Coralie McCormack

From Interview Transcript to Interpretive Story: Part 1— Viewing the Transcript through Multiple Lenses

For researchers working within a narrative inquiry framework, the task of constructing an interpretive story is daunting. They need to know, What do we do after we have transcribed our interview tapes? The authors response to this question is described in this article. The lenses of narrative processes, language, context, and moments are the dimensions people use to construct and reconstruct their identity and to give meaning to their lives. These lenses highlight both the individuality and the complexity of a life. Excerpts from an interview with one postgraduate student illustrate some of the views highlighted by each of these lenses.

Integrating information technology into university teaching: identifying the needs and providing the support

Examines the integration of information technology (IT) into Higher Education teaching in the UK. Looks at the current status of IT in universities and states that IT is only valuable if it is used in educationally sound ways. Highlights the barriers to the integration of IT and ways in which it could be more effectively adopted. States that the majority of staff need support if they are to use IT to its full potential and suggests ways of bringing this about. Concludes that this has to be a long‐term goal and that it requires many resources.

Facilitated Group Mentoring Develops Key Career Competencies for University Women: A Case Study.

This article examines the effectiveness of a facilitated group mentoring program for university women. Content analysis across existing sources of data (questionnaires, a focus group, and interviews), collected over the five years of the program’s operation (1999–2003), suggested the program helped women to develop three ways of knowing—‘knowing why’, ‘knowing how’, and ‘knowing whom’—which contribute to enhanced career outcomes. Drawing on the experiences of the women in the case study program at the University of Canberra, and the career competencies literature, the article provides a framework for exploring the career outcomes of mentoring programs for both women and men.

Developing research potential through a structured mentoring program: issues arising

Changes in higher education have meant that academics originally in institutions without a strong research culture are now being called upon to raise their level of research activity. These institutions have implemented a range of strategies to support their academic staff making this transition. One program to develop research potential of staff is reported in this paper. It involved matching inexperienced researchers with experienced researchers who acted in a mentoring role. The individual mentoring was supplemented with a two day workshop covering research skills and also providing an opportunity to focus on the issues, questions and projects of the participants. An evaluation of the program revealed that participants benefited from the support provided by their peers in the program as well as from the support provided by the mentors. The mentors assisted the participants with specific aspects of their research and also with the social and political aspects of research involvement. The program legitimated the helping relationship established between participants and mentors.

From Interview Transcript to Interpretive Story: Part 2— Developing an Interpretive Story

Writing interpretive stories from the views highlighted by the multiple lenses of active listening, narrative processes, language, context, and moments is the second part of the authors answer to the question, What do we do after we have transcribed our interview tapes? Interpretive stories offer an alternative mode of representation of interview transcripts to the traditional approach in which a transcript is fractured into smaller segments of text and then recombined into themes that move across stories, across people, and across contexts. As situated accounts inclusive of the multiple voices of the participant and those of the researcher, interpretive stories open the reader to the possibility of multiple interpretations.

‘We must get together and really talk …’. Connection, engagement and safety sustain learning and teaching conversation communities

Over time, reflective conversations seem to have disappeared from everyday academic practice, yet such conversations have the potential to influence teachers’ sense of self as well as their teaching practice. To investigate the question – how can university teachers develop a community where conversations about learning and teaching continue to flourish? – this article analyses a case study of three groups of university teachers who took up the challenge to Talk About Teaching And Learning (TATAL). Each group employed social models of reflection to construct teaching philosophy statements and teaching portfolios through a process of writing stories as reflective inquiry. The investigation suggested three factors – connection, engagement and safety – facilitated these small groups of university teachers to build conversation communities. Further interrogation of these factors suggested a model to support the construction of ongoing teaching and learning conversations within and beyond higher education settings.

Is non‐completion a failure or a new beginning? Research non‐completion from a student’s perspective

Today’s performance‐driven model of higher degree research has constructed student withdrawal and non‐completion as failure. This failure is often internalized by the student as their own failure. This paper draws on a longitudinal study that examined the experiences of four female Master’s by Research degree students—Anna, Carla, Grace and Lydia—who had either withdrawn, not completed or who had taken a very long time to complete their research. Their stories reveal that they experienced many of the factors recognized in the literature as likely to negatively affect a student’s chances of completion: isolation (social and intellectual); lack of resources; ‘absence’ of, or poor, supervision; and personal and/or professional crises; and additionally, in three cases, tensions arising from a mismatch between an individual’s understandings and institutional conceptions of postgraduate research. Rather than internalizing their experience as one of loss and failure, each of these women ‘wrote’ beyond this expected ending to reconstruct non‐completion of their postgraduate research as a beginning to a positive re‐storying of their lives.

Reconceptualizing student evaluation of teaching: an ethical framework for changing times

Conversations about student evaluation of teaching are longstanding. Ethical principles in university teaching have been suggested. However, conversations that bring together the topics of ethics, teaching and student evaluation of that teaching are rare. New expectations in relation to the evaluation of teaching, for example, expectations about the role of evaluation of teaching in promotion and probation and about the public availability of student evaluation results on institution web sites, require a reconceptualization of evaluation of teaching policies and practice at many Australian universities. It is timely then, to present the issues raised (privacy, consent, interpretation, authorship and ownership, and accessibility) and the guidelines for practice that emerged from a series of conversations begun with a focus on the ethics of online student evaluation of online teaching. The outcome of conversations, an ethical framework for student evaluation of teaching, suggests a set of values, principles and practices to guide both individuals and institutions in relation to student evaluation of teaching in these changing times.

Memories bridge the gap between theory and practice in women's leisure research.

Abstract A gap exists between women’s leisure experiences and the theoretical constructs available to them to talk about and investigate their experiences. This paper suggests that the method of memory-work, by offering women a framework for individually and collectively writing, sharing and reflecting on their leisure related memories, can begin to bridge this gap. Using this framework women participating in this research were able to challenge the traditional view of holidays as leisure. Holidays as leisure were problematic because they could contain four elements not assigned to holidays by traditional leisure researchers: obligation, work, social disapproval and responsibility. Participation in this research led some women to discoveries about leisure in their lives which changed the way they viewed leisure.

Stories return personal narrative ways of knowing to the professional development of doctoral supervisors

Storytellers have always known that there is more to a story than ‘just a good yarn’. It is through stories that individuals construct and reconstruct their sense of self as they learn ‘to be’ in the world. Learning through stories is common across a number of professional contexts. However, storied approaches are under-utilised in supervisor professional development programs. This paper argues that telling, receiving, reading, writing and re-writing stories can open to doctoral supervisors a way to negotiate the chaotic pedagogy of becoming and being a doctoral supervisor. Two examples of storytelling – interactive telling and reading of stories of research student experience and supervisor autobiographical writing – illustrate how the art of storytelling can return personal narrative ways of knowing to professional development in todays performance-driven higher degree by research context.