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It is probably true to say that the process of giving voice to my ‘inner researcher’ has already taken more than two decades. As someone who has consistently straddled professional practice and academic study, I have come to truly recognise the value of the professional doctorate in education (EdD) as the practitioner route to the doctorate, not only because it uses theory to inform practice, and vice versa, but also as a collaborative space that enables a multiplicity of different voices to come together and become more than a sum of their parts. My aim in this blog post is to encourage anyone who is teetering on the edge of a doctorate, or who has been disillusioned in the past, to come and join our swelling ranks. Belonging is my topic of study, and in the EdD I have found a place to belong.

Fractured identity

I began a PhD in a related area, more than 20 years ago, looking at the experiences of parents making decisions about mainstream or special educational needs (SEN) provision for their children, with the intention of giving voice to those who often feel unheard and minoritised in compulsory education (Holland & Pell, 2019). However, an employer with little interest in academic research, let alone that which ‘sat outside my day job’, and being a minnow researcher in the big pond of a research-intensive university, left me feeling alone, frustrated and voiceless.

I had no researcher identity; I was unable to make it exist within the social structures of the two roles I inhabited and could not synthesise the relationship between my self as a practitioner and my self as a learner. Nor could I understand the effects of my autobiographical narrative on the interactions with my participants, or my interpretations of their words. Far from amplifying unheard voices, the experience created a kind of ‘double-consciousness’ (DuBois, 1903), a fractured identity, and a ‘fragile academic self’ (Knights & Clarke, 2014) which is only slowly resolving.

Now, as a long-term higher education (HE) lecturer, with experience of a range of educational roles, who currently works in a professional services function, I have become a ‘pracademic’ (Posner, 2019), or a ‘third-space professional’ (Whitchurch, 2013). Once again I find myself operating within somewhat competing structures, with different priorities, values, capital and processes.

A new-found sense of belonging

Academic research is both an unacknowledged necessity and a key strength in the fulfilment of practitioner roles; our practitioner perspective brings layers of insight and understanding to our academic tasks, which conversely inform and improve our practice. But rather than seeing ourselves as ‘innovative and progressive, albeit overlooked, change agents’ (PDI, 2024), we so often see only the gaps between the worlds. Furthermore, the position of academic research in a practitioner role, or practitioner experience within an academic role, is still not well documented in traditional research literature, nor effectively acknowledged in academic career pathways. And so, I embarked on an EdD with the hope that, through my own doctoral research, I might also amplify the importance and the potential of the increasing number of my fellow university professionals who, like me, find themselves spanning, sometimes uncomfortably, different spaces in academia (Whitchurch, 2013).

‘Our practitioner perspective brings layers of insight and understanding to our academic tasks, which conversely inform and improve our practice.’

But the optimism and belief with which I address my current research and begin to examine the experiences of ‘belonging’ among academics who, for a multiplicity of reasons, find themselves as ‘a minority’ in HE, could not be more different from my previous PhD attempt. In the collective joy and collaborative challenge of the practitioner-focused EdD, I have found the sense of agency and identity I was previously missing. I have found that staff and students combine to become a noisy, interested, interesting, brave, questioning and affirming team, within which I feel embraced. I, and my fellow doctoral travellers, have a place to synthesise our professional and researcher identities, and to amplify our own and each other’s developing voices through the important, exciting yet daunting, process of giving voice to our participants. Join us – you may find a place for your voice too!

References

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). The souls of black folk. A. C. McClurg and Co.

Holland, J., & Pell, G. (2019). Children with SEND and the emotional impact on parents. British Journal of Special Education, 45(4), 392–411.

Knights, D., & Clarke, C. A. (2014). It’s a bittersweet symphony, this life: Fragile academic selves and insecure identities at work. Organization Studies, 35(3), 335–357.

Posner, P. L. (2009). The pracademic: An agenda for re-engaging practitioners and academics. Public Budgeting & Finance, 29(1), 12–26.

Whitchurch, C. (2013). Reconstructing identities in higher education: The rise of third space professionals. Routledge.