tracing researcher trajectories: the view from the ahrc research network researching multilingually...
TRANSCRIPT
Tracing researcher trajectories: the view from the AHRC research
network Researching Multilingually
Mariam Attia & Richard Fay
BAAL Annual Meeting 2012 6 September 2012
Introduction
Focus on researcher thinking in relation to RM-ly
Reflexive based on our own experiences in RM-ly
Corpus RM-ly website [www.researchingmultilingually.com]
The profiles as outward-facing performances of reflection-
on-action (Boud & walker, 1998; Schön, 1983, 1987)
What the profiles suggest in terms of Developing Researcher
Competence [DRC] and in terms of evidence for researcher
intentionality [as ‘purposefulness’] (Stelma & Fay, in press)
Two Prompts
The profiles were produced in response to two prompts:
1) What is your experience of doing research multilingually?
2) What is your experience of becoming aware of the complexities in this area?
Two Prompts
.. In other words:
1) RM-ly in practice
2) Trajectories into awareness
Researchers who become aware
How does awareness happen?
What intentionality is behind?
What are they aware of?
Data Analysis
Thematic analysis of each profile separately
Looking across the profiles
Identifying particularities and commonalities
1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually
In relation to experiences of RM-ly
Various areas of RM-ly
Linguistics, L2 education, translation, multilingualism,
intercultural communication, ethnography, teacher
education, counseling, marketing, social anthropologies,
Jewish studies, philosophy, health communication,
workplace discourse
1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually
Various RM-ly settings
Higher education (teaching, research, supervision,
examination), schools, community work, clinics, funded
projects, scholarly publishing
1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually
In terms of experiences in RM-ly, we have distinctive
categories of researchers
Researchers who grew up in multilingual contexts (e.g.
Bashirrudin, Daryai-Hansen, Hansen-Pauly, Naz, Rajwede)
Researchers who lived in other countries and later moved
back to the UK and became supervisors to international
students (e.g. Holliday, Robinson-Pant)
1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually
PhD researchers (e.g., Campbell-Thomson, Ganassin, Zhou, Naz, Wang)
Researchers working on multilingual collaborative projects (e.g., Davcheva, Gomez, Risager)
2) Developing Awareness
How does awareness happen?
1) Researchers are made aware through
discussions with their supervisors (e.g., Wang, Zhou)
“Under […]’s supervision, I gradually noticed so many things to which I had
been blind, such as relevant literature written in Mandarin, similar research
studies undertaken in Mandarin with unique methodological insights and
the potential of richer interpretations of the data when drawing on different
linguistic resources” (Zhou)
2) Developing Awareness
experiences of supervising international students (e.g., Louis,
Robinson-Pant)
“The bonus for me is that my horizons have frequently been enlarged and I
have been pleasantly stretched” (Louis)
engaging with the RM-ly project itself (e.g., Davcheva, Naz)
“The series of seminars on “Researching Multilingually” work as a guide to
me for presenting multilingual data in my dissertation write up” (Naz)
2) Developing Awareness
2) Researchers who grew up in multilingual contexts
not aware of the multilingual nature of their work until they
embarked on large-scale research especially a PhD (e.g.
Bashirrudin, Daryai-Hansen, Hansen-Pauly, Rajwede)
“Researching multilingually has always been a natural procedure for me”
(Hansen-Pauly)
2) Developing Awareness
3) One researcher reports being aware of the complexities but
did not have the chance to act upon this awareness (Feng)
“Because of heavy workload and tight schedules most of academics in HEIs
face these days, I never got around to acting upon the issues, even though
I was aware of the relevance of the issues to research quality” (Feng)
2) Developing Awareness
What are they aware of?
Awareness of complexities is related to setting:
MA/PhD research
Literature, fieldwork, data generation, richer sources of
data, analysis and representation, translation, ethical
issues, trust, flexibility, lack of understanding on the part of
the supervisor, extra workload, a need for methodological
guidelines, a need for a RM-ly community
2) Developing Awareness
MA/PhD supervision
(same as previous)
+ collaboration, power hierarchies, policy making,
institutional cultures, culture and identity, geopolitics of
academic publishing
2) Developing Awareness
Community research
Relations with translators, interpreters, research assistants,
and validators, power hierarchies within communities,
socio-political issues, culture and identity, relationship
between language and culture
2) Developing Awareness
Funded / collaborative projects
Power structures, collaboration, linguistic boundaries,
increased awareness of one’s beliefs, issues of editing &
conventions, English as a lingua franca, importance of
dialogue and negotiation, linguistic ownership and exclusion
.. Significant overlapping
Conclusion
Experiences of RM-ly develop across varying research areas
and settings
Researchers who are aware, may do so through different trajectories
They are aware of all kinds of complexities
We have a better idea about how they become aware, how their awareness manifests itself, and what complexities they are aware of
References
Boud, D. & Walker, D. (1998). Promoting Reflection in Professional Courses: The Challenge of context. Studies in Higher Education. 23(2), 191-206.
Schön, DA. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. London: Temple Smith.
Schön, DA. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Stelma, J. & Fay, R (in press). Intentionality and developing researcher competence on a UK Masters course: An ecological perspective on research education. Studies in Higher Education.
