The black box of faculty writing in the academy

Abstract

The current study investigates faculty perceptions of writing, asking faculty directly to think about their experiences with, feelings about, engagement in, and practices related to writing. This article contributes to the literature on university faculty and academic work with a categorization scheme that begins with faculty feelings about writing and then considers how those feelings map onto their writerly experiences. An iterative qualitative analysis of survey data from 83 faculty informs a typology of faculty writers that includes four groups (Flow, Engaged, Depends, and Stressed). Our findings offer insight into faculty across the disciplines as writers: who is writing, how they are showing up to write, and what that experience is like, both instrumentally and affectively. In turn, these results offer a rich account of the writing lives of faculty across a wide range of institutional roles and career stages—and they point to productive opportunities for academic leaders and those responsible for research productivity to support faculty and bring writing out of the shadows and into the visible core of an academic career. By shifting conversation and support toward writing, universities can help ease the mental burden and stress of writing so faculty can focus on engaging with their research on the page and sharing their work through publications.