“Generous scholarship” after Martinovic et al. (2022) and Craig (2020) — compliment and aspiration

“Generous scholarship is an intentional, collegial approach to scholarship that helps to mitigate the sense of isolation and depletion of energy often associated with managerial, production-oriented academic contexts” (Martinovic et al., 2022)

Yesterday, Agnes Bosanquet comment on a recent blogpost that my work was “generous scholarship”. And somehow those words touched me so much, and really warmed my heart! I then obviously did, as one does, a literature search on “generous scholarship”.

Martinovic et al. (2022) develop five principles of generous scholarship:

• Social praxis: Generous scholarship is enacted through conversations in communities of scholarly practice, where there is focus on collegiality and peer support
• Reciprocity: peer-to-peer learning across hierarchies, experiences, and career stages, where support is reciprocated directly, or in circles or even passed forward in chains
• Generous mindedness: the mindset of wanting to support others, therefore putting effort and mental energy into supporting them through discussions (but also, I imagine, by acknowledging their contributions, like for example through comments on their blogs, or bluesy posts like in the featured image above)
• Generous heartedness: focus on emotional support and “evident in the time devoted toward careful listening, thoughtful and respectful engagement, and non-antagonist and non-adversarial comments“
• Agency: intentionally taking on and practicing the principles of generous scholarship, because you want to, not because you have to. Generous scholars “take responsibility for contributing to knowledge building and scholarly development as a matter of professional integrity“

This spoke to me so much! The authors write that generous scholarship “aligned with [their] professional ideals“, and for me it certainly does, too. They continue that “a collegial, giving approach to scholarship helps to mitigate the sense of isolation and depletion of energy that may result from the managerial, production-oriented focus that is prevalent in academia and especially in the current COVID-19 context. Generosity is an important countermeasure against competition, fragmentation, and managerialism“. And it is not a coincidence that I am blogging the most when I need to feel that I have agency, that I am doing things that support my professional integrity. And also when I need to feel part of an intellectual community, even if I don’t always hear back that people are reading what I am writing (but then, I often do, and often that develops into conversations, which I value that a lot!). Craig (2020, i.e. written before and cited in the other one, but I read it second) writes about generous scholarship based on their talk called “the best-loved self, choice and action”. What an interesting point to ponder — what is my best-loved self? And in a way I think that is what blogging then means to me: Connecting with who I want to be, being myself on my own terms.

But of course, that can and should also happen outside of me sitting on my own couch with my computer. Craig (2020) describe that “In my case, I imagine what a generous scholar would do when faced with displeasing choices and action“, and they discuss how we sometimes enounter “our moments of choice” where we  ask ourselves ”how do we “self-educate” and “intelligently rebel”“, which I think are both really useful aspirations, and I will try to remember them next time I am in a situation “faced with displeasing choices and action”.

They further describe that “Having anything—awards, accolades, money, titles, competitive grants and research centers—is a tinny prize if the diminishment of one’s best-loved self is the price-of-purchase“. And that is so important — for example, do we keep applying for promotions to where we reach the level of our own incompetence, or do we stop and do the stuff we are really good at and really enjoy, and where we can really contribute?

They end their article writing that “we are the products of the choices that our selves make and the subsequent actions and non-actions we take. Similarly, our world is the product of our cumulative choices and actions that we collectively make and take/do not make or take as human beings. This is the reason why generous scholarship is so critically important to the educational enterprise. It is a pathway to a kinder, gentler future academy and a kinder, gentler future world” (or, to quote my current favourite book, “the process is the point!“). And Martinovic et al. (2022) “call on academics to keep discovering and promoting ways to bring generous scholarship out of the shadows and to celebrate its potential to transform academia“, which I hope they would agree this blogpost is a contribution to! And now having learned this new language of generous scholarship, that is really what I aspire to be, my best-loved self, a generous scholar.

Next to read then as soon as I have gotten access to the book, and thank you for pointing me to it, Agnes: “Generous Thinking” by Fitzpatrick (2019), with the exciting subtitle “A Radical Approach to Saving the University”! I will keep you posted! :)

Craig, C. J. (2020). Generous scholarship: A counternarrative for the region and the academy. Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading, 351-365.

Martinovic, D., McGinn, M. K., Scott, R. M., & Obradović-Ratković, S. (2022). Conceptualizing Generous Scholarship. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 10(1).