Voices of Practice: Narrative Scholarship from the Margins

Not everyone has had a straight and narrow path into academia. Many higher education teachers, in fact, were professionals before they became part of the university or college where they work; and many keep one foot in both worlds even while they teach. Especially in programs designed to support students in a field of practice (education, nursing, and others), teachers find that being an academic or a scholar is supplementary to being a professional. And yet the demands of scholarship remain a component of their academic work-research, publishing, and the rest.Inspired by scholarly narratives like those from Ruth Behar, bell hooks, Jonathan Kozol, and others, Voices of Practice inspects, interrupts, questions, and reconstructs what it means to be a scholar, using deeply personal reflections, poignant vignettes, and carefully examined timelines of intellectual and professional development. This volume features educators who may not at first call themselves "academics" and who have focused their careers on the practice rather than the publishing of scholarship.