Tracing researcher trajectories: the view from the AHRC research network Researching Multilingually Mariam Attia & Richard Fay BAAL Annual Meeting September 2012

Introduction Focus on researcher thinking in relation to RM-ly Reflexive based on our own experiences in RM-ly Corpus RM-ly website [ The profiles as outward-facing performances of reflection- on-action (Boud & walker, 1998; Schön, 1983, 1987) What the profiles suggest in terms of Developing Researcher Competence [DRC] and in terms of evidence for researcher intentionality [as purposefulness] (Stelma & Fay, in press)

Two Prompts The profiles were produced in response to two prompts: 1) What is your experience of doing research multilingually? 2) What is your experience of becoming aware of the complexities in this area?

Two Prompts.. In other words: 1)RM-ly in practice 2)Trajectories into awareness Researchers who become aware How does awareness happen? What intentionality is behind? What are they aware of?

Data Analysis Thematic analysis of each profile separately Looking across the profiles Identifying particularities and commonalities

1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually In relation to experiences of RM-ly Various areas of RM-ly Linguistics, L2 education, translation, multilingualism, intercultural communication, ethnography, teacher education, counseling, marketing, social anthropologies, Jewish studies, philosophy, health communication, workplace discourse

1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually Various RM-ly settings Higher education (teaching, research, supervision, examination), schools, community work, clinics, funded projects, scholarly publishing

1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually In terms of experiences in RM-ly, we have distinctive categories of researchers Researchers who grew up in multilingual contexts (e.g. Bashirrudin, Daryai-Hansen, Hansen-Pauly, Naz, Rajwede) Researchers who lived in other countries and later moved back to the UK and became supervisors to international students (e.g. Holliday, Robinson-Pant)

1) Experiences of Researching Multilingually PhD researchers (e.g., Campbell-Thomson, Ganassin, Zhou, Naz, Wang) Researchers working on multilingual collaborative projects (e.g., Davcheva, Gomez, Risager)

2) Developing Awareness How does awareness happen? 1)Researchers are made aware through discussions with their supervisors (e.g., Wang, Zhou) Under […]s supervision, I gradually noticed so many things to which I had been blind, such as relevant literature written in Mandarin, similar research studies undertaken in Mandarin with unique methodological insights and the potential of richer interpretations of the data when drawing on different linguistic resources (Zhou)

2) Developing Awareness experiences of supervising international students (e.g., Louis, Robinson-Pant) The bonus for me is that my horizons have frequently been enlarged and I have been pleasantly stretched (Louis) engaging with the RM-ly project itself (e.g., Davcheva, Naz) The series of seminars on Researching Multilingually work as a guide to me for presenting multilingual data in my dissertation write up (Naz)

2) Developing Awareness 2) Researchers who grew up in multilingual contexts not aware of the multilingual nature of their work until they embarked on large-scale research especially a PhD (e.g. Bashirrudin, Daryai-Hansen, Hansen-Pauly, Rajwede) Researching multilingually has always been a natural procedure for me (Hansen-Pauly)

2) Developing Awareness 3) One researcher reports being aware of the complexities but did not have the chance to act upon this awareness (Feng) Because of heavy workload and tight schedules most of academics in HEIs face these days, I never got around to acting upon the issues, even though I was aware of the relevance of the issues to research quality (Feng)

2) Developing Awareness What are they aware of? Awareness of complexities is related to setting: MA/PhD research Literature, fieldwork, data generation, richer sources of data, analysis and representation, translation, ethical issues, trust, flexibility, lack of understanding on the part of the supervisor, extra workload, a need for methodological guidelines, a need for a RM-ly community

2) Developing Awareness MA/PhD supervision (same as previous) + collaboration, power hierarchies, policy making, institutional cultures, culture and identity, geopolitics of academic publishing

2) Developing Awareness Community research Relations with translators, interpreters, research assistants, and validators, power hierarchies within communities, socio-political issues, culture and identity, relationship between language and culture

2) Developing Awareness Funded / collaborative projects Power structures, collaboration, linguistic boundaries, increased awareness of ones beliefs, issues of editing & conventions, English as a lingua franca, importance of dialogue and negotiation, linguistic ownership and exclusion.. Significant overlapping

Conclusion Experiences of RM-ly develop across varying research areas and settings Researchers who are aware, may do so through different trajectories They are aware of all kinds of complexities We have a better idea about how they become aware, how their awareness manifests itself, and what complexities they are aware of

References Boud, D. & Walker, D. (1998). Promoting Reflection in Professional Courses: The Challenge of context. Studies in Higher Education. 23(2), Schön, DA. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. London: Temple Smith. Schön, DA. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Stelma, J. & Fay, R (in press). Intentionality and developing researcher competence on a UK Masters course: An ecological perspective on research education. Studies in Higher Education.

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