Frances Kelly

Trouble in Mind: Supporting the Transition to Graduate Research in English.

This article considers the ways in which entry-level graduate students in the discipline of English begin to understand themselves as researchers within a particular disciplinary formation. Analysing data from student and staff reflections on the experience of undertaking a supervised research project, we argue that the ontological shifts and identity transformations that occur at doctoral level are also observable in the transition from undergraduate coursework to graduate research but only in the right conditions. We compare participant accounts of two supervised research projects that, although offered within the framework of a single fourth-year unit, created very different opportunities for transformative learning. This comparison of graduate research experiences raises a number of questions about threshold concepts in English and cognate disciplines, particularly those that have been transformed by the encounter with theory.

Supervision Satirized Fictional narratives of student—supervisor relationships

This article seeks to further dialogue between the disciplines of English literature and Higher Education by offering a different approach to examining the practice of graduate supervision — a comparison of three fictional narratives: two recently published novels and one ongoing online comic strip. It considers what these narratives reveal about the ways in which supervision is represented in cultural practices at this time. What kind of self or individual subject characterizes the research student and supervisor in these representations, and what kind of relationship between supervisor and student is portrayed? Examining representations of supervision offers a mirror, however distorted, of a pedagogical practice, enabling both students and supervisors to reflect on their roles in the supervisory relationship.

The role of the disciplines: alternative methodologies in higher education

The editors of last year’s special issue of Higher Education Research & Development (31:5), on the development of higher education research, noted its ‘multiple series of intersecting cognate fields’ of study while acknowledging the strong theoretical influences from sociology, psychology and philosophy on higher education studies (Macfarlane & Grant, 2012, p. 621). This special issue explores the ways that disciplines typically associated with the arts and humanities contribute to the field of higher education studies. We take our cue from Tony Harland’s (2012) view of higher education research as ‘an open-access discipline’ that includes all-comers from disparate academic origins. Provocatively, Harland queries whether or not research into higher education is research any academic can do, akin to the amateur with a love for their subject but possibly lacking the expertise associated with a professional in the field (p. 706). Whether or not we agree with Harland, we do think there is scope for conscious consideration of the disciplinary knowledge and training that current higher education researchers, whatever their origins, do bring to the discipline. Our initial call was for contributions from researchers with potentially ‘alternative’ methodological underpinnings, which does rather prompt the question – alternative to what? Methodologies in higher education research have tended to be confined to a narrow range. As Malcolm Tight’s (2011) analysis of submissions to Studies in Higher Education demonstrates, the dominant methodologies in higher education involve the research interview method, surveys or multivariate analyses, leaving other forms of enquiry relatively under-utilised and under-examined. It is not just other forms that are neglected, however. According to Sue Clegg and Jacqueline Stevenson, the prevalent method utilised in higher education research, the research interview, is also under-examined, despite its ubiquity. Their article reconsidering the interview as method opens our special issue, a move which may, as the authors acknowledge, seem somewhat perverse given its focus – yet it is appropriate, as the kind of re-examination that they engage in of the forms of knowledge and truths that are produced through research in the field was the hoped-for outcome for the special issue. As is wont to happen when what is normalised is subject to scrutiny, the research interview begins to look decidedly other in their hands, and the insiderstatus of the higher-education interviewer, who is ‘a fish in the water’, a further strand adding to its complexity Like ourselves, Clegg and Stevenson also call for researchers from the broader humanities to bring their own distinctive approaches and ‘sensibilities’ to higher education research, and the second of our papers does this by drawing from two other humanities disciplines, anthropology and philosophy. Cecily Scutt and Julia Hobson re-evaluate narrative and storytelling within higher education research and propose that these disciplines have the ability to explore the ‘unsayable’ aspects of university life overlooked by other methodologies. In this paper, methodology is combined with epistemology to interrogate how higher education research data comes into being and is structured, which allows questions relating to ‘imagination, authorisation and subjectivity’ to be posed. In their apt turn of phrase, ‘ethnography tells smaller

‘Cooking together disparate things’: the role of metaphor in thesis writing

The article contributes to the discussion of writing at doctoral level, which has lately been of interest in higher education literature, by approaching doctoral theses as texts and by highlighting textuality and rhetoric in doctoral writing, issues which have been marginalised in the discourse to date. In this paper I analyse the use of metaphor in two completed doctoral theses, highlighting its use as a rhetorical device which enables these thesis writers to conceptualise their research by drawing on knowledge beyond academic contexts, investing the thesis with individual and cultural significance. Supervisors and teachers of writing at doctoral level, as well as thesis writers themselves, are encouraged to pay greater attention not only to the role of metaphor in thesis writing but to the mechanisms used in the production of meaning in the thesis text more generally.

