Abstract:
Educational research is a multifaceted, contested and an ever-changing field. Becoming an educational researcher involves not only being apprenticed in the ways in which research is conducted in particular traditions but also being able to situate oneself as part of the Discourses (Gee, 2015) that constitute education. The learning process in which individuals become researchers in a particular field is marked by negotiations and confrontations with different subjectivities and ways of being and doing research (Kamler & Thomson, 2014). This poster aims to investigate reflectively the process by which the author, an international PhD student, went through as he navigated educational research. The study uses narrative research (Casey, 1995; Bruner, 1986) for conceptualising and producing data: a self-reflexive auto-biography and documental material produced throughout three years of candidature. The analysis focuses on the shifting nature of becoming an educational researcher through the lens of a PhD student. More specifically, the poster analyses four inter-related focal points that shaped my professional and academic identities: (a) the role of theory in being apprenticed in educational research (Biesta, Allan & Edwards, 2014), (b) the role of social media in enacting professional and academic identities (Greenhow, Robelia & Hughes, 2009), (c) the role of supervision in guiding and challenging my thinking (Grant, 2010), and (d) the role of peers in providing support and bonding as (future) academics in the field of education (Etherington, 2004). References: Biesta, G.; Allen, J.; Edwards, R. (Eds.). (2014). Making a difference in theory: The theory question in education and the education question in theory. London and New York: Routledge. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Casey, K. (1995). Chapter 5: The New Narrative Research in Education. Review of Research in Education, 21(1), 211-253. doi:10.3102/0091732x021001211Etherington, K. (2004). Becoming a reflexive researcher: Using our selves in research. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.Gee, J. P. (2015). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in Discourses (5th ed.). London and New York: Routledge.Grant, B. (2010). Negotiating the layered relations of supervision. In M. Walker & P. Thomson (Eds.), The Routledge doctoral supervisor's companion: Supporting effective research in education and the social sciences (pp. 88-105). London: Routledge.Greenhow, C., Robelia, B., & Hughes, J. E. (2009). Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship in a Digital Age: Web 2.0 and Classroom Research: What Path Should We Take Now? Educational Researcher, 38(4), 246-259. doi:10.3102/0013189x09336671Kamler, B., Thomson, P. (2014). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision, 2nd. Ed. London and New York: Routledge.