The Learning Matters Podcast captures insights into, experiences of, and conversations around education at the University of Sussex. The podcast is hotsed by Prof Wendy Garnham and Dr Heather Taylor. It runs monthly, and each month is centred around a particular theme. The theme of our second episode is ‘writing for scholarship, and we will hear from Dr Verona Ní Drisceoil, Reader in Legal Education (Law) in the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, and Dr James Williams, Senior Lecturer in Science Education and Communication in the School of Education and Social Work.
Recording
Listen to the recording of Episode 2.
Transcript
Wendy Garnham
Welcome to the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education at our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is writing for scholarship, and our guests are Dr Verona Ní Drisceoil, Reader in Legal Education Law in the School of Law, Politics, and Sociology, and Dr James Williams, Senior Lecturer in Science Education and Communication in the School of Education and Social Work. My name is Wendy Garnham, Professor of Psychology.
Heather Taylor
And my name is Heather Taylor, Lecturer in Psychology, and we will be your presenters today. So, welcome everyone.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve published in terms of your scholarship?
(1:03) Verona Ní Drisceoil
Yes. Sure. I suppose to start with, one of the kind of bigger projects that I’ve been working on recently was a piece around transitions and well-being in in law schools, particularly. And in that piece, it was very much about kind of questioning the complexity of some of those concepts of confidence, of belonging, and, yeah, really trying to get into the teeth of that, I suppose, and how it’s different maybe for law students. So that’s one area of work that I’ve been working on.
In terms of other publications and scholarship, I guess, I’ve published lots of little bits on various teaching initiatives or various projects that I’ve been involved in in the law school. So by way of some examples, I wrote an article, for The Law Teacher on a land law teaching initiative that I know Wendy might remember some of that. So it was about embedding videos into the land law module, and the idea was bringing students on a virtual kind of land law field trip. So that was a really nice piece of scholarship as well, and I suppose maybe something that we might talk about later as well, is that kind of idea of where you can grow as a teacher or a scholar as well. So that was a really nice piece to write about.
Some other areas, I guess, that I’ve been working on broadly and some of the current pieces that I can maybe share with you as well is, assessment. So thinking about formative assessment. So wrote a piece asking us to think about how we approach formative assessment in higher education. And I guess I would say, generally, that we don’t maybe approach formative assessment in a very positive way that would maybe we can learn a lot from primary schools in that respect, secondary schools, and that that idea of kind of deliberate practice, so embedding deliberate practice into our teaching.
At the moment, if I may, I’ll just share what I’m kind of working on currently. So currently writing a book about authentic assessment in law, with some colleagues from the Law School, and also another piece on community and belonging. So there’s a wide range there, and I guess maybe that’s something that we can maybe talk about if you like. But, thinking about that kind of identity of my scholarship, I’m not sure that I’ve kind of quite found my identity in terms of scholarship. But I think broadly, I would say my scholarship, looks a lot or in kind of in engages with questions around skills and assessment for law students, but then secondly, tries to look at kind of inequality in legal education more widely.
(3:43) Heather Taylor
I think people, you know, also on the, Education and Scholarship track will probably be interested in where you’re publishing these things. So there’s quite a diverse range of different topics that you’ve written about. So where do you tend to publish?
Verona Ní Drisceoil
Yeah. Interesting. And I guess this is something that I’ve kind of been reflecting on myself as I’ve progressed through. Am I publishing in the right places?
I published a lot of short pieces in blog posts, and obviously, the Learning Matters blog has been excellent in that respect. I’ve also published in legal education related journals and publications and book editions as well. The book that I’m working on right now on authentic assessment is for Edward Elgar Publishing.
So I guess there’s a range there, and I suppose it is something, for us on Education and Scholarship tracks to think about and how we, you know, target publications or where we publish and so on and so forth. So, yep, there’s a range there.
(4:48) Heather Taylor
Same question to you then, James. Can you tell us a bit about what you’ve published in terms of your scholarship work?
