University of Technology, Sydney

The research function of universities has both expanded and significantly changed its character with the growth and reorganisation of the higher education sector in over the last several decades. Rather than being an elite activity undertaken by specialised groups in a small number of institutions funded specifically for the purpose, ‘research’ now refers to the ‘normal’ work expected of all academic staff, as this can be read from institutional texts such as workload formulae and promotion criteria. This shift has had profound implications for both individual staff and whole institutions as they struggle to redefine the nature of their work and to adopt new practices for which they have not been systematically prepared. A significant need has emerged for the development of research capacities for academic staff in a variety of contexts: in the new universities and in new disciplines and professional fields formerly not part of the university sector.

As higher education has expanded and re-structured, academic development has emerged as a specialist field to meet new needs. Formerly, the culture of autonomy engendered within the older universities saw development for individual academics as an matter of direct enculturation or perhaps implicit apprenticeship, within a culture of laissez-faire collegiality. In the new environments this ‘invisible college’ was not adequate to the requirements of new cohorts of students, new disciplines and professional fields and new kinds of higher education workers who had to come to understand what it meant to be an ‘academic’. Explicit attention to developing the capacities and practices of academic work was needed and a specialist field emerged over time to meet this need. Yet, driven by the very visible needs of expanded and diversified cohorts of students, the new academic development centres focused their attention predominantly on the improvement of teaching (Boud 1999). By and large this remains the case until today. Academic development for research has been substantially neglected and little documented.

This paper argues the need for systematic attention within the field of academic development to be devoted to the development of capacities for and practices of research. Within the former non-university sector and the new professional areas, new cultures of research and scholarship need to be forged. In both of these areas there are substantial numbers of staff without doctorates or with research training in disciplines different to those they currently practise. While there have been significant completions of doctorates, the experience of doing a research degree—often on a part-time basis with many home and work pressures—has not been sufficient to complete a research training and produce competent and confident ‘autonomous’ researchers. Systematic attention to the further developmental needs of individuals and the bodies they belong to—departments or faculties—is necessary to bring about successful cultural change in an increasingly normative and performative environment.

The paper further situates its case for research development within a conceptualisation of academic development as a ‘local practice’ and as a practice of peer learning in the workplace (Boud 1999). It argues that development activity in relation to research and scholarship makes little difference in the long term if it is isolated from ‘normal’ academic practice or from the particular setting in which people operate. Such activity needs, we argue, to be directly linked to the development of university fields of practice and the enhancement of peer relationships within local settings. Approaches to research development which build such relations and which occur in sites of learning close to the context of daily work are thus preferred over those organised centrally within the institution. In this way, this paper builds and elaborates on a conception of academic development articulated in Boud (1995, 1999) which distinguishes itself from the overwhelming emphasis in academic development literature on centralised provision.

To elaborate our argument, we discuss an example of a local research development program in which we have been involved in our own workplace, the Faculty of Education at the University Technology, Sydney. Research writing groups were established in the Faculty in 1996 with an explicit brief to promote research and to develop the research capacities of members of academic staff through a program of writing for publication. While this development rests on a set of assumptions about the role of writing in research, elaborated in the next section, it also exemplifies a set of principles about the need for a contextualised and localised approach to the development of academics.

A common understanding of the relationship between research and writing is a linear one, derived most obviously from scientific conceptions of research. A grant application is written for a specific project of research; following the achievement of the grant, the research is carried out; then follows the writing ‘up’ of the research for publication and the next round of grants. In this conception, ‘writing’ is the recording of results from ‘research’. ‘Research’ we suggest has come to be positioned in large part within a trajectory similar to this even in non-science fields.

A basic and major problem with this conception of research is that it functions to exclude many if not most from even starting upon the trajectory. Competitive grants are hard to win and ‘track records’ govern the competition. The privileging of this particular ‘narrative’ of research also serves to subjugate older traditions of scholarship within the non-science disciplines. Writing books was the scholarly practice characteristic of the arts and humanities before research funding policies and formulae came to redefine the nature and the structuring of this aspect of academic work. Within the terms of these formulae, ‘research’ has came to stand in for all kinds of scholarly practice.

