Learning academic work practices in discipline, department and university
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the everyday practices of academic work in social science to understand better academics’ learning. It also asks how academic work is enacted in relation to the discipline, department and university, taking temporality as its starting point.
Design/methodology/approach
The study sought to trace academic activities in practice. Within three universities, 14 academics were work-shadowed; social, material, technological, pedagogic and symbolic actors were observed and where possible connections and interactions were traced (including beyond the institution). This paper reports on a subset of the study: the academic practices of four early-career academics in one discipline are analysed.
Findings
Email emerges as a core academic practice and an important pedagogic actor for early career academics in relation to the department and university. Much academic work is “work about the work”, both in and outside official work time. Other pedagogic actors include conferences, networks and external Web identities. Disciplinary work happens outside official work time for the most part and requires time to be available. Disciplinary learning is therefore only afforded to some, resulting in structural disadvantage.
Originality/value
By tracing non-human and human actors, it has emerged that the department and university, rather than the discipline, are most important in composing everyday work practices. A sociomaterial approach enables researchers to better understand the “black box” of everyday academic practice. Such an approach holds the promise of better support for academics in negotiating the demands of discipline, department and university without overwork and systemic exploitation.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Society for Research in Higher Education for funding the original project, and to all the participants for their generosity in welcoming the authors into their real and virtual workplaces. The authors would also like to thanks the two anonymous referees for their helpful and detailed comments.
Citation
Zukas, M. and Malcolm, J. (2017), "Learning academic work practices in discipline, department and university", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 29 No. 7/8, pp. 512-523. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-04-2016-0025
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited