Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories: the ‘problem’ with case notes in contemporary social work

Drawing on a text-oriented action research ethnography of the writing practices of UK-based social workers, this paper focuses on a key but problematic aspect of everyday, professional textual practice – the production of “case notes.” Using data drawn from interviews, workshops, texts and observation, the paper locates case notes within social work everyday practice and explores the entextualization of three distinct case notes. The heuristic of imagined, prescribed and actual trajectories is used to track specific instances of entextualization and to illustrate why the production of case notes is a particularly complex activity. A key argument is that in the institutional imaginary, and reflected in the institutionally prescribed trajectory, case notes are construed as a comprehensive record of all actions, events and interactions, prior to and providing warrants for all other documentation. However, they are in actual practice produced as parts of clusters of a range of different text types which, together, provide accounts of, and for, actions and decisions. This finding explains why case notes are often viewed as incomplete and raises fundamental questions about how they should be evaluated. The complexity of case notes as an everyday professional practice is underscored in relation to professional voice, addressivity and textual temporality

Economies of signs in writing for academic publication: the case of English Medium “National” Journals

The centrality of publishing in academic journals to academic knowledge work globally is largely taken as a given. Publishing is a defining aspect of scholars’ labour in the academic world, tied to both current and possible future material conditions in which they/we work. The aim of this paper is to focus on one part of this knowledge work, the production of English medium “national” journals in local contexts where English is not the official or widely used medium of communication yet where English, in a global context, is increasingly viewed as the “academic lingua franca.” The paper begins by outlining the longitudinal study from which this focus emerged, followed by a discussion of case studies of four English medium “national” journals in the field of psychology located in four southern and central European national contexts: Hungary, Slovakia, Spain and Portugal. I argue that a focus on the specific phenomenon of EMN journals brings into sharp relief the nature and workings of the dominant knowledge economy and also illustrates the ways in which some of the key ideological values, including a market model of academic knowledge production, are to some extent being challenged. A goal of this paper is to explore this particular fragment of the academic knowledge making world—what scholars are doing, why and under what conditions —to illustrate the need for closer scrutiny of the practices surrounding academic production and to open up debate about what kind of practices we want to be involved in and why

Writing in professional social work practice in a changing communicative landscape (WISP)

Professor Theresa Lillis, Maria Leedham and Alison Twiner are carrying out the first national project on writing and recording in social work: WiSP - Writing in professional social work practice in a changing communicative landscape. Alongside the project advisory panel, chaired by Lucy Gray, they are working to ensure findings can be used for informing education and training, as well as professional and institutional policy making

Resistir regímenes de evaluación en el estudio del escribir: hacia un imaginario enriquecido

Resumen Este artículo se enfoca en el imaginario (Castoriadis, 1987) predominante en la investigación sobre el escribir y se pregunta, en particular, cómo los regímenes de evaluación ejercen orientaciones analíticas sobre este fenómeno. El artículo retoma algunos extractos de tres proyectos de investigación: uno sobre el escribir académico de los estudiantes (Lillis, 2001); otro sobre el escribir de los académicos para la publicación (Lillis y Curry, 2010) y un último sobre el escribir profesional de los asistentes sociales (Lillis, 2017). Los objetivos del artículo son, primero, ilustrar el enfoque evaluativo-normativo sobre el escribir que se hace evidente en las prácticas de asunción en de los regímenes de evaluación, por parte del profesor, del evaluador y del inspector. En un segundo momento, argumentar que algunas categorías analíticas utilizadas a menudo en la investigación sobre el escribir pueden reflejar características de los regímenes de evaluación y llevar a un reconocimiento equivocado en lugar de iluminar lo que está pasando. Por último, el artículo busca defender el valor de un enfoque de orientación etnográfico particularmente de un enfoque que resalta trayectorias de textos y personas⎯a la hora de ‘abrir’ los imaginarios de la investigación y de hacer visibles dimensiones clave de los fenómenos que estamos explorando. [Resisting Regimes of Evaluation in the Study of Writing: Towards a Richer Imaginary] Abstract This paper puts the spotlight on the dominant ‘imaginary’ (Castoriadis 1987) governing writing research, focusing in particular on the way in which evaluation regimes shape analytic orientations towards writing as a phenomenon. Drawing on data from three different research projects- student writing ( e.g. Lillis 2001), scholars’ writing for publication (e.g. Lillis and Curry 2010) , writing in professional social work (e.g. Lillis, 2017)-the paper has three objectives: 1) to illustrate the normative evaluative approach towards writing evident in practises of uptake within the evaluation regimes, that is by teacher, reviewer, manager/inspector; 2) to signal that some widely used analytic categories/frames used across writing research traditions may mirror features of evaluation regimes and lead to a misrecognition, rather than an illumination of what is going on; 3) to illustrate the value of ethnographically oriented approaches, in particular work which explores writing through a focus on trajectories (of texts and of people) for opening up our research imaginaries and for making visible key dimensions to the phenomena we are exploring

A case study of a research-based collaboration around writing in social work

This paper discusses an ongoing research-based collaboration between an academic literacies researcher and a lecturer in the field of Social Work aimed at exploring the nature of everyday writing in social work. The paper outlines the key principles of the methodology adopted—a text-oriented ethnography—and discusses the extent to which this methodology is facilitating a collaborative partnership towards meeting three interrelated goals: the empirical goal of building rich descriptions of writing in everyday social work practice; the ideological-epistemological goal of challenging a deficit discourse on writing (and writers); and the interventionist goal of working with institutions to harness writing in productive ways to learning and professional practice. Central to this methodological approach is an attempt to build a three-way conversation between the fields of 'new' literacy studies, in particular academic literacies; the discipline of social work education; and social work agencies/practitioners. We outline the methodology and foreground some key congruencies across these fields which are helping to facilitate successful collaboration

