“A Broader Audience to Affect Change?”: How Education Faculty Conceptualize “Audience” When Producing Public Scholarship

Abstract

Many faculty perform work as public intellectuals, producing essays, op-eds, interviews, and other forms of media to amplify their academic work. However, educational research has not examined how faculty conceptualize non-academic audiences, influencing who faculty address in their public scholarship and what they work on as public intellectuals. This study engaged with 14 education faculty members to explore how these individuals conceptualized the audiences for their public scholarship. Findings suggest faculty often conceptualize audiences of public scholarship as larger, non-academic audiences, speaking to the constraints of academic audiences. However, faculty often described their audiences as being educated, being educators, and being passionate about education—identities that they held—possibly perpetuating a public echo chamber between education faculty and educators in the public sphere. Implications for faculty development and public scholarship are addressed.