Relationships among research, scholarship, teaching and indeed academic work more generally have undergone significant shifts in the context of the broader changes in the higher education sector. For example, whereas in past years in Australian universities there were generally agreed distinctions between research and scholarship, and research and teaching, sharp distinctions are no longer sustainable. Indeed, Ernest Boyer’s (1990) positioning of ‘scholarship’ as an over-arching term, subsuming spheres of activity such as discovery, integration, application and teaching, actively attempts to reshapes these activities in relation to each other. Yet despite the blurring and redefining of terms, ‘research’ has emerged in both current policy and the popular university imagination as a privileged term, the binary ‘other’ to teaching and, significantly, to the work of those formerly positioned within non-university sectors and fields. This privileging of the term, together with the persistence of the science-based conceptualisation of its relationship to writing, is a key factor often inhibiting the development of productive and enabling scholarly dispositions and capacities in relation to what we will term, for convenience, research-writing.

The writing group initiative discussed below began with the assumption that it is productive to reverse the normalised direction of the research-writing relationship when considering research development (Lee 1998). The concept of scholarship, broadly defined, allows a more inclusive account of ‘proper’ or useful foci for writing, including the work of teaching and curriculum development within a particular discipline area or field of professional practice, as well as more ‘traditional’ forms of research-writing. Most fields support educational journals and journals of professional practice in addition to conventional, disciplinary research-based journals. The work of high quality teaching and curriculum development in any field requires a currency with the key issues in the field and scholarly engagement with these in the local site of practice. As higher education continues to change rapidly, new sites for scholarly enquiry open up, including flexible learning developments, new forms of internationalisation of higher education provision, learning partnerships with industry, etc. It could be said that, in the light of the current challenges of change in higher education, there have never been more reasons to write. Reflection, review and analysis can be writerly activities pursued without the necessity of funded research, in the first instance.

The developmental argument is that, by beginning with writing, skills, capacities and dispositions can be developed in a supportive peer environment. Writing groups serve many developmental functions. They disrupt the commonplace received fantasy of writing as a solitary activity (Gere 1987, Brodkey 1996) and build on those aspects of academic writing that are collegial. What is explicitly acknowledged is that scholarly writing, while often carried out alone, enters into a network of peer relations: conference presentations, collegial critique of draft texts, the peer review process in journal publishing, etc. Writing groups can function to demystify the processes of scholarly writing and publication, to build skills of review and critique and to provide early ‘audiences’ for draft texts. There are many accompanying personal issues for those undertaking such development, which can be summed up as concerning what is at stake in changing work practices and commitments from a predominantly teaching culture to one which also fosters and rewards research. These issues emerge very clearly in the next section. Crucially, writing groups offer a place where issues and dilemmas about research and writing can be ‘externalised’ from the individuals who experience them and considered in terms of the institutional conditions of their production (Grant and Knowles 1999, Saunders, Sampson and Lee 1999).

The University of Technology, Sydney was established from three Colleges of Advanced Education. The Faculty of Education at UTS was formed in the early 1990s from departments in two of these. It is located on two campuses with different histories and different cultures separated by 18 kilometres. During the period covered in this paper the structure of the Faculty was reorganised from two Schools—Adult Education and Teacher Education—to a unitary structure with no formal Schools or Departments and with greater interchange of staff between the two campuses. While the origins of both parts of the Faculty were in teacher training colleges, great strides had been made in establishing a research culture. Research centres had been established, commissioned research grants were successfully sought and publication rates increased substantially. Until the change of Federal Government in 1996, national policy agendas had focused on training reform, language and literacy and post-secondary education in general, and Adult Education had benefited from those expansionary times. Across the University there had also been a variety of research development initiatives for staff, including workshops and seminars, a research mentoring program and release-time to complete doctorates.

By 1996, university-wide support for research development had been reduced and the substantial increase in research funding and publication output had started to plateau. Buoyed by its earlier success, the Faculty wanted to strengthen its achievements and develop further in research. To do this required a focus on staff. A need for the Faculty to provide explicitly and systematically for research development was identified. Many staff had gained doctorates in recent years or were close to completion, most had made contributions to conferences, but research and scholarship was being seen by too many as something undertaken in addition to teaching responsibilities. Research was starting to be included as part of workload formulae and seminars and workshops about publishing had been conducted. In this climate the notion of forming staff groups oriented around writing for publication began to be discussed. The conjunction of a staff member with a professional interest in academic writing (AL) and the need for initiatives to be identified as part of a Faculty Strategic Plan saw the first writing group started.