Quelle relation entre l’écrit académique et l’écrit professionnel? Une étude de cas dans le domaine du travail social [What is the relationship between academic writing and professional writing? A case study in the field of social work]

Beaucoup d'étudiants, dans l'enseignement supérieur, suivent des cours à orientation professionnelle. Cet article se focalise sur un projet d’« ethnographie de texte », concernant l’écriture des assistants sociaux pendant leur formation et sur leur terrain professionnel, avec cinq assistants sociaux comme co-chercheurs. L’article examine les ressemblances et les différences entre l’écriture pratiquée dans les cours universitaires et dans le travail quotidien. Une conclusion importante de la recherche est qu’en général on ne prête pas suffisamment d’attention pédagogique à l’écriture – tant aux textes qu’aux pratiques – que les assistants sociaux doivent produire dans les contextes professionnels

The sociolinguistics of writing in a global context

Non technical summary: The goal of this programme of work was to critically review what we mean by ‘writing’ in the 21C, to generate an international agenda for future research and to collaborate with potential users. The programme builds on a ten year study of academic writing in four national contexts and a state of the art review of research on writing in sociolinguistics. The review is informed by work in new literacy studies, applied linguistics, semiotics and new media studies. Key findings are that writing is on the increase globally in all spheres of social life, involving a wide range of technologies, including the continuing use of conventional tools, such as pen and paper, as well as digital technologies, where writing is increasingly produced alongside image and sound. Whilst people’s practices of writing are wide ranging, both common sense and academic approaches to writing often involve rigid assumptions and expectations (for example, expecting writing to be monolingual, in a standard language, using particular design layouts and materials). Such expectations are problematic in that they limit understandings about the complex functions of writing in different domains of social life and can cloud understandings about what any particular piece of writing means. Any misunderstandings can be highly consequential in a globalised world in which writing – in all its forms- plays a key role. Key activities of the programme have been the writing of 3 books, 11 articles and book chapters, the organisation of two international seminars and collaboration with user groups

Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy

Academic literacies research has developed over the past 20 years as a significant field of study that draws on a number of disciplinary fields and subfields such as applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociocultural theories of learning, new literacy studies and discourse studies. Whilst there is fluidity and even confusion surrounding the use of the term ‘academic literacies’, we argue in this paper that it is a field of enquiry with a specific epistemological and ideological stance towards the study of academic communication and particularly, to date, writing. To define this field we situate the emergence of academic literacies research within a specific historical moment in higher education and offer an overview of the questions that the research has set out to explore. We consider debates surrounding the uses of the singular or plural forms, academic literacy/ies, and, given its position at the juncture of research/theory building and application, we acknowledge the need for strategic as well as epistemological and ideological understandings of its uses. We conclude by summarising the methodological and theoretical orientations that have developed as ‘academic literacies’, conceptualised as a field of inquiry, has expanded, and we point to areas that merit further theoretical consideration and empirical research

Strategies and tactics in academic knowledge production by multilingual scholars

In the past decade, academic evaluation systems worldwide have markedly increased the use of mechanisms that privilege the use of English in journal publishing. In the context of these trends, this article highlights our findings from more than 12 years of research on the experiences and perspectives of 50 multilingual European scholars with writing for publication, particularly in English. We draw on de Certeau’s (1984) notions of strategies and tactics to explore key ways in which scholars manage often-competing demands and interests in writing for publication. Scholars both adopt strategies that align with official publication policies and use tactics that support scholars’ sometimes competing agendas. At different moments scholars embrace, accommodate, or resist the perceived dominance of English in knowledge production regimes and evaluation systems. We conclude by summarizing the value of drawing on the notions of strategy and tactics in an era of increasing debates over evaluation systems

Cerrando la brecha entre texto y contexto en la investigación sobre la escritura académica: revisitando la etnografía como método, metodología y teorización profunda / Closing the gap between text and context in researching academic writing: revisiting ethnography as method, methodology and deep theorising

Resumen Abordar la escritura académica desde una perspectiva contextualista sigue siendo una preocupación fundamental en los proyectos de investigación que tienen como objetivo explorar la naturaleza de la escritura —¿qué es la “escritura académica”?— y las consecuencias de una configuración específica de la escritura académica —¿quién participa en la escritura académica y bajo qué condiciones?—. Este artículo tiene dos objetivos: 1) resumir los argumentos que propuse en una publicación en inglés del año 2008 acerca de cómo se puede evitar una perspectiva textualista en el estudio de la escritura académica, usando los recursos empíricos y conceptuales que brinda la etnografía; 2) ofrecer algunas reflexiones críticas acerca de los argumentos que planteé originalmente, incluyendo mayor detalle acerca de la importancia de la noción de indexicalidad para cerrar la brecha entre texto y contexto. A lo largo del artículo incluyo preguntas que han surgido desde 2008 en publicaciones y conversaciones con colegas acerca de los argumentos, así como algunos breves comentarios. Abstract Exploring academic writing from a contextual perspective remains a fundamental concern in research projects aimed at exploring the nature of writing— what is ‘academic writing’?—and the consequences of specific con-figurations of academic writing— who participates in academic writing and under what conditions? This article has two objectives: 1) to summarize the arguments I proposed in an English-medium publication in 2008 on how to avoid a textualist perspective in the study of academic writing, using empirical and conceptual resources provided by ethnography; 2) to offer some critical reflections on the arguments I originally presented, including a sharper articulation of the importance of the notion of indexicality to bridge the gap between text and context. Throughout the article, I include questions that have arisen since 2008 in publications and conversations with colleagues about the arguments made, as well as some brief reflections