Faculty identity and writing at university
- Autores: Liliana del Pilar Gallego Castaño
- Directores de la Tesis: Montserrat Castelló Badia (dir. tes.), Antoni Badia Garganté (codir. tes.), César Coll Salvador (tut. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2016
- Idioma: inglés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Marta Milian Gubern (presid.), Eva Liesa (secret.), Concepción Yániz Álvarez de Eulate (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Psicología de la Educación
- Materias:
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- Resumen
This research dissertation entitled Faculty identity and writing at university consists of an empirical research undertaken as an attempt to relate faculty identity and their writing at University. To achieve this goal we conducted three studies. In the first one, we explored the relationship between faculty writing conceptions and their feelings towards writing. Sixty seven volunteer faculty members from Foreign Language departments in different highly ranked universities in Colombia and Spain answered the Writing and Feelings Survey, containing four Likert Scale type sections. The first, affective dimension, consisted of a list of bipolar adjectives (feelings) associated with writing; the second, genres, asked about frequency of use of written genres; in the third one, competences, faculty evaluated their perceived proficiency in writing competences; in the fourth section, good writing, faculty valued good writing characteristics. Exploratory factor analyses were performed and subsequently, data were related through a co-occurrence analysis. Results of this first study showed a three-factor structure for the four sections of the questionnaire, associating: a) writing to feelings of demanding standards of writing, satisfaction and importance; b) genres to research writing, technical writing and narrative writing; c) perceived writing competences to the management of formal and technical mechanisms, discursive mechanisms (structural aspects) and in a lower percentage, composition process competences (related to positioning and readers’ implication). Besides, participants conceived writing as demanding, but also as important and satisfactory in their profession. In conclusion, being conscious of the importance of writing a specific genre and perceiving themselves as competent writers are the variables that lead faculty to increase their production of research writing genres.
The second study was developed with the same participants. In this case, we used a different survey entitled Faculty Identity and Academic Writing (FIAW) to understand how faculty identity development is related to a differential use of writing genres in the teaching and research spheres of activity and whether this development follows different paths, on the bases of faculty perceptions regarding what they consider their main goal at university and their preferred sphere of activity.. In this case, a mixed-model combining quantitative and qualitative data analysis was used. Results from the second study showed first that the most often mentioned genres were written exams in the teaching sphere of activity. Second, activities related to the research sphere, such as writing related activities and participation in events were the least reported while evaluative activities were mentioned in all spheres. Third, faculty’s perceptions regarding their main goal at university (research) were not in alignment with their preferences (teaching). Writing genres used and activities reported closely mirror preferred spheres of activity and mismatch faculty’s perceptions of their main goal at universities. In conclusion, sphere of activity preferences relate to different paths of faculty’s identity development.
In the third study, we explored possible emergent position repertoires about teaching and research based on university teachers’ conceptions and feelings about those two spheres of activity. Participants were 30 Faculty from Colombian universities that answered a semi-structured interview. Information was analyzed through content analysis by looking for faculty’s positions as teachers and researchers. Results showed the existence of two main positions regarding teaching conceptions: teacher-centered and student-centered conceptions of teaching. Regarding research conceptions, we noticed that some university teachers considered research related to the growth of disciplinary knowledge while some others seemed not to understand what research is and implies. The latter group related doing research to the improvement of the teaching activity and thus, considered research as embedded in teaching. Finally, regarding the position repertoires linking teaching and research voices, we identified four main prototypical repertoires combining conceptions of teaching –as teacher-centered versus students-centered- and those of research -embedded in teaching versus research related to disciplinary growth.
In general, results reaffirmed that identity and writing at university are social situated constructs. Faculty still prefer teaching more than research and this fact, influences the genres they produced that in most of the cases are also linked to the teaching sphere. Additionally, misconceptions regarding writing and doing research might be affecting faculty and their development as academics and, therefore, their writing productivity. Finally, we confirmed that teaching conceptions influence research and research activity. Feelings intensity acted as distinguishing elements to build prototypical position repertoires.
