A PhD In motion: Advancing a critical academic mobilities approach (CAMA) to researching short-term mobility schemes for doctoral students

ABSTRACT

Short-term mobility has been neglected in the higher education mobilities literature, which tends to focus on longer stays such as study abroad or entire degrees. Short-term doctoral mobility schemes are relatively low-cost, potentially high-value investments in the development of early career researchers. Doctoral mobilities research – and the field of academic mobilities research more broadly – is characterised by a positivist, often atheoretical orientation; this article responds to this by introducing a critical academic mobilities approach (CAMA). This approach is rooted in the ‘mobilities paradigm’, and involves (i) questioning the status of mobility as a universal good; (ii) exploring the subjectivity of mobile subjects as dynamic and shifting, but also structurally determined; (iii) a commitment to researching mobility processes as well as investments and outcomes. The article explores ‘autoethno-case studies’ of two doctoral mobility schemes funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC): Overseas Institutional Visits (OIV) and the PhD Partnering Scheme (PPS).     

Anticipating doctoral supervision: (Not) bridging the transition from supervisee to supervisor

Building on existing studies that ask doctoral supervisors how they understand their role, and what has influenced this understanding, this article explores invitations that are issued to supervisors to reflect in certain ways about the role of supervisor. The article calls into question the ways in which supervisors are invited to think about and represent supervision, by professional development courses, handbooks on supervision, and the questions that researchers pose about supervision. This discussion is situated in autoethnographic analysis of a valuable moment in the author's academic career for reflecting on these factors: the author is positioned directly between the role of doctoral supervisee and the role of doctoral supervisor. Through autoethnographic engagement with doctoral supervision literature, the article argues that professional development for supervisors would benefit from more critical analysis of the invitations which are issued to supervisors to reflect on the transition from supervisee to supervisor.     

Widening access to educational opportunities through teaching children how to reason together

This paper reports on a project to explore the impact of promoting exploratory talk as the medium of teaching across the curriculum for 6‐ and 7‐year‐old pupils in three primary schools in the UK. We found that this focus on teaching through exploratory talk (which we call the Thinking Together approach) enabled the children to work together more inclusively and more effectively, improving their social skills and, at the same time, their use of language for reasoning and learning.     

Examining the use of theory within educational technology and media research

Academic research in the areas of educational technology and media is often portrayed to be limited in terms of its use of theory. This short paper reports on data collected from a survey of 462 ‘research active’ academic researchers working in the broad area of educational technology and educational media. The paper explores their use (and non-use) of theory.     

Refocusing Reference Services Outside the Library Building: One Library's Experience

In response to changing user needs, the library sought ways to meet new challenges and engage users outside of the building. Librarians were removed from the service desk in order to offer support at locations around campus. The service desk in the library was staffed primarily by paraprofessionals with librarians providing support as needed. Targeted staff training was offered, and different scheduling models were used over a period of time. Restructuring the service desk was a complicated endeavor but provided a number of benefits including expansion of services. Along the way, challenges were met and recognized as learning opportunities.     

Plugging a gap? Soft skills courses and learning for work

Governments across Europe have been encouraged by the European Union (EU) to take measures to upskill their workforce to ensure growth and social inclusion. Low-skilled workers are particular targets and learning providers and employers are expected to provide learning opportunities for them. However, research shows that those with low skills often lack confidence and require support to engage in learning. This paper examines an European Structural Funds (ESF)-funded course aimed at developing soft skills in low-skilled employees through a course developed by a Scottish college. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with learners from two cohorts of the course to examine their experiences and gains from the course. Learners’ accounts demonstrate benefits from the course but workplace culture impacted on the level of gains. The paper questions the ability of one-off courses to deliver the aims of policy and suggests more coordinated and sustained effort is required.     

Stepping out of our comfort zones: pre-service teachers' responses to a critical analysis of gender/power relations in sexuality education

This paper discusses pre-service teachers' responses to a critical analysis of gender/power relations using examples from a final assessment for an intensive elective unit called Teaching Sexuality in the Middle Years. This unit critically examines gender/ power relations, the production of difference, heteronormativity and pleasure and desire, employing a feminist post-structural framework. Despite the focus on critical thinking, reflection and interrogating structural inequalities in this unit some students were resistant or unable to engage with this approach in their assessments, although appearing to do so in workshops. We consider the broad range of sexuality education discourses mobilised by this unit to try to make sense of what looks like resistance but may be something more complex and difficult to negotiate. The paper ends with a consideration of some of the implications of this approach for practice.     

Classifying curriculum scholarship in Australia: A review of postgraduate theses 1975–2005

This paper discusses an initial analysis of the form of Australian postgraduate scholarship over the last four decades in relation to curriculum inquiry. The study forms part of an ARC funded project on the shifts and emphases of Australian curriculum policy from 1975 to 2005 which seeks to contribute to understandings of how Australian curriculum has developed across states and over time. Analyses of changing emphases within education thesis production are hampered by the lack of systematic and consistent indexing of the theses, but within the criteria and methods we used, the thesis analysis elicited some tantalising findings. These seem to show a changing focus away from curriculum study in the most recent decade of Australian postgraduate theses, following three decades of rising interest in that area of education. But the study also demonstrated inherent methodological and practical problems for doing the inquiry itself, in terms of (1) the ways we categorise and think about education as a field; (2) limitations of the archiving and coding practices we have put in place to sustain a sense of our own history and the need to improve these; and, (3) potentially, research assessment now in train, and its intention to categorise work via “field of research” codes.