Day 2. Still pre-conference. I must confess that while taking notes today, I sincerely wondered to myself: how will I condense this much information in a way that its essence is not lost? So much was said; so much needs to be done. Oya grab your seat. @LagosStudies #lsa2019

The first panel was the Gender and Academy II. Panelists were Yetunde Zaid, Lynn Schler, Bamidele Wale-Oshinowo, Oyeronke Oyewunmi, Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome (@mojubaolu) and Taibat Lawanson (@TaibatLawanson) The first question shows that mentorship comes in various forms.

Who was your first mentor?:

"My first mentor was my Ph.D. supervisor. He was good @ treating students equally&that gave everyone a sense of confidence when starting out with their career. It distilled any competition that we might have&developed a sense of community.” Schler

"My first mentor gave me some compliments. She told me she loved what I was wearing. Before, I knew she was a really brilliant woman. She was there even when I got another supervisor for my thesis; she is the supervisor or the supervisor& still reads my work." Zaid

#academia

"During my research, I met Prof Bolanle Awe. I needed to some data&she was the1 who could give me. She told me that I could enter anywhere that I needed to be. The first thing she did was she took me to a conference and she gave me the mic and said Bamidele speak!" Wale-Oshinowo

"It was from my undergraduate supervisor that, I got the advice that it is okay to be broke when you are young as a researcher. He says that the first thing u owe your students is to be kind. I have since then made it my mantra, to be kind.” @TaibatLawanson

#AcademicChatter

"I have never quite had mentors. I have been a survivor. Much of the decisions that I have made about career, I advised myself. At the end of the day, it is like “okay look at where I got." Oyewunmi who talked about the precarity as a young female academic in a strange land.

On networking:

"Find someone doing good work in your field&make the connection. I recognised some academics who are not in my field/uni. I sought2challenge myself&the only way to do it is find people who are doing great work& force you to rise to their level." @TaibatLawanson

"I meet people in the profession, learn from them. Small conferences, are much better than big ones. Networking feels like meeting the right people at the right time.” Schler

#gender #academy #women

"After Ph.D., I said that I wouldn't just sit in the UNILAG library, it should have an impact on me& generations after. I went online all by myself&looked for a librarian network that would impact my career; applied&joined. Then I asked: who is an African? Who is a specialist...

... in African collections? I sought out someone&we started talking. It is something that you have to do&be assertive about. One day, she told me of a Fulbright fellowship at UCLA. That was how I became the first female librarian from here to get a Fulbright.” Yetunde Zaid

On Family:

“Balancing the equation is key. You know that it is a decision u've 2make. Choose the right partner who will not personally affect your career choices. You must know how to balance the equation&be practical about it. It is something you need to talk about” Zaid

"You can plan everything. Then you get to roadblocks. How will you deal with them? That is the question. My mother said: send your child to Nigeria. I decided wilfully to make that sacrifice. I had to do all kinds of thinking that enabled me to work...

#women #womeninacademy

...Make sure that you re-assess and think of your priorities. Negotiate hard. What works for me, may not work for you. There are things that you should fight about.” @mojubaolu on women, family, academy and the gender dynamics

“Gender biases aren't limited to men putting u down. It is about managing peoples' perceptions of u. I try2build what I want them to see. You need to manage how people see you&what you want them to see. Understand and identify your strength and project it nicely.” Wale-Oshinowo

“There have 2b structures in every university where these things are talked about. Ultimately, what will change is if at least 51% of each faculty are women. There need2b more women in these positions. That is the only way I think there will be sensitivity to our needs.” Schler

"The pressure to be the best as a woman can put unnecessary pressure on you. It is okay not to be perfect sometimes. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be the perfect Mum, academic, or wife. My career is a family project." @TaibatLawanson

On Handling Rejections:

"I submitted a 13-page paper2a journal&got an 8-page reviewers' comments. I spoke2a senior professor who said: that's a good thing; it means that ur paper had so many interesting issues; if you had a 2-line comment that means it was not so interesting...

...They raised those questions because they don’t know it well enough. That gave me the confidence to approach the comments. It was a case of "let me educate this person." The paper got published&I felt very proud." @TaibatLawanson

Rejections help me2think outside the scope that I was not looking at initially. I now try to imagine what these people are looking for. Rejection should not close the area for you. It should make you go back. Ask yourself: What have u done wrong or right?”

Next: From Dissertation to Book with Moses Ochonu. The session captured how you move beyond your dissertation to academic book publishing: what skills do you need to have? What is the process like? What do you need to do?

#academia

Test the Waters: Once done with your thesis, give the scholarly community samples of your findings. Start going to conferences. Start presenting your work. You are also discovering your scholarly prowess.

#academicWriting

Most dissertations are not published, it is not an indictment on your scholarship. Imagine a new audience. The book audience is different from the audience of the dissertation. The language has to change from more esoteric to more accessible language. Clarity is important.

