My transition to being an academic and scholar occurred in the mid-1990s after I had been a public school English teacher for more than a decade and a writer for almost two decades.
Looking back, one of the most pivotal moments of that transition was when Craig Kridel, a leading scholar of educational biography who would become the anchor on my doctoral committee, stood at the first organizing meeting of new doctoral students and announced the importance of being able to write well. He introduced me to Joseph Williams’s Style and forever changed me as a writer and a teacher.
I was in my mid- to late 30s when I completed that doctoral program, and I chose the degree primarily because I had the opportunity to write an educational biography (a non-traditional dissertation form and an under-appreciated research type, qualitative) and work with Kridel. You see, I wanted to write a real book and not a formulaic doctoral dissertation.
Of course, entering the doctoral program, I had yet to experience or fully understand just what writing a dissertation entailed—or what it would mean to CONTINUE READING: Writing as an Academic and Scholar – radical eyes for equity