James Williams
Yes. Of course. I mean my writing actually goes back a very long way. I started life as a secondary school teacher in terms of education. And after doing that for 12 years, I then moved into training science teachers.
Now, at that point, I was actually writing textbooks for children. So along with, two teaching colleagues, we wrote a series of textbooks that were, well, they were actually very successful. They were used in about 40% of all secondary schools. This is in the early 2000 and sold well over a million copies of the textbook. So that’s, you know, 1 element of, of scholarship if you like. And that’s I wrote the biology and my two colleagues, one wrote the physics, one wrote the chemistry. But when it comes to university and publishing, I’ve done a variety of things. So I’ve written, books for, teachers. For example, in, I wrote a book on leadership skills for teachers in schools. I then wrote a book on what’s called how science works. In other words, about the nature of science, which is actually an area of research that I’ve been undertaking for a number of years. And it was the subject also of my PhD. I also then published another book, which interestingly came out of the PhD, which was how to read and understand education research. And I’m currently working on a on a second edition of that. But in terms of other forms of writing, oh, all over the place, newspaper articles. I write a regular article every Thursday for the local Argus, called “Making Sense of It”. And that’s really an opportunity for me to engage with the local community, and to investigate things that I find interesting that I hope that they would find interesting. I’ve written, chapters of books, for publishers.
And a particular area of interest of mine is the history of evolution, the work of Charles Darwin and the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of evolution. So I’ve written papers on Wallace, which have appeared in international peer review journals. I’ve written articles for professional magazines about Wallace, and also about Darwin. I did a chapter for a book which was about how Darwin saw science and how he built up his theories from the observations that he made on his travels. And I regularly write articles for professional associations. There’s one for science teachers called the Association For Science Education. And I regularly write articles for them. And that’s aimed obviously at an audience of secondary science teachers mainly. But I also dip into the primary area as well. So I think, you know, the question is what do we deem to be scholarship? You know, that’s the big question I think that everybody wants to be answered. And I think it is so many different things. And writing is not just writing an article for a journal. It can be lots of things. It can be blogs. It can be, articles for newspapers, professional magazines. It can be your own blog on your own site. So I think what I’d encourage people to do in terms of writing for scholarship is, you know, write about what you’re really passionate about, what you really know, and what you really understand. And that will shine through in your writing. And you’ll have far more chance, I think, of being published.
(8:32) Wendy Garnham
James, coming back to you. How did you get started with all of this writing?
James Williams
There’s a very simple answer to that question, which is when I was training to be a teacher. So I’d done a degree in geology, and I had specialized in evolutionary paleontology. And I didn’t want to become a geologist in the North Sea or do all of that sort of thing. I thought, what can I do? And I thought, oh, I know. I’ll go into teaching. And I had a tutor. His name was, Doctor. Bob Farebrother, retired now, but a wonderful man. And when I wrote an assessment for him, the feedback on my assessment in pencil sort of said, I think you’ve got a little bit of a gift for writing here. Have you ever thought about writing for a magazine? And, of course, I hadn’t. So I talked to him about that and he put me on to the Association For Science Education. They had journals. They had a journal for teachers called Education in Science and they had another journal, which is called School Science Review. So I started off by writing just one of these sort of magazine type articles, and it grew from there. And his advice was always write about what you know, you know, because then the passion comes through. Said if you artificially say, oh, I want to write about this because it’s popular at the moment, but I don’t really know anything about it. You’re not going to succeed. So write about what you know. That’s where it began. And as a result of that, I started publishing in educational newspapers. I’ve got a regular column in the newspaper. I was an agony uncle. So I was, helping students out with, issues, through questions and answers in the newspapers. I then had a science column which was called “Science Now and Then” where I looked at the history and present-day science, which was fantastic. And I did that for a good, oh, 10 years or more for the Times Educational Supplement. That then led to an offer to write textbooks for children.
