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Telling stories of our collaborative practice.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This paper draws on our lived experience of a collaborative research project. We suggest that collaborative research projects can promote quality research outputs and enhance research skills of new academics. We have used storytelling as a framework to reflect and analyse on our lived experience as researchers. From the evidence presented in our stories, we have compiled a list of themes that we suggest could be considered by others embarking on collaborative research projects.

Introduction

New academics are important for developing the research capacity of any university. However, they can find themselves in a particularly vulnerable space and require mentoring and encouragement to undertake or begin research. Many initially shoulder heavy teaching loads and the expectation from the university that they will undertake research. They have yet to establish a research reputation and find themselves working at 'double pace' to prove their capability. Some cope and others who are probably very talented do not manage the expectations and fall by the wayside.

What follows is a description and explanation of the collaborative process as we experienced it as 'new' researchers. We have written from the 'first person' perspective as the story and journey reported is of ourselves as both the researchers and researched. We have used storytelling as a means of reflecting on the experience. We describe why and how we chose to work together to counter the minimal research culture and loneliness of researching on individual projects, and to support one another in developing research skills. We have included a list of themes that others may also find useful when using a collaborative research approach and ways in which the institution could support collaborative research undertakings. We have found that the list of themes is not dissimilar to earlier work undertaken by Hafernik, Messerschmitt and Vandrick, (1997) and Eisenhart and Borko (1991). Our suggestions contribute to the literature and propose that collaborative research partnerships when managed appropriately can increase research capacity amongst new academics, both for the benefit of their own development as researchers and for their home institutions.

A brief overview of collaborative research

The research literature reveals diverse investigations resulting from the collaborative endeavours of researchers. Some of the issues to emerge include discussion of the ethics of conducting collaborative research with participants in unequal relationships and the assigning of authorship (see for example Hafernik, Messerschmitt and Vandrick, 1997). Other studies detail the perceived quality of collaborative research in relation to citation measures (Rymer 1994; Bridgestock, 1991). Collaboration also demonstrates the benefit of pooling expertise and energy to work on a problem in the careers of early...

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