(Episode 92) Kay Guccione Reflects on 10 Years of Researcher Education and Development Scholarship (REDS) conference

earch Culture Uncovered Host [: 00:00:04

Welcome to the research culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be. You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:00:23

Hello and welcome to another episode of research Culture uncovered. Hello, I'm Heledd Jarosz-Griffiths, a researcher development advisor at the University of Leeds, and today is my first podcast as a host, which is very exciting. I'm not going to lie, though, I'm also a little bit terrified, particularly as the Research Culture Uncovered podcast has just won an award from Vitae for its contribution to research culture. But I hope I can continue to bring you, our listeners, some captivating episodes on researcher development in all of what it can offer. And what better way to start with a guest who has a wealth of experience in this area? Today I'm going to be talking to Dr Kay Guccione, who is head of research culture and researcher development at the University of Glasgow and is also a co director of the Lab for Academic Culture. Kay, do you want to say a quick hello to our listeners?

Kay Guccione [: 00:01:20

Hi. Hi everyone.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:01:22

Kay's research interests and specialisms span doctoral education, mentoring, research supervision development and research community building. She is also leading the InFrame project, which is Glasgow's well confirmed tri university collaboration that takes a deep dive into collegiality and research culture. In 2018, she was awarded national teaching fellowship in recognition of her impact in these areas. Kay also edits blogs on research culture, PhD supervision and the hidden curriculum of the doctorate. She's also a principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a master's qualified leadership coach, as well as being a trustee on the UK Council for Graduate Education Executive board. I have to say one day I hope I have such an impressive list of accomplishments. That said, I actually owe a big thanks to Kay for enabling the opportunity that led to my recent achievement of being recognized associate research supervisor, an initiative she developed in collaboration with the UK CGE. Receiving recognition for my supervisory practices as a postdoc is incredibly valuable to me and it offers that much needed recognition for early career supervisors, and I am now supporting others and gaining their own recognition through this award right onto today's podcast.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:02:47

The focus of our episode is going to be on the researcher education and development scholarship conference, or in short, REDS. We have recently celebrated the 10th REDS conference here in Leeds, which is titled Developing Researchers fit for the future. It was my first REDS conference being a recent addition to the researcher development community, but I also had the privilege of being involved in the organization of the conference, as a member of the advisory board and as conference convener, stepping in for our wonderful colleague Tony Bromley, who has been a big part of this journey with you. So, Kay, before taking a deep dive into what REDS is and what it offers, can you take me back to the beginning and tell me a little bit about how it all started?

Kay Guccione [: 00:03:37

Just first to say congratulations on your associate supervisor award. That's great. And that is a piece of work that had its first airing to the public at a REDS conference as well. So we've got REDS to thank for the fact that you've been recently accredited for your supervision work. Now, in October 2014, I was working at the University of Sheffield at the time. I was planning the year ahead through my PDR with my boss there, which, if anyone knows, the brilliant Briony Portsmouth at Sheffield. We were the dream team at that time. And I said to her then that I wish there was a conference for researcher development professionals and practitioners who were trying to break through into researching and publishing their work.

Kay Guccione [: 00:04:23

Now, at that time, and still today, research and development professionals had really come in the majority through PhDs, frequently in the sciences. And whilst we really retained that desire to work in an evidence based way, to gather and to analyse data related to our work, I think we were all really struggling because one of the very different fundamental shifts in our thinking was the paradigm of how knowledge is made, what types of knowledge have value, how to research in that area, because the way research is done in education and the way it's discussed is really different to how we were trained to do things as majority scientists. And I certainly wasn't the only person thinking about this at the time. So Tony Bromley, who you've just mentioned there, was also thinking about this. He was setting up the RD scholarship jisc list at the minute, and he was doing really great things through and with vitae on how we could evaluate the work we do and how we could show the value of researcher development work. So really, he was the first person I reached out to after my boss at the time and said, you should absolutely go for it, you know, don't wait around and wish for this. Go make it happen. And he was a great peer mentor for me, Tony, all along this journey, and he's been there now for the last ten years before he has earned his, he's very well deserved retirement this year.