Somebody had seen my articles and said, you know, would you like to write textbooks for children? And we teamed up, three of us. And as I said, we were incredibly successful. I’ve written two textbook series actually in in my career. And that then leads to lots of other types of writing. So I feel as if I’ve covered many different types of genre when it comes to writing. And that’s also then led to a lot of other opportunities for scholarship which are outside of writing. Things like, I did a television series for Channel 4, where I was a 1950s teacher of biology. And we had to teach the children 1950’s style, and everything was 1950s. It was it’s the hardest I think I’ve ever worked in my life because we did it genuinely, you know, 7 days a week. And it was a, 14-hour day when you were being filmed, you know, with these with these children. I’ve also then, done a lot of, radio stuff, certainly with the BBC, ITV, BBC Sussex. I’m regularly contacted to be the science, sorry, the education expert on that. And I go on and talk about, you know, what happens to be in the news this week about education that everybody’s up in arms about.
So you never know where your scholarship will take you. And the thing is, you know, not to try and narrow things down, but to be as broad as possible, and try and think of different audiences, different opportunities, and different places where you can publish because you never know who might spot what you’ve read.
(12:12) Wendy Garnham
So would you say then that really sort of illustrates the power of networking? It’s who you know that really sort of can help you.
James Williams
Yes, absolutely, Wendy. To a large extent, you know, opportunity leads to opportunity, and people put you in touch with other people. I mean, the book proposal that I’m preparing at the moment, I’ve got some study leave coming up. And I understand that that’s quite a rare thing on the scholarship track, but I’ve got it. So I’ve got a book proposal. Now the person who is interested in my book proposal was actually one of the editors of the textbooks I did 20 years ago. So, you know, you never know things come back around.
(12:53) Wendy Garnham
So over to Verona, same question. Just how did you get started with your scholarship writing?
Verona Ní Drisceoil
I guess just by way of some context, I think James picked up on this as well, kind of trajectory into higher education as well, and maybe that’s relevant to my story of scholarship. So I started off on a research and teaching track or education and research or whatever they’re called right now. So my, I guess, research area initially was on language rights. So that was my PhD area. Came to Sussex, and but I always, I guess, felt that maybe wasn’t my calling, and I was kind of very involved in education-related initiatives and so on and so forth in the department, and I suppose linked to what you said earlier, James, about something that you’re passionate about. Right? So I think there was just that natural sense that I was being drawn to this work, and then I requested to go on an Education and Scholarship track and found my tribe in that. And then it became much easier to write as well. And whilst I’m obviously very passionate and interested in language rights debates and so on, it maybe just wasn’t exactly what I wanted to pursue in my career trajectory. So I suppose that’s relevant to how I got started writing about scholarship.
And so for me, there’s an important maybe point as well, linking to what you were saying, James, about kind of if you’re on an Education and Scholarship track and you’re carving out your career trajectory and so on. I think there’s also potentially an important link between what roles you might be doing in the department or what you’re responsible for in the department or, you know, because that can inevitably open up other opportunities for you, and you, you know, you’re kind of passionate about something, so, for many years I was involved in the widening participation work in the Law School, and I think that brought me into literature around challenging structures and inequalities, and that’s always that’s coming through in my writing now as well. So I suppose, yeah, that’s how I got started. I’m not going to say that I found it really easy to make kind of the shift over, and I suppose something that James picked up on earlier, you know, what is scholarship or what you’re expected to do. So that was quite there was a different expectation when I moved over. And definitely, I would say that I had, some imposter syndrome around that as well. I was kind of starting over with my new research and so I did feel that was definitely a challenge, and we can definitely talk more about that if it’s of interest. So yeah, that’s how I guess I got started.
I would say there’s an important link to be made between kind of admin roles and other work that you’re doing in the department because, again, you might not be allocated lots of time for your scholarship in writing. So if you’re writing policies on feedback or you’re writing policies on x for your department, you know, you should really think about how you can think about creating that into something that might, you know, qualify as scholarship as well and in the many forms that that James has outlined.
