Editorial

Citation

Evans, L. (2012), "Editorial", International Journal for Researcher Development, Vol. 3 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrd.2012.53203aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal for Researcher Development, Volume 3, Issue 1

As Olympic fever begins to dissipate in the wake of the magnificent London 2012 games, I begin my editorial with news of the journal’s own “champions”: the annual Emerald Literati award winners. Every year the publishers invite the editor of each Emerald journal to select winners from her or his journal over the previous year. For the 2012 awards, papers published between 1 January and 31 December 2011 in the International Journal for Researcher Development were eligible, of which two categories applied: the outstanding paper award and the outstanding reviewer award. I am pleased to announce that the outstanding paper award went to early career academic, Carol O’Byrne, of the Waterford Institute of Technology in the Republic of Ireland, for her paper, “Against all odds: researcher development in teaching-focused HEIs”. Three papers received highly commended awards: Robert Bray and Stuart Boon’s “Towards a framework for research career development: an evaluation of the UK’s Vitae Researcher Development Framework”, Gill Turner and Lynn McAlpine’s “Doctoral experience as researcher preparation: activities, passion, status”, and Eva Brodin and Liezel Frick’s “Conceptualizing and encouraging critical creativity in doctoral education”. All of the selected papers achieved high standards of scholarliness, combining critical analysis and discursiveness with skilled use of theoretical perspectives – which made the selection of one “winner” extremely difficult. Outstanding reviewer awards went to Dr Ruth Albertyn, of Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and Professor James Kaufman, of California State University at San Bernardino. The editorial board sends its congratulations to all of the worthy winners!

Moving on to the content of this issue, we have five articles from the UK and the USA – some written by experienced authors and some by early career researchers making their publishing debuts. I am delighted that two of the articles focus explicitly on a topic that has long been an interest of mine, and the subject of much of my own research: motivation. These papers examine what motivates people to develop as, or into, researchers by undertaking doctoral study.

First, drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, Paul and Irene Garland’s paper presents a fascinating and novel approach to developing doctoral students’ methodological skills and awareness by working together to analyse each other’s, and their own, career trajectories, focusing particularly on what motivated them to undertake doctorates. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article, not least because it resonates in so many ways with my own life and career experiences.

The second paper – an offering from across the Atlantic – also incorporates a Bourdieuian analytical perspective. Julie Posselt and Kim Black’s article is illuminative in its examination of the bases of the evident success of an American scholarship programme aimed at tackling the under-representation of lower class, black and ethnic minority students in postgraduate education – in particular, those whose parents have not benefited from higher education. The authors dig below the statistical evidence of the success of the McNair Scholars Program to explore the ways in which it promotes the development of first-generation university students’ research and academic aspirations, motivating them to pursue postgraduate study. The small scale study that they report aimed to shed light on how the McNair initiative achieves its impressive results. What I particularly like about this paper is its focus on what is – regrettably – a much-neglected constituency within the field of researcher development: undergraduate students. The McNair Program clearly merits attention outside the USA as an initiative that we on this side of the pond can potentially learn from and replicate – at least in part. I am grateful to Posselt and Black for bringing it to our attention through the dissemination of their research, and for choosing the International Journal for Researcher Development as the forum for doing so.

The UK’s researcher development organisation, Vitae, justifiably continues to be a key influence on the academic development sector within British higher education, and Vitae’s researcher development framework (RDF) has evidently had a considerable impact upon university-based academic developers’ planning and delivery of researcher development-focused programmes. The International Journal for Researcher Development already boasts the publication of what we believe to be the first paper (Bray and Boon, 2011) that analyses aspects of the RDF, and now, in this issue, Peter Kahn, Lorraine Walsh and Christos Petichakis present us with a second. Yet this paper is at least as much an analysis of collaborative research – its nature, its strengths, and how it may be promoted – as of the RDF. Familiar with his work, I have for some time been impressed with the incisiveness with which Peter Kahn applies theoretical perspectives to the broad field of academic development, and I was therefore delighted to welcome him to the International Journal for Researcher Development’s editorial board, confident that his influence could not fail to enhance and support our mission to develop our relatively new journal into a respected, world-leading forum for the dissemination of scholarly analyses and critical reflection. With his authorial contribution to this issue, he and his co-authors have not disappointed. Applying critical realist perspectives to their conceptual analysis of a stage model of expertise for collaborative working taken from Vitae’s RDF, their article is thought-provoking and, moreover, carries a message that has practical implications; highlighting some of the RDF’s limitations, it opens the door onto its further development.

Employability is not generally considered a researcher development issue and I was therefore rather sceptical when Elena Golovushkina approached me to propose an article on that topic, and to gauge my interest level. My response was initially lukewarm. Such an article would have to demonstrate a clear focus on researcher development, I advised her; the link to employability must be made explicit. Now, many months later, and after working extensively with this early career researcher to ensure that successive drafts incorporated the right balance of researcher development- and employability-related issues, I believe we have ended up with an article that illustrates not only the relevance of employability to researchers’ career development – and, indeed, that researcher development, as I continually argue (Evans, 2011), is multidimensional and therefore encompasses much more than research skills development – but also the width of the field. With co-author, Colin Milligan, Golovushkina reports a small scale study of doctoral candidates’ perceptions of employability and examines the extent and nature of their awareness of how their development as researchers may be broadened to enhance their own employability both within and outside academia.

Finally, in the Researcher Development in Practice section – where, inter alios, academic development professionals and research leaders may share their practical successes – Annika Coughlin and Petia Petrova present an account of several writing workshops that they facilitated, passing on to readers useful tips for how to ensure the success of such initiatives. Academic developers who are contemplating organising writing workshops or retreats will find this article informative and useful.

Lastly, I end this editorial with news of our international editorial advisory board. We were delighted recently to welcome five new members to it: Professor Nicole Rege Colet, from the Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI), Switzerland, Mr Christian Tauch, of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), and three Australian-based professors: Brian Paltridge, from the University of Sydney, Alistair McCulloch, from the University of South Australia, and Allyson Holbrook, from the University of Newcastle (Who knows? – perhaps we may have the distinction of being the only academic journal to have both the UK’s and Australia’s Newcastle Universities represented on our IEAB!) We warmly welcome these five distinguished colleagues on board and look forward to working together to promote the journal and enhance its reputation internationally.

Linda Evans