Kay Guccione [: 00:05:44

So I went across to have a chat. Tony said, you know, how can we link these two things together? How can we think about the way we evaluate our research? But also how we frame our research, how we theorise our research, what. What theories already sits in with. Because what I really wanted was that the research projects we were doing or trying to do, trying to get off the ground as practitioners, this has never seemed to make it into the literature with all the best intentions. And actually some of us, me included, were drafting things and sending them in to journals, and they were just getting outright rejected, you know, woefully under theorised, I think was some feedback that I received early on. And I totally see that now. You know, we were collecting the wrong data.

Kay Guccione [: 00:06:25

The data that we had in abundance was perhaps overlooked because we didn't understand text based data in that same way, or we didn't know the right methodologies or the way to describe or write that research. And I'm clearly generalising here, but this is, at the time, the practice based conversations that we were having in addition to this, I suppose. And the reason for wanting a conference was to kind of collectivise and bring people together at that time. Good. Ten plus years ago now, roles in research and development tended to be very solo.

Kay Guccione [: 00:06:58

If there was one in a University, there was one. The whole profession was still relatively new, and there wasn't that team vibe that there is now to hold that knowledge of how we work, how we research, how we. We published that research and we were teaching ourselves. And I always joked that I learned educational research from Twitter at the time. So really just trying to make my way through going to seminars in and around the University of Sheffield, really trying to absorb as much as I could. But what I wanted was a conference that just welcomed people who wanted to have a go, you know, people who wanted to put their practice in the theory, research, their specialism, and one that really encouraged through the actions of the audience, would encourage people to develop and grow through the early steps we were taking to try and get our work out there. So, yeah, that's the origin story of REDS in a nutshell.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:07:50

Fantastic. Thank you, Kay. And I can really resonate with that transition from being a STEM researcher, obviously doing it at this time. It's kind of a great time to transition because there's so many changes that are going on and there's a real change in culture and a lot more focus on researcher developers. So would you say that REDS was a first of its kind? Were there any other conferences at the time that were similar?

Kay Guccione [: 00:08:15

Well, maybe first of its kind, because of its niche and because of the tone and the lens that we gave it, but very obviously at that time, Vitae were doing incredible, groundbreaking things in terms of helping to create the whole profession of researcher development and create those frameworks and standards. And really, the Vitae conference had been running for several years by the time I went to it, and was doing absolutely brilliant things in connecting people and talking about the practice of researcher development. At the same time, the UK Council for Graduate Education. I'd been to both of those conferences, I think in the year before, and got a lot out of them both that UKCGE, really focusing down on the doctoral side of things and lots and lots of really excellent practice sharing going on. But they were very practice based conferences. So often people were describing what they'd done, what the data looked like and how it went and how it worked, and then recommendations to other people who wanted to adopt that practice. Absolutely fantastic. I'd also gone along to SRHE conference, Society for Research into Higher Education, which is a very, very scholarship based.

Kay Guccione [: 00:09:25

And most of the people presenting there had tended to be people who worked, let's say, full time within that education, educational research, higher educational research area, deeply scholarship based, very well established. And in order to get into present at that with a thousand word paper to write, again, something really alien to me, coming from sciences where we just submit an abstract, I'd actually been rejected from presenting. I mean, clearly in hindsight now, because my paper was not very well put together, it wasn't within the conventions of that discipline, it wasn't articulated in the way people need to see it. So the quality just wasn't there. So we were making these attempts, finding, I couldn't get through that door as a presenter, but still huge, huge value from turning up as a delegate and just absorbing. I remember filling a huge notebook with literature and methodologies that other people were using and thinking, how do we get this into the hands of my group, my community? Same for the HEA. I've been to the HEA conference, I think the year before when it was still the HEA conference, and that was really for me, looking at the right blend of investigating our own practice. So the scholarship of learning and teaching, but it wasn't researcher focused.

