Taking Academic Selfies: Realizing the Presence and Power of Defining Moments in Our Own Journeys

• In Event: 60.083 - Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: 60.083-3 - Self-Study in the Academy

Abstract

The journey through the academe integrates personal growth, professional development, pedagogical expertise, and political astuteness. Navigating the path from graduate student to full professor encompasses two expeditions that ideally guide, inform, support, and complement one another: the anticipated institutional expectations established by the academe and the unanticipated defining moments experienced by the academic. In this self-study involving hermeneutic phenomenology (self-interpretation), researchers examined both planned and revealed events encountered on one researcher’s journey aligning defining moments with the eight stages of the Gallavan Critical Consciousness Model (GCCM). Defining moments corresponding with each stage not only made visible the researchers’ discoveries relating to teaching, scholarship, service, and collegiality, researchers realized collective effects of each stage on the other stages of the journey.

Authors

• Nancy P. Gallavan, University of Central Arkansas

• Angela Webster-Smith, University of Central Arkansas