According to the call for participants, the group was ‘devised for academic staff who are either new to academic work or who are changing the nature of their work and their role in the Faculty’. Members were invited to self-identify in this category by contacting the convenor. Some individuals were encouraged through informal approaches, since one of the assumptions was that some prospective members would not be highly confident and might be fearful of taking the step of committing themselves to scholarly writing in a group. As a commitment of the Faculty to this initiative, teaching release equivalent to one hour of class contact was provided to those who took part. It was formed from staff from Adult Education, on one campus only.

The response to the invitation was quick and positive and a group was formed with eight members and a convenor. This group had a life of two years and remained quite stable in terms of membership, with principal changes being the addition of two new members in the second year. The group met fortnightly and then weekly for two hours each time. The initial conception of the group’s functioning was that it would involve ‘a combination of workshops and individual consultation with a view to fostering collaborative self-support activity, and generating concrete outcomes for each participant as appropriate for their level of skill and experience and their own goals’.

The convenor of this group was an experienced writer who had had considerable experience in group-based research-writing development activity. In particular, she had developed successful writing workshops for research students as part of learning development initiatives at another university and saw that academic staff in the Faculty might benefit from similar kinds of developmental support to develop their research and scholarly writing practices. Her particular role in this group was to initiate writing tasks and activities and to develop a certain quasi-technical understanding about language and writing, as well as to facilitate the development of a peer-learning environment.

Because of the nature of this first group it was necessary to approach the task of setting goals and securing a common commitment to those goals with considerable sensitivity. It was clear that the agenda was not, in any straightforward way, just about ‘writing’ but about the positioning of the participants within a changing workplace context and its attendant pressures and challenges. To give a sense of how the group proceeded to clarify its goals and its tasks in its early stages, this reflection on the experience of the first few months by one participant is instructive:

The group worked in its first few months to identify overarching themes within which it would conceptualise its agenda and organise its repertoire of tasks and activities. These emerged as: questions of identity, know-how and practices around writing for publication, and writing

Identity.
Members of the group brought many implicit assumptions to the first few meetings. The initial task of the group was to surface these and it was in this process that the three overarching themes were articulated. For example, notes from these meetings, and the reflective and evaluative writing undertaken regularly by participants, identified assumptions about writing that had remained largely unconscious until interrogated through the group process. The securing of confidentiality was essential in creating the space where these could be surfaced and spoken, their irrationality acknowledged and worked through. It was not until several months into the group’s life that general agreement was secured to begin the task of reviewing draft papers participants submitted.

The question of ‘identity’ was a major issue for many participants in the group. Members felt they were being asked to make a radical shift from having been ‘adult educators’ to becoming ‘academics’. Issues of fear and desire worked together to impact often dramatically on images of personal competence. Loss of old identities and sets of ‘core’ values as a particular kind of worker-educator needed to be acknowledged and worked through. The group became a place (the only place, members believed) where these matters could be articulated, shared and processed. The question of identity cannot be over-estimated and the therapeutic role of a peer group at a time of break-down and change in university work needs to be better understood.

Know-how
‘Know-how’ was a term which came to overlap with the notion of identity, as group members came to take up certain kinds of position which enabled them to write and publish. That is, what they came to know became, over the life of the group, part of who they were. In practical terms know-how was marked off from knowledge about writing itself and encompassed such matters as:

• using conferences strategically
• identification and analysis of key journals and the practices of submission
• positioning in relation to ‘rejection’ letters
• time management strategies

Writing
The theme of ‘writing’ involved an explicit attention to the practices and processes of text production. The group developed a language for talking about writing, which included a focus on such things as genre, rhetoric and the grammar of academic English, as and when it was useful to explicate effective writing strategies. Activities to develop writing, including overcoming blocks and developing structure for papers, were drawn from the literature on teaching writing, especially composition studies (eg. Coe, 1991). Many of these activities actually involved producing writing during group sessions, a deliberate strategy to build confidence and generate text that could be worked on between meetings. These were of particular benefit in the early months of the group but remained a highlight of the learning that group members reported had accrued from their participation in the group. Many reported that they used their new knowledge about writing in their teaching and assessment; one effect of this was to further break down the mystique of scholarly writing, as they transferred knowledge and expertise from writing to teaching, from reading and reviewing peers’ writing to assessment of students’ texts.

