The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation: Academics' Writing Practices in the Contemporary University Workplace

这项拟议的研究将调查在当代英语高等教育系统中，如何通过跨学科和不同职业阶段的学术人员的写作实践来产生、塑造和传播知识。各种学术写作实践(学术写作、教学写作和“影响”写作)是高等教育事业的核心。大学在很大程度上是通过这些写作实践来实现其核心目标的，不同机构的成功是根据这些目标来衡量的。现有的数字资源、更多的管理主义和高等教育的国际化正在重新安排学者开展写作工作的社会物质环境。这项研究旨在通过更好地了解这些相互关联的过程的动态，为高等教育未来的创新、生产力和教师培训提供信息。这项研究将提供一些想法，说明如何在具有挑战性的时代最好地支持和发展大学部门的使命，因为对更大问责的要求、越来越多的学生、为决策提供资源、技术以及对学者角色的理解的变化正在改变高等教育专业人员的工作。将通过访谈、对线上和线下写作活动的密切观察以及对更广泛的组织背景的分析，对九个学科地点的学术人员的写作做法进行一年多的跟踪。这些方法将产生一个多模式的数据集，将通过扫盲研究和社会材料理论的理论透镜进行分析。识字研究吸引了人们对参与者如何执行日常任务以及在组织环境中如何成为一名学者的关注。它们在方法论上与日常实践的研究相联系，并涉及对文本中介互动的密切观察。社会物质理论阐明了人和物质制品在活动网络中的重要性。这种方法确定了文本的轨迹，它们如何在多个地点传播和协调活动，并揭示了当代实践的基本物理和信息架构。结合这些方法，我们将引导我们分析参与者日常经验和活动的元素，包括：社交网络和关系；学术写作的目的，以及这些元素在其他相互竞争的目的和写作类型的动态中的位置；资源和工具，包括数字和其他技术以及图书馆/学习资源；学术活动的空间和时间分布；以及学科和机构领域，包括研究、教学、行政、咨询和服务活动。

The proposed study will investigate how knowledge is produced, shaped and distributed through the writing practices of academic staff working across a range of disciplines and at different career stages within the contemporary English HE system. Academic writing practices of various kinds (scholarly, pedagogic, and 'impact' writing) are central to the enterprise of higher education. It is largely through these writing practices that universities achieve their central objectives, against which the success of different institutions is measured. Available digital resources, increased managerialism and the internationalization of higher education are reorganizing the socio-material contexts within which academics carry out their writing work. This study aims to inform future innovation, productivity and teacher training in HE through a better understanding the dynamics of these interconnected processes. The study will inform ideas about how the mission of the university sector can best be supported and developed in challenging times, when demands for greater accountability, increasing numbers of students, resourcing decisions, technologies and changes in the understanding of academics' roles are transforming the work of professionals in higher education. The writing practices of academic staff in nine disciplinary sites will be followed over a year, through a combination of interviews, close ethnographic observation of both online and offline writing activities, and analysis of the wider organizational context. These methods will generate a multi-modal data set which will be analysed through the theoretical lenses of literacy studies and social material theory. Literacy studies draws attention to how participants perform everyday tasks and enact "being an academic" in organizational settings. They link methodologically with studies of everyday practice and involve the close observation of textually-mediated interactions. Socio-material theory articulates the importance of both people and material artefacts in networks of activity. This approach identifies the trajectories of texts, how they circulate and co-ordinate activities across multiple sites; and reveals the underlying physical and information architecture of contemporary practices.Combining these approaches will lead us to analyse elements of the everyday experience and activities of participants including: social networks and relationships; the purposes for academic writing and the location of these within the dynamics of other competing purposes and types of writing; resources and tools including digital and other technologies and library/learning resources; the distribution of academic activities across space and time; and disciplinary and institutional domains including activities of research, teaching, administration, consultancy and service.