Melinda J Lewis' Doctoral work
Thesis Overview
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The doctoral thesis is on academic identities, with a critique on the use of practice frameworks, for example, the research-teaching nexus, and how a disruptive higher education environment offers liminality, temporality, and shifting narratives of the self.
Five chapters offer a story with an introduction to the theme, discussion, empirical or reflective data. Three of the five chapters are case study stories, informed by a micro-ethnographic approach towards insider methodologies. A reflective prologue prefaces each chapter, and an epilogue anchors the theme and links the next chapter.
Chapter 1 offers a general introduction to the research question, focusing on the historical fashions of theories and frameworks, and in particular, the Research-Teaching nexus (RTN). It also describes the background to higher education systems as a whole, a critical review of frameworks, the research approach, and methodological intent.
Touchstones
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Identity as a social construction - variations and changes - our many selves, disciplinary and organisational identities.
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Disruption to use binary framing of academic practices of research and teaching; also service and professionalism/academic.
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Ethics of frameworks to guide the work; ethics of non-local framings and historical guidelines; ethics of identity work, and cultural mingling re knowledge traditions.
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A feminist face - feminist principles and framings.
Chapter 2 (Story 1) examines the factors that condition academic responses to the implementation of the RTN framework, and limitations of framings in general. This is achieved through stories of individuals in the study, academics and their identities, portraits of their practices, and their strategic moves to remain buoyant and afloat in a radically changing sector.
Chapter 4 (Story 3) offers a contemporary example sector wide, where we shift the identity narrative to preface debates on the place of Southern theories informing Indigenous Australian cultural competence and the Black Lives Matter movements. A discussion on multiple ethics when working with First Nations Peoples demonstrates the need for a more sophisticated understanding of the implementation of policy generally in higher education.
Chapter 5 The final chapter summarises and discusses the conclusions of the study and considers their implications through further reflection and dialogue. Overall, the nature and significance of the complexities in higher education are uncovered through the real-life stories of a few individuals, and the structural and rapid changes in response to global pandemics, as one form of major disruption.
Chapter 3 (Story 2) uses the empirical evidence from the study and the theoretical account which arises from it to reassess a number of earlier approaches to higher education. We deepen an understanding of forms of disruption, and through examples, provide an explanation and justification for the qualitative methodologies, ethics of organisational insider research, detailing the analysis of the data generated, and a description of limitations.