If I Only Had a Brain: Scholarly Identity at Oddz in the World of Academia

• In Event: 47.097 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Eight - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 47.097-7 - Out of the Box: Performance and Arts-Based Approaches in Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

This auto-fictitious narrative of a teacher educator utilizes satire, common archetypes, and an allegorical process (borrowing heavily from a parallel plot line in the Wizard of Oz) to describe a fictionalized academic setting called Universe City. In the story, this institution has an established milieu with high-level players who stealthily drive the organizational direction through top-down, pre-determined, cloaked, decision-making processes. Idiosyncratic characters experience academic events internal to university operations in which they must choose to seek quality or power. The story explores factors which influence socially-constructed scholarly identity formation and the dynamics of organizational power constructs within an academic environment.

Author

• Denise M. McDonald, University of Houston - Clear Lake