Previously on Screenface dot net, I wrote about the first half of identity themed sections in the Slowposium site. Now I am doing the rest.
Negotiating third space identity through the process of writing about it
Carina Buckley (Solent) & Alicja Syska (Plymouth)
One of the things that we really wanted to encourage is for hosts/presenters to express themselves in a variety of ways, befitting the skill and creativity found in the third space. Buckley and Syska decided to embed a 30 min podcast recording in a Padlet for their contribution.
I must admit, I’m not much of a podcast person because my mind frequently drifts. When this happens in text, it’s easy enough to glance back – and re-read key ideas that resonate. Podcasts are far more transient. As a result, my thoughts here reflect snatched, in the moment reflections.
Delightfully conversational
Fluidity as liberating rather than constraining
Liquidity – they created a 10 point scale between academic and professional identity. Participant positionality changed depending on the questions
Feeling less constrained by the expectations of academic writing, resisting the deadness of academic language
Happiness, a more personal relationship with writing, the ability to retain a voice
The (in)visibility of librarians in the third space
Heidi Butters-Stabb
Butters-Stabb asks the question of why librarians are so often absent from discussion about the third space. I’ve always felt that they should be/are part of the third space but tend not be because they have such a strong and established professional identity of their own already. I noticed that Celia Whitchurch in her welcome video observed something similar.
She lays out a solid case that there is a gap in the literature about librarians being part of the third space and offers some possible reasons – the third space is seen as new and librarians have been around forever; libraries are considered part of a different version of the third space (home is one, schools another, libraries a third); and questions about being academic or professional staff may also shape perceptions of librarians as being 3S.
Forum responses agreed that librarians are part of the 3S, and that other roles such as English for Academic Purposes staff are equally ignored. I think the reasons that librarians don’t appear so often in 3S scholarship might be largely a question of 3S research being undertaken about areas where the researcher is writing. I know very little of the scholarship about librarianship – I’m sure it is a robust body of work though. Or maybe it isn’t – I don’t honestly know. I feel like it would be though. Anyway, long story short, academic developers write mostly about ADs, LDs are the same and nobody bothers writing about ed techs.
So maybe it is actually just that librarians themselves aren’t writing enough about librarians being in the third space?
Abstracted selfie: Creating a third space persona
Claire Bowmer, Flinders Uni
Bowmer puts the onus for considering third space identity squarely back on the participant, offering a selection of sign-in and no sign-in tools for them to use to create their own avatar or persona – “who you are, what you bring or even less about your skillset and more of what you are excited about”
I decided to choose the GenAI tool in Adobe Express, offering the prompt “a middle aged man with a passion for education and technology who does not wear glasses”
Ok let me try something else
I might run with the whole first one because it is true that I draw some degree of pleasure from GenAI ignoring parts of prompts.
I decided to be a little more abstract. Evidently Adobe Express doesn’t care for liminal
And now it just thinks that I’m at some kind of education conference or something. Rude
Standing out in the Third Space
Donna Murray, Uni of Edinburgh
Donna has been a friend of the TELedvisors Network for some time now, even posting on our blog a while back. This section largely discusses how she navigates the communication part of her work and her use of quotes to emphasise key points – including Douglas Adams, Yoda and Maya Angelou.
The focus of the post overall is to ask participants what language they use to describe third space roles and/or the impact of these roles – with a view to discussing this in another blog for TELedvisors down the road.
This is, I feel, something that I have invested A LOT of time in. Refining and honing my language as I have progressed in my thesis. Now that I’m at the end, I think what i have is pretty decent.
I shared: “Third Space practitioners work across and between conventional academic and professional domains in higher education to enable better learning and teaching, research and student experiences. EdAdvisors (learning designers, education technologists and academic developers) focus on a common goal of enabling better learning and teaching, drawing on their specialist expertise across pedagogy and technology in different and complementary ways.”
(De)constructing professional identities of third space practitioners through Zine making
Kate Molloy, Atlantic Technological University
This is another of the creative outlets that our contributors have brought to the third space slowposium. This was an aim of mine – knowing that we all come from an incredibly diverse set of practice backgrounds and have wildly varying interests. Kate takes us on a journey through the history of Zine making via a SCORM package. I love that she frames the third space as an “academic counterculture”. A phrases which resonated: zine culture’s rise as a response to corporate information fatigue, emphasising authentic voices and community-driven content in their collection
General observations – Zine writing, being much more expressive and less bound to reinforcing the status quo than scholarly writing reflects the third space experience well and highlights our strengths.
Molloy encouraged participants to share examples of their own zines related to working in the third space (and 3S identity)
https://atu.padlet.org/katemolloy3/shared-zines-5t7u5922vtcmzypx/wish/O7A9QmBogm9mZ6x3
https://www.thinglink.com/card/1912828040031764966
https://atu.padlet.org/katemolloy3/shared-zines-5t7u5922vtcmzypx/wish/PR3NWxbn7dz1Qb0O
Empowering professional identity and positive outcomes through Third Space collaboration: A subject lecturer and EAP practitioner case study
Claire Toogood (AGCAS UK) and Katy Hale (Aston Uni)
Toogood and Hale share a pre-publication version of their contribution to the upcoming Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education special issue about the Third Space. (Just quietly, I also have a small discussion piece in that issue – my first proper pub)
It focuses on English for Academic Purposes staff, noting that they are often sidelined by academics. This seems to be a keen defining quality of the third space imho. EAPs work with international students to help them get their English up to HE standards. So, in many ways, still educators in exactly the same way regular academics are, just with a different focus. Nonetheless, the authors note that they are seen more as service providers by academics, so I guess that makes them third space. (Also, presumably not having a research component to work?) Ah ok, they worked with the “real” lecturer to advise on incorporating materials and activities to facilitate language learning.
At the heart of this is a discussion of an effective collaboration between the EAP and a lecturer, where they worked together to find ways to support the international students and better understand their challenges and needs. I commented this on their forum post:
Overall – collaboration (ideally) is our bread and butter. (to use an unnecessary idiom). It’s the best case scenario because it means that the academics we are working with are on board with the support/advice and we are collectively working together for the best outcome. This is no small thing, given that it can be more common that we are required to come in and “enforce” institutional policy about how teaching is done or technology is used.
I think collaboration can be supported by building a culture of trust and respect for the expertise of both the third space practitioner and the academic. Most often this comes over time, so the more contact we have the better.
Conclusion
And that wraps up the Identity section of the Slowposium. Definitely a lot of great ideas and experience sharing that deserve your attention.