Book Title: Voices of Practice

Book Description

Not everyone has had a straight and narrow path into academia. Many higher education teachers, in fact, were professionals before they became part of the university or college where they work; and many keep one foot in both worlds even while they teach. Especially in programs designed to support students in a field of practice (education, nursing, and others), teachers find that being an academic or a scholar is supplementary to being a professional. And yet the demands of scholarship remain a component of their academic work—research, publishing, and the rest.

What does it mean to be a professional while also an academic? Whether part-time, sessional, or adjunct, full-time, or permanent, what are the challenges we face when transitioning to an academic job from our field of practice? How do our professional perspectives and experiences inform our teaching, our interpretation of curricula, assessment, evaluation, and grades? And what is the relationship between scholarship and work?

Inspired by scholarly narratives like those from Ruth Behar, bell hooks, Jonathan Kozol, and others, Voices of Practice inspects, interrupts, questions, and reconstructs what it means to be a scholar, using deeply personal reflections, poignant vignettes, and carefully examined timelines of intellectual and professional development. This volume features educators who may not at first call themselves “academics” and who have focused their careers on the practice rather than the publishing of scholarship.