Abstract
The literature surrounding researcher development explores the identities of university researchers to improve research practices and productivity. While these research works predominantly provide insights into the writing identities of undergraduate students and academics, little attention is directed towards exploring the writing identities of those recognised as prolific researchers. This study defines prolific researchers as individuals who are not only internationally recognised for their level of excellence but also graded ‘A’ by a New Zealand (NZ) national ranking system called the Performance-Based Research Fund. This PhD thesis explores the writing identities of these prolific research writers and how their writing identities are formed. The exploration provides insights into perceptions and behaviours that could be emulated by other researchers.
This study employed a grounded theory approach to create a model of the writing identities of prolific researchers. Participants were 16 prolific research writers from the University of Otago in NZ, who were all at the professorial level. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews to access participants’ experiential insights into research writing perceptions and behaviours. The data analysis formed an interpretive theoretical construct illuminating their identity and how that identity was formed.
The prolific research writer’s identity is constructed through a sequence of processes common among participants. These processes define the prolific research writer as ‘production-centric, data-driven storytellers’ who create data-driven narratives to argue for and enable change in readers’ thinking and practice. This model shows that the prolific research writer’s identity is formed by three overarching phases: ‘writer’s mindset’, ‘writing behaviours’ and ‘enabling behaviours’. The mindset includes their motivations to write, and view to turning research experiences into data-driven stories to inspire change in readers. Their writing behaviours include specific actions such as collaborative writing acts, a reflective writing cycle and specific writing strategies. The enabling behaviours refer to the writer’s relationships with time, space and technology.
The findings from this study have practical and theoretical implications. From a practical perspective, this work provides an empirical-based description of a prolific research writer’s identity. The model might be used to improve conditions to support the development of successful writing identities, particularly for early career researchers. The model also provides reflective prompts for other researchers to evaluate their perceptions and behaviours of their own writing identity.
From a theoretical perspective, this work builds upon Burgess and Ivanič’s (2010) seminal Discoursal Construction Model and proposes a more accurate identification and interpretation of writing identities as used in the writing and reading experience.