Kay Guccione [: 00:10:43

And in fact, there's very little researcher education content out there, but I felt like the pieces were there. We just had to create that niche on the scholarship of researcher development and researcher education. So for me it was pulling all that together and recognising that there was just so many disciplines to draw on and so many ways of understanding, ways of investigating. So it's very multidisciplinary space. So research and development is obviously education. It's also organisational change and development. It's drawing on psychology. It's drawing on learning and teaching.

Kay Guccione [: 00:11:18

It's drawn on philosophy, linguistics, human resources. And all of these things were relevant to us. So it was about creating that blended space that really tried to focus on bringing all those different disciplines together to the very people who benefit from having that interdisciplinary approach to the work they do.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:11:39

Fantastic. Thank you, Kay. So, you know, REDS was really about providing that platform for researcher developers to be able to develop their kind of scholarship of researcher development and researcher education. I still have a question. Do you still have that notebook?

Kay Guccione [: 00:11:54

No, I don't. Do you know what? I'm very. I don't really keep things. Once the knowledge was in, I didn't really need the paper anymore. Yeah, it would be nice when. It would be nice to share a picture of it with you and show you. I do remember turning it sideways, and this is a strange thing about me. I can write with both hands at the same time.

Kay Guccione [: 00:12:13

So people coming up to me at that conference going, what's happening here? What you're doing? Kind of crayon in and drawing a word cloud at the same time.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:12:23

Fantastic. And what a wonderful journey. I love the success it's become and how the different themes each year kind of reflect that changing landscape of higher education and how we as research developers are kind of responding and adapting to resources to support the developing researchers. It's such a fantastic initiative. You know, from my own research and looking back over the different conferences over the years, I can see that REDS has traveled from Sheffield to Leeds to Coventry for two days in Coventry, actually, that was a unique one. And then to King's College London before it then came back to Leeds when Covid hit. Now, can you tell me a little bit about the impact Covid had on REDS and, you know, what did it do to the community?

Kay Guccione [: 00:13:11

Yeah, sure. I mean, it did exactly the same thing it did to every other educational space. It moved us completely online. So I feel like we'd had several months from March until REDS in October to get the hang of using Zoom and being online. We really had that very quick induction into online life, and it moved online at that point. And like you said, you know, it's now spent half of its life online, and there's pros and cons to both, but it enabled lots and lots of things actually moving it online, and I don't really want to lose those things. So it enabled the conference to be entirely free and free to everybody. Who wanted to attend.

Kay Guccione [: 00:13:57

It was only breaking even before we basically charging people the price of the lunch we were providing for them. It wasn't a profit making endeavor by any means, but it's completely free, and I'm really, really proud of that. I'd love that to be maintained because I think in our spaces, in researcher education, researcher development roles, we are less likely than colleagues in academic spaces to have conference funds to draw on. Not true for everybody all the time, but there's often not the same level, let's say, of investment in our attendance at conferences and professional development. And that's dwindling. If you look at what's happening in higher education in the UK on the whole right now, all of those budgets have been clawed back, let's say. So I really do want to keep it free. And it was enabled to be free because we went online, but also we saw some really big shifts in who was attending and certainly how many people were attending.

Kay Guccione [: 00:14:55

So our global audience just absolutely surged in that first year. We were able to welcome people from all over the world because nobody's going to be traveling for a small one day conference that nobody's heard of. You know, they're not going to be coming from the sort of powerhouses of where research development is happening. And I'm thinking of places like Australia, like South Africa, like mainland Europe. There's lots and lots of great activity going on there. And really we were seeing that global audience increase, and that's continued. And we're now seeing lots of east asian, southeast asian attendees. We're seeing people from a whole range of different african nations, particularly the sort of east african nations.