During the life of the group the following took place:

• Surfacing and discussing assumptions about writing and images of personal competence as writers; discussion and clarification of writing goals
• writing exercises designed to free up ‘blocks’ and to clarify thinking about the structure of a paper; exercises were developed to build skill and confidence in relation to writing and a language for talking about writing; sharing useful articles on writing
• problem identification and problem-solving in relation to barriers to writing, goal identification and problem solving in relation to achieving goals; discussion of successful writing strategies

• tasks related to processes of writing and publishing, such as analysing the content and direction of a refereed journal to ascertain what are the arguments going on between its contributors; interviewing experienced writers to find what strategies they use

• establishing procedures and practices to optimise achievement of goals, for example the establishment of learning partnerships which would meet between group meetings; and
• sharing and analysing draft papers in the group

This list illustrates clearly the point above that this agenda was not simply about ‘writing’ in any straightforward way but rather about the series of cultural practices around writing. It is not until the last dot point that ‘writing’ in a literal sense arrives.

Spurred by the need to address the research development needs of a wider group of staff in the Faculty and the overwhelmingly positive views of those who had taken part, a second writing group was formed a year later. It was designed to ‘meet the needs of those staff who have already published something but who wish to extend their publication activities’. It was seen to ‘be of most benefit to those who have already had at least a paper (not necessarily refereed) or a chapter in a book published, but who do not at present view themselves as regular writers or researchers.’ It included staff from two campuses who hitherto had had little opportunity for professional interaction with each other.

There were seven regular members plus a convenor (DB). They met at first weekly then fortnightly over a semester. Some members continued in subsequent groups. The aims were stated as ‘to provide support for staff who wish to write for publication. The emphasis will be on fostering collaborative self-support activity and on generating concrete outcomes for each participant as appropriate to their level of skill and experience and their own writing goals.’

The invitation indicated that ‘Participants will need to make a commitment to participate in all the meetings—they will be scheduled at a time to suit those involved—and to engage regularly in writing throughout the year.’ ‘The emphasis of the sessions will be on meeting the needs of participants and the agenda will be strongly influenced by the interests of those who take part. It is expected that there will be regular writing tasks. These can involve both the continuation of writing projects already commenced as well as the starting of new ones. It is expected that participants will commit themselves to developing a paper to the stage of submitting it for publication during the life of the group.’

The convenor was a professor in the Faculty with considerable experience of writing for publication, book and journal editing and academic staff development, but with no background in teaching writing. He saw the emphasis of this group as being less on the practice of writing per se, more on writing as part of academic practice, that is, as part of what academics do as normal work.

The starting point of the group was the surfacing and challenging of assumptions about the group. The following were acknowledged as common assumptions:

1. everyone in the group can already write papers, but not necessarily yet of the kind they wish to.
2. the emphasis of the group is on academic and scholarly writing for publication in all its many forms.
3. everyone has something for which they have some basic material and on which they can write this year (ie. that a lot of research and analysis is not necessary in order to get started).
4. everyone will prepare for each meeting and write something between meetings.
5. it is not necessary to have a doctorate to write, but if you are enrolled in one it is necessary to write as well.
6. participation in the writing group is not a substitute for completing a research degree.

The group proceeded with a dual agenda. In each meeting a balance was sought between dealing with some topic about writing and publishing and giving feedback on drafts. Drafts could be anything from a sketchy outline for a paper to a paper almost ready for submission. After a few meetings, the convenor summarised what it appeared the group wanted as an agenda (See Appendix). This was not used as systematic syllabus—that would have been incompatible with the emerging dynamic of the group—but as a point of reference when deciding what might be considered.

Although this group of staff had more experience in writing than the first group and about half had recently completed doctorates, many of the themes of the first group also recurred. There was a focus on the development of collegial relationships and identity as academic writers; ‘know-how’, though this manifested itself in different ways; and productivity as publishers.

Development of collegial relations.
The mixture of staff from different locations and disciplinary locations, far from being a limitation proved to be an important feature of the group. Within the group were staff involved in science and mathematics education, language studies, special education, popular education and vocational education and training. They were using disparate theoretical frameworks and had different professional/academic orientations to their work.

