I keep a diary, just like I did when I was 16. It is filled with events in my life, musings about my partner, Stu and our home life. Sprinkled through it there are professional reflections on my journey as a student and what I’m going to call a Pre-Early Career Reseracher (PECR). I intend for this blog to be much more focused and less cathartic. I want to share my struggles, my strategies, my reflections and my triumphs so that others know they can do the same. I believe in the transformational power of education and I believe that insignificant little me can make a difference. So here is a rundown of where I am at now regarding the research projects I am part of. Perhaps next time I will do “the story so far.”

I want to have 25 publications by the end of 2025

Above is the whiteboard in my office displaying the 25 publications I have planned. I want to have 25 by the end of 2025. So let’s start at the top left and go down each column.

The first three are publications I have already had published or accepted. This first is a discussion piece which came out of my honours thesis, co-written with a former colleague at my previous university (FedUni, where I was emplyed sessionally). Dr. Susan Emmett who is a wonderful mentor and never ceases to encourage me. The article is about social equity discourses in higher education and can be accessed here.

The next two are chapters in an edited book which have been accepted but we are waiting to hear the offical publication date from Springer. One is co-wrtten with Susan about the same social equity discourses but it also discusses the pandemic. The other is a scoping literature review which looks at deficit discourses in higher education and it is co-written with another academic from my former university. That’s 3 down and 22 to go!

The next four sections are labelled RPP (Rural Placement Project). This is a project where we initially interviewed Pre-Service Teachers that had done a rural placement. So it’s all about the teacher shortage in rural areas and the governement incentives for teachers to work in rural areas. Dr. Tim Fish from Monash university invited me to join this project as we share a passion for rural education. We are a team of four with Ondine Bradbury from Deakin University and Richard O’Donovan, also from Monash. That is the main team but we have had a Research Assistant (RA) do some of the work as well and they are listed as an author. I am by far the least experienced one on the team, but they never treat me like that. As you can see from the whiteboard we have 4 publications planned and the first one has already been submitted. The team meets fortnightly.

Next is “CSGT-JUTLP-SE” which stands for Cross-School grant team, Journal of university teaching and learning practice, special edition. I put together a team at FedUni because they offered an internal grant for research teams that had people from Arts, Education and Business. We sent our article in to the JUTLP special edition and they suggested we combine our work with Michelle Joubert from South Africa. So we did! Can anyone say “gee an international collaboration will look good on your resume”?! It is currently “under review.”

So is the COVID discourse article. It is an extension of the first article and the book chapter. Also co-written with Sue Emmett. Submitted to a Q1 (top ranked) journal, waiting for it to be reviewed.

The bottom tile in the second column is a project that I am determined to keep as a solo project; my only one! I want to survey and then email interview enabling staff about their views on equity and see how their views align (or not) with the 4 discourses that Sue and I have created.

The Bandura and Sense of Belonging article is another discussion peice. There was some drama with co-authors but it ended up being Trixie James and I that submitted it. It is also the JUTLP, but a different special issue. We got it back with major revisions, completed those and re-submitted it. Should hear any day now.

The next project same out of a Wellbeing Special Interest Group (SIG) which is part of the National Association of Enabling Educators, Australia. A group of us got together to write reflecitons and then do an autoethnography of our experience during the pandemic. It is almost ready to be submitted, my parts are done.

The next article is a discussion peice on intersectionality which I will write with Dr. Susan Hopkins later this year. She is part of the Wellbeing SIG project and was quite keen to work with me on this one after I sent her the draft I had written. She wants to make the article more theoretical and I am A-OK with that. Plan to submit it before the end of the year.

The next article is co-written with Sue Emmett and it is a follow up from our first article. It names the discourses we discuss as a typology and argues for their usefulness. I’m not sure that it will be accepted but it has been submitted so we will see!

Katrina Johnson, Cody McCormack from my unversity, and I are putting together a project to examine how students interact with memes about student life. They tend to line up with what the research says students struggle with, and personally I can identify with quite a few of them. I want to know if I am alone in this! So this is another project which was certainly my iniative however Katrina has far more experience than me. Still in the planning stages.

The preparedness project is with Michelle from South Africa, my dean Karen Seary and probably another couple of co-workers. We have had one quick meeting with Michelle and determined that we are all interested in doing a mixed methods comparitive project around student preparedness. Next meeting and finalising who is on the team should happen over the next few weeks. Karen is a busy lady!

My university has a social innovation group and we are writing a discussion piece which defines social innovation and shows what that looks like in enabling education. It is all being done during weekly Shut-Up and Write sessions.

The TAFE transition project is with Sue Emmett and Talia Barrett from FedUni. We are looking at how they transition to unversity as they enter second year after coming from TAFE. This group of students has one of the highest attrition rates. We have ethics approval from FedUni and now I have to get it done for CQU. We are planning at least 2 publications.

The bottom tile in the fourth column is the second publication from the Cross-School Grant Team but this time it’s not a collaboration with MIchelle in South Africa. It focuses on one qualitative question about what concerns students had during the pandemic and the emergency move to online learning. I’ve used a sense of belonging framework which I think will work well. The discussion section is still not quite written properly.

Next! Last column. The UNESCO project is a big report which came out in 2021. Sue Emmett and I are going to code it according to our typology of social equity discourses. So far it seems to be very much transformative and social justice related. It has also directly opposed neoliberalism on a couple of occasions. You can find the report here.

The last 4 tiles are for my PhD which I hope to do via publication. That is a least a whole separate post, if not 10.

So that is it as far as my current research goes! Multiple projects, at different stages, loads of fun!