"Everybody has to have a theoretical framework; why? Why do we have to require it for every work? Some topics lend themselves to theoretical frameworks; others don’t. Many times, the theoretical frameworks are so arbitrary&do not engage with the work." What do you think?

“Send an aspect of the work to a journal. You've gives you feedback, It is also an appetizer. Be strategic about these placements. How many articles are too many? I say don’t publish more than two articles. I publish in sections. Do not cannibalise the dissertation.”

Book from scratch:

Have an idea. Imagine an audience. Read existing literature&fill in the gaps. Map the research: how will I do the research? Where do I need to visit? IS it feasible? Map out the logistics of the research. Read some more.

Ethical landmines: Don't plagiarise. That is the original sin in academia. Run your manuscript through a plagiarism detector. Look at your citation well. Make sure everything is in order.

On the writing process: I have an idea, I let it grow. I give it time. I find out that once I wait for the idea to mature, it makes it a lot easier when it comes2writing. I have tried to do it the other way but it is almost impossible. Sometimes, I see the outline of the paper...

...&then it begins to flow. Writing becomes a lot easier when you read a lot, when you read the works of other scholars. You cannot become a good writer as a scholar if you cannot read widely. The secret to prolific writing// fecundity of thought is reading widely.”

#writinglife

Test the Waters: Once done with your thesis, give the scholarly community samples of your findings. Start going to conferences. Start presenting your work. You are also discovering your scholarly prowess.

#academicWriting

Most dissertations are not published, it is not an indictment on your scholarship. Imagine a new audience. The book audience is different from the audience of the dissertation. The language has to change from more esoteric to more accessible language. Clarity is important.

"Everybody has to have a theoretical framework; why? Why do we have to require it for every work? Some topics lend themselves to theoretical frameworks; others don’t. Many times, the theoretical frameworks are so arbitrary&do not engage with the work." What do you think?

“Send an aspect of the work to a journal. You've gives you feedback, It is also an appetizer. Be strategic about these placements. How many articles are too many? I say don’t publish more than two articles. I publish in sections. Do not cannibalise the dissertation.”

Book from scratch:

Have an idea. Imagine an audience. Read existing literature&fill in the gaps. Map the research: how will I do the research? Where do I need to visit? IS it feasible? Map out the logistics of the research. Read some more.

Ethical landmines: Don't plagiarise. That is the original sin in academia. Run your manuscript through a plagiarism detector. Look at your citation well. Make sure everything is in order.

On the writing process: I have an idea, I let it grow. I give it time. I find out that once I wait for the idea to mature, it makes it a lot easier when it comes2writing. I have tried to do it the other way but it is almost impossible. Sometimes, I see the outline of the paper...

...&then it begins to flow. Writing becomes a lot easier when you read a lot, when you read the works of other scholars. You cannot become a good writer as a scholar if you cannot read widely. The secret to prolific writing// fecundity of thought is reading widely.”

#writinglife

Next: Academic Journal Publishing II.

This was a continuation from yesterdays session with Carli Coetzee (@AfricaJacs), Ebenezer Obadare and Saheed Aderinto. This delved into ethical issues in the academic publishing space+conferencing in addition to other matters.

The authorial voice: as the author am contributing to the literature? It takes time for that to develop. If you ask me about an idea and I say it to you, it will be different when I write it down." Obadare

"The assumption is that once u've a degree, you should be able to write but quality writing is something that you actually develop. If u spend time understanding a particular phenomenon, u acquire the language to express yourself better. Each discipline has its own vocabulary...

...One of the things I hate is, when I see a lot of short paragraphs, it means that the ideas are not well developed. The ideas in a section have to be related. You have carefully woven ideas in a section.” Aderinto

#thesis #journal

“Collecting data is not enough. Understanding the literature is not enough. Being able to write itself is something that you can deliberately work on. Quality writing can be developed.” Aderinto

"I try to publish one good article a year. I will typically have at least eight drafts before I let someone else see it. The first one I write by hand because as soon as you type something it looks good, it looks professional...

I try to keep one day a week completely free of other tasks. On that day, I stay with my work Otherwise, we will never have time to do the research. It is reasonable to tell your HOD that I have to use this day for my work." Coetzee

Popular academic publishing fallacies in #Nigeria:

1. You need a European name to add to yours as co-writer.

2. You need a supervisor’s name before you can be published.

3. Writing is a talent.

All untrue. 1&2, clearly. 3: Writing is a skill, it can be learned, groom it

“You cannot develop an idea in a vacuum. You remain productive by consistently putting yourself in the line of action; read up, research.”

“If that superior scholar is not contributing anything, that is poor. Did he rewrite? Did he revise? Did he sponsor the research?...