At first, members of the group expressed views that indicated their doubts about their ability to contribute much to those in other academic areas. As the group progressed, the commonalities of interest in constructing a paper, of understanding the journal publishing process and sharing drafts led to a realisation, shocking to some, that they really were colleagues engaged in the same business as each other with common concerns and desires. This became even more tangible when members of the group spotted issues in the drafts they were reading which linked directly to matters they had been concerned about in their own work. Although, for example, one person was engaged in a structural critique of globalisation and another in the role of the special educator in the classroom, the challenges of writing brought them together in a context held together by deeper educational commitments than the area or the forms of conceptualisation used. To share what they cared about with colleagues doing the same, created a space of genuine academic and educational engagement absent from day-to-day meetings in the Faculty.

A pivotal point in the development of the group occurred during the third meeting when the convenor was asked if he would be bringing his own writing to the group. His agreement to do this and the subsequent enacting of this decision seemed to cement a commitment to peerness in the group and showed that it was for the benefit for everyone, not just the least experienced.

Know-how
Even though many participants had completed research degrees and most had already published something in a journal, their level of knowledge about publishing was surprisingly low. They were familiar with the journals in their field, but as readers of the content published, not as writers or discriminating consumers of journals as publishing vehicles. They appreciated discussion with a journal editor to find out what went on ‘behind the scenes’ and to understand how to read the significance of the letters written by editors which accompany referees reports. Less emphasis was placed on understanding processes of writing, and perhaps more on understanding the experience of the reader (other group members) who interacts with what has been written.

Productivity
As might be expected, given the composition of the group, there was a much greater emphasis on productivity than in the group of new researchers. All were committed to producing at least one paper or book chapter ready for submission during the life of the group. All were successful in a tweleve month period. Ten papers discussed in the group were made ready for publication and at the time of writing almost all had been published.

Towards the end of the semester, prompted by a suggestion that the Faculty might not continue resourcing the group unless it was clear that some benefit was being obtained, a number of ‘measures of success’ were generated. Most of these have already been discussed in relation to one or other of the two groups, however, the ‘extending publication’ group members focused especially on:

• Support in own writing. Encouragement to produce—deadlines, peer expectations
• Adding of intellectual quality. Shorter time to acceptance.
• Efficiency: techniques for time, saying no, strategies, etc.
• Importance of affirming the importance [of research-writing] in our lives

The convenor was overseas during the following semester and his place was taken by another professor from the Faculty, quite different in personal style. Some members continued in the group, some joined a group for staff undertaking doctorates, other discontinued participation (and in one case rejoined a semester later). A few new members joined. The central emphasis on providing feedback on writing continued throughout.

Following the initial two writing groups, others have formed and the group for academics with limited writing experience has divided and been reformed with additional members. There has been strong support from participants for the group designed for staff enrolled in research degrees (this includes staff enrolled in other universities), but lesser support for a group focused around writing research grant proposals. At the present stage of development of the research culture, grant writing seems to be such an intensive and deadline-driven activity, that the notion of development of a proposal over time—the model of the writing groups—does not seem to fit. A limited number of carefully scheduled workshops and access to a panel of experienced readers seems to be a more acceptable strategy.

IV. Considerations for good practice

In this section we seek to extract, from the specific cases presented above, a set of principles for successful development which might be generalised to other local sites of practice. While significant to our understanding of the necessary conditions for successful research development, as principles they remain necessarily abstract, requiring local conditions and circumstances to be mobilised for them to be operational, robust and sustainable. Three general points of principle have emerged from our exploration thus far. We will outline them here, sketching briefly how in the case of the two groups these points of principle were realised.

The first of these principles refers to what we will term ‘peer-ness’. Typically, relationships among academic staff are characterised as ‘collegial’, a notion predicated upon the traditional ‘autonomy’ of the academic. While hierarchies exist, in terms of managerial function, promotional position and what we might term, following Bourdieu (1986), ‘symbolic capital’, they do not involve direct lines of control and can be decentred in the interests of autonomy. The idea of collegiality is often invoked as a desirable goal, one to which many academics are deeply attached. Yet an excessive attachment to academic autonomy often leads, in our experience, to isolation for many. This is particularly so for those who, in seeking to position or reposition themselves within a research culture, find themselves lacking the necessary resources for building productive collegial networks. Many academics are either undertaking or have recently completed doctoral study on a part-time basis, concurrently with full-time work. The forms of intellectual socialisation and enculturation experienced by full-time, on-campus doctoral students, which are part of the history of traditional disciplines, are not available to many newer academics in this new environment. Traditional ideas of academic collegiality and autonomy mask the need for new kinds of relations to be built, which recognise the new conditions in which academics work.

