Who is my research for? Positoning ourselves as researchers

In this workshop through a series of prompts and provocations participants are asked to position themselves within the wider international research community and within society as whole. The positionality of researchers is a richly contested area. A seminal view of research is that it is systematic enquiry made public (Stenhouse, 1981). However, Stenhouse challenged his own definition within a year by acknowledging that practitioner researchers specifically may choose to conduct research for self-development alone. Others have written about researching for empowerment (Frost, 2012), researching for selfdevelopment (McNiff, 2013) and of policy focused (Hess, 2008) or activist researchers (Gillies, 2014). There is also a separate but related internal debate that early career academics engage in regarding choices in publication, which includes the decision to write for academic journals, for alternative publications, to self-publish and to publish in journals for teachers often locally released. In this workshop through a series of prompts for group discussion we ask and explore the following over-arching questions • how can you define your role as a researcher? • what and who is your research for? • where do I need to publish or present? • how should I write to reach this audience? In doing so this workshop will enable further discussion on the career implications of these differing choices, linking this to the educational problems we may wish to solve and the best ways to. The workshop is led by two academics both working in affiliated to the University of Cambridge and working in lectureships in UK universities, who have made distinct choices regarding their own positionality and publication strategy. This workshop also links to the rich debates currently taking place in many contexts as regards the nature of knowledge and that have been tied to the 25th anniversary of the creation of the post 1992 university sector.