The Impact of Pedagogic Research Writing Retreats on Participants’ Identities and Writing Habits

Writing for publication is a core activity in higher education. It serves many purposes including dissemination of good practice and the development of personal and institutional reputations. Writing is a practice that benefits from support and protected time away from the competing pressures of the ‘day job’, and one way of providing both of these is through writing retreats. In particular, pedagogic research writing retreats provide dedicated time and space to write, to develop new writing practices, and to foster a community of practice. They can be made available to both academic and professional staff. In this paper, we show how attendees learned new writing approaches and strategies such as recreating the retreat structure at home and developed and maintained a coherent and vibrant interdisciplinary community of practice within which they reframed their identities as academic writers.