‘Peer-ness’ is a term we use to disrupt the effects of an excessive attachment to notions of academic autonomy. The achievement of a rich relationship of peer-ness involves recognition both of a common positionality in some fundamental sense and a common project. In our study, an important aspect of the common project for the writing groups has been recognition of the need for cultural change within the Faculty. Meeting individuals’ own developmental needs has served at the same time to build a common change project of producing a Faculty research culture. The idea of peer-ness, to supplement or even displace older, laissez-faire notions of collegiality, involves explicit attention to identifying the organisation’s developmental goals, the needs for change and development of its members in meeting those goals, and the active working to build collective strategies to meet those needs.

The writing groups are an explicit strategy for building peer-ness in relation to research and scholarship. Peer-ness is a necessary condition for the successful and sustainable functioning of the groups. In addition, however, the possibility of a substantially enriched relationship of peer-ness is one result of such groups. The essential elements of a rich peer environment in relationship to the writing groups are, first, that all members can speak confidently out of their own experiences of writing and reading. Second, that members are comfortable addressing each other directly about the other’s writing. And third, that the relationship is reciprocal: the dynamics of turn-taking crucially involve reciprocity at a number of levels, from the micro-level of interaction within group meetings to the taking-up of multiple roles within the group at different times. A significant distinguishing feature of the writing groups is that every member takes a turn at every one of the roles available within the groups.

This notion of peer-ness does not equate to a flattening-out of differences, however. The ‘new researcher’ group required, and demonstrably enjoyed, direct teaching by a person with expertise in writing (Saunders, Sampson and Lee 1999). The acquisition of a vocabulary for talking about and intervening in the process of writing was a significant feature of this group’s activities, especially in the first months of its operation. Similarly, in the ‘extending publication’ group, the convenor’s own considerable experience, as writer, publisher and editor, was acknowledged as a major resource for that group. Yet, as noted in the previous section, it was this person’s submission of his own draft text to group feedback that marked a significant shift for the group in the achievement of a valued peer-ness. The point is that, in identifying and working on common goals, hierarchic power relationships are backgrounded, and a collective purpose involving collective and reciprocal action is foregrounded.

It is also not the case that notions of autonomy are simply refused. While a respectful peer environment is necessary for new and less experienced writers to submit their own unfinished work to group review, the specificity of the writer’s own purposes and goals in writing must also be respected. Indeed, there is a delicate balance to be achieved between a productive taking-up of the agendas of particular members’ projects by the group and an inappropriate appropriation of those agendas. At different points in the writing process, the group interactions might influence the shaping of a writing project, might help to surface possibilities and directions, or might take on a more editorial, readerly function. At all times, the group’s task is to assist a writer to position themselves within their own writing, within the text and within the particular community of readers to whom the text is addressed.

The commitment to collective ways of working on writing, then, entails a respect for differences at a number of levels. What is clear, though, is that such a commitment is in many respects counter-cultural within universities. Despite the fact that writing groups have a long history within academic institutions (Gere 1987), writing has been conceived and practised largely as a solitary activity. Further, in Faculties of Education, as elsewhere, work practices in general are solitary and private—teaching, for example, largely goes on behind closed doors. Promoting a group approach to writing development works actively to break down such sedimented practices, creating unprecedented spaces for dialogue across positional differences.

The second principle is that successful research development must become ‘normal business’ within the daily life of the workplace. This involves building the activities into the ways in which the organisation governs itself, organises itself and plans for its future. It involves building upon existing advantages, opportunities and priorities, using available expertise and linking, wherever possible, with other priorities of the organisation. In an immediate practical sense it also requires group meetings to fit the timetables of participants.

In this particular Faculty, the ‘normality’ of the writing groups was achieved through a variety of measures. The need for a focus on research development had been included as an objective in the Faculty’s Research Management Plan. Writing groups were written in as strategies for meeting the objective, with targets involving productivity-based outputs. Funding was attached to the writing groups, first in terms of a workload allocation for the convenors, then for the other participants. From the convenors’ point of view, it was important to signal that this was regular ‘work’, neither an ancillary extra to normal workload nor a charitable donation of labour and expertise. For the other participants, time was allocated as part of a refinement to an existing practice of allocating ‘R&D’ time upon application. A workload formula was developed and refined in which research and writing was factored in as work alongside teaching and supervision. A portion of the notional research budget was allocated to the ‘Development’ side of R&D. An individual could obtain ‘D’ workload time through participation in a writing group for a given period. This was funded out of income partly earned through research productivity dividends and project overheads. The principle of normal business was thus formally inscribed through strategic planning and budgeting.