There is so much that the supervisors can do without just slapping their name on the work. I will show you how to think through data. They can work on the revision." Aderinto

#writinglife #publishing

“If you accept the idea that for you to be published in a Grade A journal, you have to be white, that is accepting defeat before even fighting.”

Next: Pedagogy of Teaching was handled by Saheed Aderinto and Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani. The sessions dealt with how to teach despite the challenges of the Nigerian educational sector. Central to the session was the question: why do you teach?

“Quality teaching is a private personal agenda. We don’t look at our institutions when we publish. We take loans to go for conferences&spend months paying back those loans. Is it possible to make such commitments to teaching without waiting for the institutions?” Aderinto

“Your research must be useable in the classroom. You are not just publishing for the sake of publishing or promotion. The ideology of publish or perish is unacceptable. The fact that you must publish or perish should not give you high blood pressure.” Tijani

“Do not pay for your intellectual property. They should pay you. Most of you want to rush, just like you rush into the classroom unprepared, you rush into the paper. What do you want to contribute? That should be the state of your pedagogy in the classroom.”

Student evaluation: "We do not develop that in many universities. Develop a self-student evaluation form. Do not have their details on it, if your institution isn’t doing it. You will learn a lot from the critique of your students. It could also be typed."

On syllabus:

Description of the course, the aims, and the learning outcomes: what do you want them to learn after the course? Set the goals about what students are supposed to learn during your lesson cycles.

#pedagogy

“We can all continue to highlight the obvious institutional limitations; however, if we take teaching as a personal agenda to positively change things on our individual levels, things will be different. We have to change our attitudes towards teaching."

“Who owns the university: funders, students, administrators? Whatever the answer is, it will affect our pedagogy as teachers.

Whatever we do as teachers in the university has to be student-centred.”

Teaching philosophy: "Every teacher has a teaching philosophy. What is your role as a teacher? What is your teaching model? Do you bring guest lecturers over Skype? How do you use intellectual materials?

"What is missing in pedagogy is the art of mentoring."

"There is no stupid answer or question. The stupid question is that which you kept to yourself."

“If you accept the idea that for you to be published in a Grade A journal, you have to be white, that is accepting defeat before even fighting.”

Next: Pedagogy of Teaching was handled by Saheed Aderinto and Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani. The sessions dealt with how to teach despite the challenges of the Nigerian educational sector. Central to the session was the question: why do you teach?

“Quality teaching is a private personal agenda. We don’t look at our institutions when we publish. We take loans to go for conferences&spend months paying back those loans. Is it possible to make such commitments to teaching without waiting for the institutions?” Aderinto

“Your research must be useable in the classroom. You are not just publishing for the sake of publishing or promotion. The ideology of publish or perish is unacceptable. The fact that you must publish or perish should not give you high blood pressure.” Tijani

“Do not pay for your intellectual property. They should pay you. Most of you want to rush, just like you rush into the classroom unprepared, you rush into the paper. What do you want to contribute? That should be the state of your pedagogy in the classroom.”

Student evaluation: "We do not develop that in many universities. Develop a self-student evaluation form. Do not have their details on it, if your institution isn’t doing it. You will learn a lot from the critique of your students. It could also be typed."

On syllabus:

Description of the course, the aims, and the learning outcomes: what do you want them to learn after the course? Set the goals about what students are supposed to learn during your lesson cycles.

#pedagogy

“We can all continue to highlight the obvious institutional limitations; however, if we take teaching as a personal agenda to positively change things on our individual levels, things will be different. We have to change our attitudes towards teaching."

“Who owns the university: funders, students, administrators? Whatever the answer is, it will affect our pedagogy as teachers.

Whatever we do as teachers in the university has to be student-centred.”

Teaching philosophy: "Every teacher has a teaching philosophy. What is your role as a teacher? What is your teaching model? Do you bring guest lecturers over Skype? How do you use intellectual materials?

"What is missing in pedagogy is the art of mentoring."

"There is no stupid answer or question. The stupid question is that which you kept to yourself."

"You have to move around, not because you want to exercise but because you want to know your students."

"Collect students emails&compress materials with smallpdf.com so that they can read before class. If they use data for Whatsapp, they should use it for books."

"When asked to teach a new class, talk to a teacher who has done it before. This will provide insights into the work."

"If we are interested in decolonising Africa, it can not exist outside of teaching and learning. We should look at the way we teach. Recognise each learner."

"You can't be a good scholar without knowing to teach. If you have an idea and you cannot demystify it, then you don't know it enough."

"Colonial education does not recognise the students' agency, to contribute to what's being taught. It was hegemonic and did not learn from students. Our education is still a colonial heritage."

There is so much more to share but this is where I end it tonight. Beyond the tired and often true narrative of the challenges of the education space, there is something, one thing that you as a lecturer can do, to improve teaching as we have it today.

Tomorrow is another day!