On writing

Today at the Inclusive Education monthly research meeting Ann-Marie Priest and I talked about our respective experiences as writers. It was a fascinating discussion, particularly from Ann-Marie who is currently finishing a book looking at the experiences of four Australian women writers through the lens of writing as a vocation. While we talked about quite different experiences we each expressed in different ways the need to find a voice that balances the conventions the academic writing with our own ideas, thoughts, style and personal opinions. We each also talked about our inspiration for writing about the topics we do. Both of us acknowledged that writing is a way of making sense of the world around us. For Ann-Marie her personal experiences in various jobs and the quest for a "vocation" or place in the world has drawn her to looking at other women who have wrestled with the same issue in their lives. I could relate to this as I'm still not sure what it is I'm going to do with my life but it has something to do with teaching, communication, exchanging ideas (large and small) with others. I talked about the intersection between personal writing (blogging, twittering) with academic writing and what each offers to the other. Twitter is teaching me to be succinct and clear. Blogging has taught me to write without fear, without the need to obsessively reread, rewrite and redo everything I write over and over. All of these skills continue to have an impact on my "academic writing" in that I am continuing to become aware of the flow of my writing, as well as the expression of ideas with clarity. Probably the key point (for me at least) that Ann-Marie made went something like this: We don't write about something because we fully understand it. We write about something in order to try and make sense of it for ourselves. All writing is personal. As writers we are our most important readers.

Collaboration

Things have been quiet here at the Cultural Studies and Education SIG of late. Recently, after some discussion with another of the Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre Special Interest Groups it was decided that for the rest of 2011 we would collaborate with the good people from the Inclusive Education SIG.

With that in mind, last week I joined in their monthly videoconference where Karen Seary from CQUniversity reported on her visit to Adelaide in April where she attended a forum on dual sector institutions. This was of particular to all of us as CQUniversity has recently been given the green light to go ahead with merger plans with the Central Queensland TAFE. This would make the institution one of the very few in Australia that blends TAFE and University operations. Naturally, there are many implications to be considered and the merger is in its very early stages. Karen had a great deal of interesting material to disseminate. It was interesting that she noted the forum spoke of how most institutions were not dual-sector ready but in preparing they needed to focus on building strong, collaborative relationships. At present there are only five dual sector institutions in Australia - four in Victoria, and one on the Northern Territory. They each have adopted various management and organisational structures and the concept of "transfer shock" was used at the forum to describe the culture shock that the newly blended institution and its people can suffer through - even at the best of times. Despite the fact that TAFEs and Universities can exist side by side it was noted that there is no such thing as a seamless transition from one sector to the other for students. Karen observed how many speakers at the forum discussed the gap in expectations that needed to be filled by providing TAFE to Uni students with tertiary learning skills in order to aid them to succeed.

All this was food for thought for all us who were present and no doubt as time goes on more will be revealed as to how CQUniversity plans to move ahead with its proposed merger. Collaboration it seems, is the word for the week.