There is, however, a tension between the principle of normal business and the imperative to create space outside particular kinds of work patterns which militate against the development of productive research practices and rich peer relations around research development. The writing groups clearly acted as enabling micro-environments in what was perceived of as an otherwise often unfriendly mainstream working environment. In this way writing groups functioned as privileged spaces (Boud and Miller 1996). They provided continuity in fragmented work lives and they built relationships across restructured institutional boundaries—across the two campuses—which would not otherwise have been fostered. In this sense they were experienced as extraordinary and valued as such. The very nature of ‘ordinary work’ is that there is no space for new activities and new ways of being with each other. It is only through the creation of the extraordinary that cultural patterns can be disrupted and new forms of ‘ordinary work’ made possible.

The third principle is harder to name but involves acknowledgment of a combination of the elements of investment, satisfaction and pleasure. As diffuse as these elements are, they are crucial to the sustainability of any developmental activity, yet they are often ignored. Desire on the part of the participants to be researcher-writers; on the part of the convenors to contribute to the becoming of researcher-writers; and on the part of both to sustain this alongside the tensions and vicissitudes of current academic work was part of the unstated, but powerful motives which fuelled the initiative. The convenors had a longstanding investment in and commitment to both professional development and to scholarly writing and publishing. In the context of this development, there was a particular commitment to the demystification of research and academic publication. The theme of ‘know-how’ that was discussed in the previous section, and the lists of tasks and activities in the Appendix, are geared to this demystification process, one which is clearly crucial to the attainment of sustainable rich peer relationships.

The convenors ‘cared’ about the need for resourcing such know-how. To them the transmission of specific knowledge about writing and publishing was of a lower priority relative to demystification and opening up of knowledge required for writing and getting published. The exposing of what was perceived by participants as otherwise ‘secret’ knowledge was more important than the specifics of the knowledge itself. Once ‘secrets’ were revealed, for example in the decoding of acceptance/rejection letters from editors, then group members could use their own resources to gain the specific knowledge they needed to get their own writing published. The satisfaction involved in understanding the code or appreciating for the first time what experienced colleagues ‘knew’ as an apparent matter of course is impossible to underestimate. For staff who did not see themselves as full members of the club of which they seemed to be inadvertent members, to discover that they were closer than they realised and that their investment was not in vain was a source of pleasure. To add to this, their new-found ability to assist each other without loss to self, indeed rather the opposite, compounded the value of their participation. Participants brought into the writing groups long-standing investments in taking-up or strengthening their position as scholarly writers. The questions of identity and of fear and desire around change, also discussed in the previous section, were central elements in what brought and kept the groups together.

Accompanying these investments are the satisfactions and pleasures in experiencing the fulfilment of goals, the production of tangible outcomes, the repositioning of selves. Pleasure also has to be substantially located within the processes of ‘doing’ the writing groups. Reflections from all participants foregrounds this pleasure and it has been recorded in some detail in the paper written by members of the ‘new researchers’ group (Saunders, Sampson and Lee 1999). The fact that the writing groups have been deeply satisfying to all participants is clearly a major factor in their success. As a principle it perhaps cannot be over-emphasised.

As a strategy for research development, the writing groups have clearly worked to reposition participants as active scholarly writers within a peer-learning framework. They have served to build peer-ness and to break down boundaries between specialisms and the hitherto separate Schools in the amalgamated Faculty. They have functioned to equip members with resources for making realistic decisions about their careers as researchers and for fostering collaborations with colleagues.

Further, the two groups have also demonstrated, in their contrasts with each other, that there is no particular ‘right’ way or style needed for successful functioning. The three convenors involved have each brought very different skills, experiences and interests into the groups, though they shared a common commitment to investing in their colleagues. Further groups have formed and are working with different members in quite distinct ways. We conclude that the idea of writing groups in the current university environment is robust enough, given the three principles outlined in the previous section, to accommodate considerable differences. That there will be considerable variation in local contexts is clear. It is for this reason that we would caution that our list of activities provided in the Appendix to this paper, generated out of our own local site, is not intended as a general curriculum for writing groups, though it might provide a resource.

