the end of my one-to-one mentoring session, is confidence.
Our stories matter and listening to them matters more. But since, when we write, we cannot be in control of others listening or not, my strategy of choice would be not so much to build my own identity by putting myself out there.
This is very personal but I feel uncomfortable just ‘talking’ (writing) about myself. I’d rather include other people’s stories in my story, showing that I have listened to others, to their stories, and somehow that has been integrated into my story.
I am more interested in building a collective we, engaging with the world, because this business of producing subjects is the result of a focus on the individual, which to me is a root cause for the isolation that we often lament. Scholarship to me is learning with others.
I've always liked reading and writing essays.
I wonder how essays relate to the concept of scholarship. Not so much in the sense of academic essays students write (although I always like connections with learning, such as the ones included in the etymology of ‘scholarship’), but more in terms of texts developing the author’s argument. Perhaps ‘essays’ for scholarship can be more or less personal, reflective and informal.
I wonder if it is possible to combine the personal and autobiographical with literary, scientific or political themes, including going as far as abstract or universal conclusions where appropriate.
I love the fact that ‘essays’ derive from the French ‘essayer’, to try. Trying to form and put forward ideas and arguments is definitely something I can take a lot of pleasure from.
I've just attended a great and intriguing Narrative Scholarship workshop here at the OU. I won't mention the names of the project leads because this is my personal take on things and I don't want to misrepresent them.
I'm trying to get my head around what scholarship is and in what ways it differs from research.
This is the Oxford dictionary definition of scholarship:
I came out of the session with more questions than answers but reassured that scholarship has huge potential for me personally, particularly narrative scholarship, as I make sense of my past and move forward to a future as a scholar that makes me feel comfortable in my skin.
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