A day in the life (and death) of a public university

This is a narrative of an actual day in the authors working life at a large public university in the southern hemisphere. It is an enquiry into life, and death, at the university. It attempts to balance a critical and informed perspective with a lived perspective and, as a story that contributes to a developing genre of academic writing, it works to counter the dominant neo-liberal discourse in the university by reaffirming the value of the imagination. It reflects on a remarkable–unremarkable day to show the complexity of being an individual subject, situated in language, hailed by different discourses, feeling and sometimes thinking contradictory things at once, in a contemporary university context.

‘And so betwixt them both’: taking insights from literary analysis into higher education research

This paper looks at ways in which methods used in literary analysis can contribute to higher education research. I start by describing a methodology commonly used in the analysis of literary texts, close reading or textual analysis, and outline how it can be utilised in conjunction with several theoretical approaches in the literary studies toolkit. I then demonstrate how these methodological approaches might work in higher education research through a brief analysis of two texts produced by two universities, focusing on the construction of the doctoral researcher in each. Finally, I close by briefly considering what kinds of texts could be analysed in a higher education research context and argue for a broadening of what counts as data in the field.

Seekers after truth? Images of postgraduate research and researchers in the twenty-first century

Western cultural practices contribute to our understanding of the purpose of higher education and how we are to conduct ourselves in educational contexts. In this article, entitled ‘Seekers after truth?’, I analyse recent works of popular fiction which draw on and contribute to the idea that postgraduate research is a process of locating and amassing clues leading to the revelation or discovery of a truth. These novels re-inscribe the metaphor of the postgraduate researcher as detective or ‘seeker after truth’. This article considers the contradictory and productive meanings that arise from the trope of the researcher-detective. In addition, I argue that, although there are challenges in bringing the work of one field to bear on another, analyses of discourses which are not produced within higher educational contexts can nonetheless promote reflection on educational concepts. In this case, fiction enables us to consider ideas about what it is to do postgraduate research and to be a postgraduate researcher.

Pushing Boundaries in Postgraduate Supervision

Background and context In keeping with global trends, there is a national imperative in the terrain of higher education in South Africa to increase the percentage of university students studying at the postgraduate level (RSA DHET 2012). With this comes mounting pressure to increase the throughput rates of postgraduate students in the country’s universities for economic, social and political reasons, and critically in order to maintain and further what has become known as the ‘knowledge project’. However, as a result of the inequities of the apartheid era, the higher education arena is faced with a complex and diverse student population (Quinn 2012) and ever-increasing student numbers (Snowball & Sayigh 2007) as it attempts to grapple with issues of epistemological access, redress and quality. To date, there is evidence to suggest that our higher education system is failing the majority of students, at both the undergraduate and the postgraduate levels (Letseka & Maile 2008; Scott, Yeld & Hendry 2007). Higher education in South Africa, therefore, must be understood to speak to both the ‘knowledge project’ and the issue of social justice, as without a sustained emphasis on the latter, the country will have failed in its mandate to engage in equal and equitable transformation of the higher education system.IntroductIon: AcAdemIc mobIlIty While the concept of the wandering scholar is not new, the speed and frequency of academic mobility have rapidly gained momentum in the 21st century (Kim 2009). Linked to the notion of the ‘borderless’ university (Cunningham et al. 1998; Hearn 2011; Watanabe 2011), scholars today expect to study and work in more than one country, to present their research at international conferences, and to collaborate with colleagues from all around the world. The result is a multicultural academic workforce in many universities for whom boundaries between national cultures are increasingly being erased and where all members require high levels of intercultural competence.

Antipodean Victoriana: History and Fiction in Annamarie Jagose’s Slow Water

Annamarie Jagose’s novel Slow Water (2003) is a work of historical fiction set in nineteenth-century New Zealand and peopled with historical figures, including the disgraced missionary William Yate. Although the tribulations of Mr Yate comprise a relatively minor historical event, a footnote to mainstream history, his story is one that has recently garnered attention. This article analyses Jagose’s novel through a neo-Victorian frame and in terms of its engagement with history, arguing that Slow Water constitutes a rewriting of Yate’s story to highlight a history of sexuality that intersects with a history of settlement and empire.

Professor Alison Lee: a stellar presence in Australian higher education research

For around two decades and up to her untimely death in September 2012, Professor Alison Lee was a significant figure in Australian higher education research. Alison’s incisive work ranged across several sub-fields of higher education studies and helped broaden the field as a whole beyond issues of teaching and learning. She also brought an eclectic range of theories to her work and, in doing so, inspired many others to do the same. More personally, she offered friendship and mentorship to many other higher education researchers. Led by the editorial team of HERD and including the two articles Alison published in our journal, as well as seven further articles published in Teaching in Higher Education and Studies in Higher Education, this virtual issue pays tribute to an outstanding scholar. By virtue of the quality of her work and her generous support of so many others, Alison will have an enduring influence on the field. Barbara Grant