(16:12) Wendy Garnham
It sounds as though for both of you, it’s about following your interests that really sort of sparked this sort of interest in writing the scholarship. Is that would you say that’s right?
James Williams
Yes. Because let me put it like this. If you’re not interested in it, why should anybody else be interested? You know, you’ve got to think quite carefully about the audience that you are writing for. And I came from obviously the science background and there is this terrible thing in science where they say, oh, you mustn’t bring yourself into your work. You know, you must stand outside and look in. You have to be on the outside. You mustn’t interfere or you can’t use pronouns like I and me or we. I mean, that’s oh, that’s terrible in science. But actually, you know, people don’t want to read that sort of prose. They want to feel invested and engaged in what it is that you’re writing about. So you have to make that connection and you can’t do it. I don’t think unless you have sparked a bit of interest in yourself in what you’re writing about.
And you know that that’s that for me is the key thing. I’d also say that Verona is absolutely spot on when it comes to the roles that you take on within a department. I’ve been at Sussex now for 21 plus years. And I’ve probably done nearly all of the roles apart from the two roles that I really didn’t want, which were Head of Department and Head of School. But those are for particular thoughts. I would it was the same reason why I came out of schools and went into university. Yeah. I was asked, you know, do you want be a deputy head or a head teacher? No. I don’t want to be that. I want to stay with my subject and my passions. I don’t want to be led off into admin. But I, you know, I’ve been a Director of Student Experience. I’ve led the team in terms of, initial teacher training. I’ve led the team in terms of, science education.
I’ve been an academic misconduct investigator. And I think people should also think about taking opportunities in the wider university as well. So for example, I work on the student discipline team. So I investigate cases from other areas. I sit on academic misconduct panels. And that gets you known across the University, but you’re also giving something very positive to the University. You’re helping the university to maintain its standards, to maintain its integrity. And those are really important things.
(18:55) Wendy Garnham
I guess that sort of speaks to the sort of broad nature of what scholarship is. Which brings us to, our next question, which I’m going to direct to you, Verona, which is about the impact that your writing has had for you, personally. Just what sort of impact has your scholarship writing had for you?
Verona Ní Drisceoil
Yeah. Absolutely. I think it links maybe to some of what I was saying earlier about that shift in my identity and also my value system, I guess, and my passions and feeling very aligned in that. So for me, you know, being involved in Education and Scholarship, writing about teaching, pedagogy, legal education, all of that, and all of the wonderful people that I’ve met because of that, is has been wonderful for me. And I feel, I guess, much happier. So not to sound all self-help like, but, I think that is important. You know? And I think we’ve that point about passion, your values, what you’re involved in, and what you’re contributing to is really important for us as academics. So it’s been a really positive impact for me, meeting people like all of you. I feel that it’s a really warm and wholesome space. Wendy, I remember hearing you speak before about making those external connections and networking and so on, and I did throw myself into that in terms of Twitter and social media and there’s been so many beautiful things that have come from that in terms of networking with legal education academics across the UK and Ireland. So has had a really positive impact? Not saying it’s always easy, right, but, generally, I would say, a really positive impact.
Wendy Garnham
I think sometimes it’s about just being prepared to move out of your comfort zone, isn’t it? And then these things can sort of really take off.
(20:58) Heather Taylor
So, Verona, you talked about this a little bit before, where you were saying about transitioning from being on an Education and Research track onto an Education and Scholarship track, and saying you had some challenges around sort of making that transition, a little bit of imposter syndrome. So I was just wondering, have there been any other sort of challenges you faced around doing your writing for your scholarship?
Verona Ní Drisceoil
Well, yes. I mean, I think you won’t be surprised by this answer. And listening to James, I’m like, how do you find all the time to do all this wonderful writing? You know? But I like everyone, I guess, we can often struggle with those differing demands in our roles, and if you have a heavy admin role, and there are things that you need to firefight and so on and so forth. So, I mean, I’ve had that challenge. The writing challenge. Finding space to write challenge.