Developmental activities need to be situated within broad frames of timing and sequencing. In the case of the two writing groups discussed here, it is planned to continue to fund the groups in the manner described over the next few years and to withdraw formal support for them as they become self-sustained and achieve their goals. For individual members, as they increase their publications, they will move beyond the need for funded developmental support and will be supported as productive research-writers through the deployment by the Faculty of ‘research earnings’. It is envisaged that writing groups will be further ‘mainstreamed’, for example, in some instances by having them take place within existing academic groupings, effecting a substantial culture shift within the organisation.

The case we have made here about the role of writing groups contributes more generally to ideas of academic development. We have illustrated how a local initiative can work when it takes careful account of the local context, adapts to it and links to policy priorities and collective aspirations. It acknowledges personal and wider institutional aspirations but does not subordinate development to the pursuit of these. It moves beyond predominantly individually focused models of academic development associated with the accreditation of professional development and mission-driven models based primarily on policy-formulation, to a project of cultural change within the local workplace. While our own workplace may have untypical features, we believe that the approach we have adopted has potential for operating within the new environment of constant change. All workplaces are of course ‘untypical’, it is only through acceptance of this and the contextualising of practice of academic development that it can become meaningful and relate to those it is designed to benefit. By selecting an issue for which we anticipate an increased role for professional development—the ongoing need for academics to write—and articulating a number of principles drawn from our own practice we have pointed to new possibilities in new forms of work.

The following topics are a composite extracted from the work of the writing groups conducted by the authors over several years. They are included in order to illustrate the range of issues explored. Different groups in different settings would necessarily generate different topics: they should not be taken as an outline of a ‘curriculum’ for writing groups as such a notion would deny the localised and contextualised features which the paper argues are vital for success.

Issues of identity and career progression. What is being an academic about? Planning one’s career as a writer, ie. a writing program over time—beyond the single paper. Thinking about ourselves as writers—identity, refocusing

Purposes of writing and publishing. As obligation as an academic, for peers, for practitioners, for self. Public and private knowledge. Pragmatic and principled motives. Linking writing to UTS/Faculty strategic initiatives.

Identifying what is worth publishing? How do I choose what to write? How do I know what to start on now? Formulating ideas in terms of publishing. Planning for publishing. What to think about at which point in time?—writing first or writing last?

Formulating a paper. Writing summaries and arguments. Stages of writing: the development of a paper over time. Sequencing of activities. Where do conferences and seminars fit in? Reusing/repeating material—under what circumstances is it appropriate?

Where to publish? Researching journals — ‘cracking the code’ How to find the right journal for one’s work? Finding the most suitable outlet is not primarily a task in the library. ‘Entering into the conversation’.

Exploring different types of outlet: conferences proceedings, papers of different kinds, chapters in books of different kinds—how are they regarded, what are each good for? Writing for different outlets/journals/purposes. Status of different journals—how much does it matter?

Turning research reports into papers. Turning teaching innovations into papers.

Writing is not just about ‘writing’. Finding one’s voice, avoiding being intimidated by the assumed requirements of scholarly writing, academic writing is not necessarily depersonalised writing.

What constitutes a ‘good’ paper? Sharing examples of ‘good’ models.

Receiving and giving feedback on ideas and drafts. When to get feedback? Editing one’s own writing.

Modes of writing (on own, collaborative, etc.). With whom, for what purposes? Writing with others, issues. Cross-disciplinary writing. In whose journal?

The editorial and publication process: understanding and dealing with it. What goes on behind the scenes once a paper has been received? Who gets to be a referee? What do editors and referees look for?

Gatekeeping and how it is manifest. Editors can be more helpful than they might appear. What are they thinking about when they receive your paper?

What are my chances of acceptance? Why do acceptances sometimes read like rejections? Issues in dealing with long time lags to publication.

Organising time. Why is time management not the key issue? Organising work for writing. Prioritising

Academic v professional v practitioner writing. What positions do I occupy as a writer? Meeting practitioners needs as well as others: issues in publishing in non-refereed practitioner-oriented outlets.

Linking teaching and writing. Using teaching for research/combining writing and teaching/writing and consulting etc.

Encouragement (pressure) to get going/keep going. Regular writing. Feedback. Strategies/ideas/advice/efficiencies. Making commitments.