Kay Guccione [: 00:15:41

As research development has become more spoken of and there's been more and growing activity within those countries as well. And I think just the overall audience increased from. I remember very clearly that we had 60 places for REDS, the first REDS that was held in Sheffield, I think we had over 600 registered this year. So, yeah, it's certainly, it had the impact it has everywhere, but there are things we would retain from that experience, and I certainly don't want to lose, you know, our 540 international delegates by making it something that's very. That goes back to a more exclusive space.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:16:22

Yeah, that's fantastic, I think. Yeah. With that kind of, you know, changing landscape, like with COVID you know, those kind of adaptations had to happen. But like you say, it's been such a huge benefit and that ever expanded international community. It's fantastic to hear how many different continents it's hit and how it's continuing to develop with it being free as well. It just like you say, it makes it so much more accessible for so many more people. So REDS has covered a whole host of themes over the years, exploring researcher development and career progression to changing research and academic landscapes such as supervision, leadership, identity, agency, and inclusivity to theoretical foundations of researcher development. It really has covered a lot of ground over the years, and that kind of leads me to the next question.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:17:08

Do you have a standout REDS conference?

Kay Guccione [: 00:17:12

No, I've just got this real sort of bias to whatever I've been at most recently as the thing I've enjoyed most. So I would say my comment on that is every single one I go to, I have an absolute whale of a time meeting people, finding out what they're working on, emailing with people after connecting through LinkedIn, etcetera, et cetera. So no is the answer. They've all been incredible because they've all been specifically chosen to speak to the time we were in and what the hot topics were. And I think, you know, as well as trying to do something scholarly, just the value of bringing people together on a common hot topic has been incredible. So yeah, as long as it's of its time, I think it's always going to be a winner. What about you?

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:17:56

Well, I've already been to one of the REDS conferences this year. I've got a slight bias in which one I would have chosen, but just picking up on what you've just said, something I really like about the conference is that you open up a padlet open to all the participants to put forward their ideas about what should be discussed at the next REDS conference, which is, I think it's a great way of actually being inclusive and framing what those real hot topics are in that space. But yeah, I think coming back to this year's conference, I thought the, you know, the keynote by Faith Uwadiae from the Wellcome Trust, open, honest account of leadership 'Actions Speak Louder Than Titles'. It was truly inspiring talk and it really set the tone for the day. And I learned a lot from the day, and I've already made several new connections as a result, which, you know, is one of the key things from this conference. So I think it's a wonderful space, especially for me as a new researcher developer, to want to be able to connect with different people who are working on similar things. And so give me that confidence about, you know, how should I approach this and what ideas have you got? So it brings me on to one of my last questions. So what would you say is next? For REDS.

Kay Guccione [: 00:19:15

So if we think about the last ten years and everything that we've all put into that and what REDS has achieved, I mean, certainly from my perspective, the goal that I wanted was that I needed to be able to access these other conferences and publish and everything. I've published absolutely everything, including getting my PFHEA, where REDS was. You know, I talked about that as in terms of sort of the national impact of the kinds of work I do, my National Teaching Fellowship, I talked about a national impact through REDS and how that really has promoted scholarship in that area. But I also think it's really, it supported the development our profession into that scholarly space as well. I think, as you know, you mentioned all the different titles that we've gone through and all the different themes of the conferences, and it's almost been brilliant to see as we've got away from those early phases of here's a researcher, I must develop them, let's do something to that researcher, and therefore they learn something and are changed through that process. That very individualistic approach to the conversations we're having now about culture and how people are enabled or disabled by the different structures and strategies, policies, people, networks and cultures around them. We've almost seen topics come back and be revisited from that different way of seeing and understanding what it means to develop people. We've had reading groups and writing groups and collaborations that have come out of REDS and I think it's given us a new confidence to speak within our work, but about our own work in a scholarly way.

Kay Guccione [: 00:20:53

And I think it makes a difference if I walk into a room and say, hi, welcome to my workshop today. Let's start with a piece of research I did. I think it helps to resonate in a different way with the researchers that we're talking about. So I would say we've achieved a lot and I know other people would say would and have to me said the same about their work and how they approach that as well. But we've still got a lot to do. There are lots of opportunities and lots of options and in terms of has it really translated into lots and lots of outputs and publications, I think we can do more in that space. And the next part of the journey to set up a red blog space, I know everyone laughed because it's like, oh, it's Kay slam another blog on it and see what happens. So, but actually giving people ask base to take that, you know, the 300 word abstract they wrote that became a ten minute presentation.