I guess one other challenge that I found when thinking about the writing for scholarship, if we like, or writing in terms of legal education. For me, I didn’t have any specific training in in research methods, for example. So I came from a discipline where I wasn’t using kind of empirical work and research and so on.
So I suppose there was a part of that imposter syndrome because I think the kind of approach that you take is quite different to how I was approaching my work on language rights, which you might say was more desk based and so on. Whereas now, I’m thinking I want to do a lot more surveys with students. I want to do field work. I’m doing a project at the moment, experimenting with walking interviews, for example, but I didn’t have any of that type of training, let’s say, so I think that’s something that can be interesting for people that maybe are on an Education and Scholarship track, and maybe there’s that expectation that you’re going to do particular type of work, you’re going to use particular types of research methods and so on, and maybe you haven’t had any training in that.
And I think that can be a challenge for people on an Education and Scholarship track. It’s something I’ve had a conversation with Sarah about, and I think it’s something that might be rolled out at Sussex. So that was definitely a challenge for me.
Heather Taylor
What could be rolled out at Sussex with the training?
Verona Ní Drisceoil
I think more training for people that are on these tracks that maybe have come from various disciplines that may have not received training in that area. So I’d be interested in your thoughts on that.
Heather Taylor
I think as well, you know because obviously you’ve got really good knowledge about the topic. Finding somebody else who might have good knowledge about the methods, who wants to collaborate with you would be a really, really good idea as well.
Verona Ní Drisceoil
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that’s kind of where the networking comes in. But, again, I suppose it’s the support structures around this, which I know I know we’ve all probably talked about those things, but, I mean, there’s been really great strides have made in that area, so supporting people with the development of their scholarship. But I think still it needs to be kept on the agenda, let’s say.
(24:25) Wendy Garnham
James, for you, what impact does your scholarship writing have, and what would you say the challenges have been for you?
James Williams
Impact is a difficult one. Again, what do you mean by impact? From a personal perspective, it’s a sense of satisfaction that I can write about the things that I really love writing about and that actually they are then appreciated by other people. And, you know, occasionally I’ll get, from a newspaper column, I’ll get an email that says, oh, I really liked your column in the newspaper. Oh, yes. I thought, you know, I agreed with you. I also get the ones that say, I think you’re totally wrong, which is which is fine. I don’t mind if people disagree, just as long as I don’t start calling me names. You know, you attack problems, not people. So there’s been the immense sort of, it’s almost like leaving a legacy. You know, I’ve got now, some grandchildren and it’s good to know that actually my textbooks, my written books, my newspaper articles, there’s a little archive of things. And, you know, they’re not going to read my PhD thesis. I mean, come on. Whoever does read this? But there is that sense, which is, you know, about the impact. And you never know where you will affect people because I’ve had people from overseas contact me about things or inquire about, oh, I found this, you know, can you tell me anything about it? Because it’s to do with Darwin or it’s to do with Wallace and all of those sorts of, aspects.
I made a great friend at Charles University in in the US who is another expert on Alfred Russel Wallace. And he and I communicate regularly now and we write, you know, we write about Wallace and we publish on a blog that he runs. And that’s been great to have that sort of impact. In terms of challenges, well, the challenges are always when you put your heart and soul into something and it doesn’t work. You know, the publisher says no, I don’t think this would be interesting for our readers, etcetera, etcetera. And you’ve got to get over the oh, that’s it. It’s because I’m a bad writer. It literally just could be this is the wrong time for that piece of work. Don’t throw it away. Keep it because I’ve had things that have been rejected, that I’ve gone back and updated and it’s been published because I hit the right publisher at the right time, You know, it’s a bit like JK Rowling, how many times was she turned down for Harry Potter? And then, you know, look what happened there.
(27:37) Wendy Garnham
I guess that sort of leads into our top tips. So really if you could share a top tip with listeners about writing a scholarship, what would your top tip be James?
