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LEAD - Learning Enhancement and Academic Development

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14083

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Author: search.filters.author.Adams, Gill

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Becoming doctoral researchers: the role of dialogic activities in fostering community belonging
    (Taylor & Francis Group, 2025-07-23) Adams, Gill; Donaghue, Helen; Turrell, Molly
    The university research environment is seen as key to supporting the development of autonomous, creative and collaborative researchers, with supervisors often positioned as significant brokers, yet successful integration into research communities is challenging, particularly for early career researchers. In this paper we look beyond supervision to map the practices that support doctoral researchers to develop a sense of belonging to and participation in research communities. To elicit insights into the complexities of doctoral experiences, we deploy a somewhat novel approach comprising analysis of talk in tutorials, supplementing this with individual interviews. The findings reveal the centrality of relationships in doctoral students’ sense of belonging. Although supervisors are important in this work, this study demonstrates the complexity of doctoral experiences and the value of interactions and relationships with other human and more-than-human (e.g. texts, objects, physical and digital spaces, technologies) actors. These relationships were fostered through structured dialogic spaces and activities and various informal encounters. This study shows how these planned activities are experienced and how they interact with serendipitous events. We argue for increasing opportunities for dialogue and the use of tasks that encourage critical engagement within supportive small-group environments, to facilitate candidates’ integration into research communities.
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    An embedded genre-based writing pedagogy for early-stage doctoral students
    (Emerald, 2025-03-10) Donaghue, Helen; Adams, Gill
    Purpose Writing is crucial to doctoral students. Increasing recognition of the importance and difficulty of doctoral writing has prompted a call for doctoral students to be better supported in developing writing skills and confidence, and for writing to be taught within disciplines. This paper adds to this call by presenting and evaluating an embedded genre-based writing pedagogy for doctoral students. It focuses on early-stage doctoral researchers. Despite literature highlighting the importance of integrating doctoral students into scholarly practices from early stages of studies, there is a lack of writing research with these early-stage students. Design/methodology/approach This paper audio-recorded small group tutorials in the early stages of a professional doctorate and supplemented this data set with individual interviews with doctoral students. Data were analysed thematically. Findings In this paper, the authors report on four main findings: how genre pedagogy (1) prompted students to revise their understandings of doctoral writing, (2) inspired students to express voice and stance, (3) helped students develop a conscious awareness of writing and (4) influenced (positively) students’ identity formation and emotions. Originality/value While interest in doctoral writing has increased, there is little research about doctoral writing pedagogies for early-stage doctoral researchers. This paper also extends the literature on doctoral writing pedagogies by showing how a genre-based pedagogy helps early-stage doctoral researchers understand doctoral writing and develop their own writing via analysis of genres within their disciplinary community.
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    The role of situated talk in developing doctoral students’ researcher identities
    (Taylor and Francis Group, 2023-10-28) Donaghue, Helen; Adams, Gill
    It is widely recognised that an important aspect of doctoral study is the development of a researcher identity. However, little is known about how to support this. Although previous research has highlighted the importance of discursive engagement for researcher identity development, no studies examine talk or discuss how identities are constructed through interaction. This article examines how doctoral students’ researcher identities develop during tutorials on a professional doctorate in education. Analysis reveals how researcher identities are constructed and accomplished, turn by turn, during study-based talk. Researcher identities are co-constructed with and confirmed by peers, and verified by a tutor who validates students’ actions and describes experiencing similar, often difficult, processes herself. Knowledge and understanding facilitated by discussion prompts identity development and tutorial talk builds a sense of belonging and confidence, acculturating students into the research community. The article makes an original contribution to research by analysing situated talk to show identity accomplishment in action. The article also makes recommendations for both practice and further research which include setting up opportunities for doctoral students to talk and share experiences, and close analysis of doctoral interactional events such as supervision meetings and peer support groups.
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    ‘Working on a rocky shore’: Micro-moments of positive affect in academic work
    (Elsevier, 2019-05-03) Gannon, Susanne; Taylor, Carol; Adams, Gill; Donaghue, Helen; Hannam-Swain, Stephanie; Harris-Evans, Jean; Healey, Joan; Moore, Patricia
    Neoliberal ideologies, marketization and performative regimes associated with recent reforms in universities have exerted considerable pressure on academic working conditions and subjects in recent years. While analysing these pressures is important, it is also productive to consider the ways in which academics engage in moments of resistance by mobilising resources beyond those of critique. This paper therefore focuses on joy and positive affect in the everyday moments of academic life. It utilises the feminist methodology of collective biography to explore ways of making the restricted spaces of our working day more expansive and finding within them unexpected openings for joy. Our analysis of the stories included in this paper traces the mercurial and ambiguous affective atmospheres of academic work. We suggest that joy is founded upon connections with others, that it arises in different academic spaces and that it can lead to revised knowing of ourselves. We argue that the glimpses of joy evident in this paper provoke affective attunement within the everyday, sensitizing us to other fragments of joy and providing strategies to strengthen that resistance.
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    Grim tales: Meetings, matterings and moments of silencing and frustration in everyday academic life
    (Elsevier, 2019-11-28) Taylor, Carol A.; Gannon, Susanne; Adams, Gill; Donaghue, Helen; Hannam-Swain, Stephanie; Harris-Evans, Jean; Healey, Joan; Moore, Patricia
    Universities are dominated by marketisation, individualisation and competition, forces inimical to individual flourishing and collaborative endeavours. This article presents four stories from a collective biography workshop in which a group of women academics explored everyday moments in their university lives. The stories are grim tales of damage, silencing, frustration and cynicism, whose affects continue to reverberate. The article makes two contributions to higher education research. One, its focus on mundane moments offers insights into embodied dynamics of gender, power and affect within the neoliberal university. Two, it demonstrates how collective biography as a feminist methodology can mobilise increased awareness of shared experiences and, thereby, enable participants to work together to recognise and contest the affective grimness of their workplaces.