Kay Guccione [: 00:21:44

What's the next scaffold on that journey. Can this be a 1000 word written piece that we will publish? We can help, we can give feedback on that and then, you know, moving that into a 5000 word journal article, that's another step along the journey. So for me, using that blog, making the most of that blog to really support the community, to submit their, not just their papers but their works in progress and things that they're aiming towards publication and really use the REDS community to support, that will be really important. But there's also some other key developments. I mean, firstly, REDS is going to come back to, it's going to come back to me and to Glasgow. That said, I'm kind of holding two thoughts in the same space at the minute because I really want to formalise what's been informed, what's been very Kay based for the last ten years. So for me, the conference, I think, needs a written and agreed mission statement that sets out our purpose, our focus, the aims and the value added for the sector. And I'm talking about sort of a document writing a formal document that communicates REDS niche and its specialism in the area.

Kay Guccione [: 00:22:51

Over the years of supporting Red and being part of that advisory group, I've felt that to keep it kind of on its true mission and true focus, I've been steering that. And there's a real blurred boundary between what the conference is in service of the sector and what Kay says it is because it's hers and she started it. So for me, I want to take the me out of it. I want there to be a lot fewer ad hoc decisions. I want to create this sort of remit to guide the advisory board's choice of future themes and topics and have the sector be more included and more able to choose that based on not me just intervening ever so often going, oh, but we shouldn't do that because, you know, I want to, I want to ground that work into policy and then ratify it through that board. And we probably, for that, need to start with some written terms of reference for the board and for the conference and for the blog. I think we also need formal policies on accessibility, inclusion, safeguarding sustainability. And recognising that I don't want to have this as a, you know, a tight grip in my own hand forever, some succession planning, who's going to be the next person to come in and chair that board as well and take this into a whole new raft of developments? I think we probably need to do some thinking about the conference formats.

Kay Guccione [: 00:24:11

I've been a developer long enough to know that, as many people think it should be online as on campus and as many people think it's too long and too quick as it is too short and not quick enough. There's lots and lots of different tensions to be rectified. But I think we can do, I think we can do something that develops the absolutely solid foundation and makes it a little bit more accessible, let's say, or a little bit more variety in the pace and the tone that helps people to engage in the way that they would choose to engage. And for me personally, I'd really love to secure some funds to be able for REDS as a conference to be able to make annually some really small research seed funding awards out to the REDS community. And obviously we've been looking very much at the what have you done and how to get that out there. And actually, I'd really love REDS to start thinking about how can we enable and support new research and new ideas to come forward and take pace, and that clearly needs full development. But that's where my mind is at the minute and I would be really pleased to hear from anybody who's got ideas for where we should go. And certainly we've got a call out at the minute for applications to the advisory board because we'll need a whole team of people behind this as well.

Kay Guccione [: 00:25:27

So, yeah, let me know if you've got big ideas about what REDS should be doing in service of our researcher developers.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:25:34

Wow, that's fantastic, Kay, thank you so much. And yes, listeners, please get in touch about anything that Kay's brought up today. And yeah, if you have any ideas, she wants to hear about it. I think you've had so much insight and you talk about passing it on and making sure it's not just the Kay show. I think you've got such great insight and I think people just see you as that real leader in this space and, you know, it's hard to step down from that. But, you know, it's great that you're wanting to kind of form that kind of. That bigger community into and have it in a more of a formalised space as well, because it's got so much to offer and I can just see it catapulting even further and I'm really excited about what the future may bring. So I'm afraid I think that's all we've got time for, and it's gone a lot quicker than I imagined.

Heledd Jarosz Griffiths [: 00:26:23

And thank you for being such an amazing first guest. Kay, you've made my job very easy today and I have learned so much as well, and I'm sure our listeners have too. And to our listeners, we will share all the resources mentioned in this episode in the show, notes and any links that Kay wants to share. And if you weren't at REDS this year, then get yourself there next year. It is too good to miss. So that just leaves me to say thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.

Kay Guccione [: 00:26:57

Bye.

earch Culture Uncovered Host [: 00:26:58

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