James Williams
My top tip is that your writing has to involve people. If you don’t involve people, people tend not to be interested. So even if you’re writing about something which is, I don’t know, interesting historically. I wrote a piece recently about private education and people are not interested in the structure of private schools and the fact that it was set up in this, you know, at this time and it was supposed to be for the poor, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Those are just facts and people go, yeah, so what? So what you need to do is you need to find interesting characters and talk about the characters. So my top tip is always involve people in whatever you’re writing because people like to read about people.
Wendy Garnham
Top that one, Verona.
Verona Ní Drisceoil
I don’t think I can. That was really powerful, James. I love that. I guess linked to that in the sense of involve people, but not in the same way that you spoke about, but in order to do well in anything, I think, in life, you have to surround yourself with good people and people that lift you up and so on, and so I think that’s very relevant to writing about scholarship. So whatever you’re writing about, you know, surround yourself with good people, and I think that links to some of the points that were made earlier about networking, connection. So I think we’re aligned there, James, in that point, or that power of connection, let’s say, more widely. I hope that’s useful.
Heather Taylor
I agree with you that sometimes, you know, if you think about all the scholarship activities you might have done, so much of it comes out of little conversations, not even deliberate ones. You know, you might just be having a coffee with a colleague or something. And so I think, yeah, keeping a really sort of, other people, like you were saying earlier on about how much you admire James being so enthusiastic. You need a lot of enthusiastic people around you, I think, to keep enthused and to generate ideas and sort of roll with them. So, yeah, I completely agree.
Verona Ní Drisceoil
Just that idea of support, you know, we all really need that kind of support and structure. I might come in with a less interesting kind of tip, but I think we picked up on it earlier. I do think there is that point about if you are on an Education and Scholarship track and the admin point that we made earlier. Think about where you’re writing all this work, let’s say, your Director of Teaching and Learning or you are Director of Student Experience, or you are whatever, and you’ve been asked tasked with writing loads of these policy type documents with your own internal department, but how can you then maybe push that into another piece? So whatever you’re working on as well, think about how can this be more than just 1 piece.
James Williams
And if I could just come in with a second little top tip, which is to keep a notebook and write down ideas because you never know when an idea will happen. So for example, you know, as I say, I’ve got to come up with an idea every single week for my column in the in the Argus. And nobody tells me what to write. And I’ve been given carte blanche by the editor to write about whatever I want provided it’s not illegal or defamatory or all the rest. And literally, you know, this I’d normally do it on a Sunday, and I file it on a Monday or a Tuesday. And my wife said to me this week, she said what are you writing about this week? And I said, I haven’t got a clue. I don’t know yet, but I’ll find something. And then I read Twitter and Andrew Neil put out a tweet that said, of course, you know, this whole thing about, wind farms is rubbish. He said, think of how many days there are when there’s absolutely no wind whatsoever in Great Britain.
And I thought, well, that’s scientifically illiterate. That’s what I’m going write about. So this week, tomorrow’s Argus is going to be about solar farms, wind farms, and bioenergy and it’s all about alternative energy and it just came from one tweet. One thing that was said wrote it down and from there, that’s where it came from.
So keep a little notebook and when you’re having conversations with people and you think, well, that’s a good idea. Write it down because I can guarantee you that if you say, oh, I must remember that you will forget it?
Wendy Garnham
I have difficulty remembering where I put the notebook. That’s a different story. So I’ve only really got one thing to add, which is just I’ll take this opportunity to remind you, Heather, that we have a plan to write our next foundation year textbook. So, this is a good point where I can just, remind you that.
Heather Taylor
I would like to thank our guests Dr Verona Ní Drisceoil and Dr James Williams. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.
Wendy Garnham
This has been the Learning Matters Podcast from the University of Sussex created by Sarah Watson, Wendy Garnham, and Heather Taylor, and produced by Simon Overton.
For more episodes, as well as articles, blogs, case studies, and infographics, please visit https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/learning-matters/
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