Early career researchers (ECRs) in education bring unique histories of professional practice and development into academic research communities.¿Women Becoming Practitioner Researchers¿explores autoethnographies¿of twelve women who were, or still are, schoolteachers in the process of becoming researchers. Using autoethnography to disrupt the established systems that distance researchers from their research, the chapters in this volume are curated to apply theory to this important transition. This theory as method approach provides a foundation for understanding as the authors' weave threads of identities and experiences into their roles as practitioner researchers.

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Acknowledgments

Introduction: Tugging at the Thread: Navigating the Journey from Teacher to Academic?
Alexandra Hay, Anna Olsson Rost, Claire Goodley and Su Lyn Corcoran

Chapter 1. Saved by the REF?: The Invisible Academic
Anna Olsson Rost

Chapter 2. Exploring the Dialogic Identity of a Female Early Career Researcher
Corinne Woodfine

Chapter 3. The Pink Panther Roaming the Halls: Semiotic Mediation for the Doctoral Researcher Navigating the Investigation of their School
Alexandra Hay

Chapter 4. Becoming a Black Female Academic
Paris Brown-Gardner

Chapter 5. Finding a Place to Speak Comfortably
Rebecca Patterson

Chapter 6. Conflicting Identities: Learning to Navigate the Field of Academia as an Early Career Researcher
Rachel Stenhouse

Chapter 7. Academia Beyond the Ivory Tower: ADHD Meets Interdisciplinary and Cross-sectoral Research
Su Lyn Corcoran and Alice Bloom

Chapter 8. (Not) Becoming: (In)Fertility, Motherhood and Precarity as Early Career Researchers in Higher Education in the UK
Jessica R. Hawkins and Helen Underhill

Chapter 9. Why Here and Why Now? The Road to the Professional Doctorate: A UK and International Perspective
Alexandra Hay and Samira Nicolas

Chapter 10. The Glass Labyrinth: Navigating the Transition from Teacher to Academic Through Support, Guidance and Identity Work
Claire Goodley

Chapter 11. Ending Up in Academia: A Story of Multiple Transitions
Dimitrina Kaneva

Chapter 12. Rethreading the Tapestry: The Importance of Storytelling in Developing an Identity as an Early Career Researcher and Academic
Claire Goodley, Su Lyn Corcoran, Alexandra Hay and Anna Olsson Rost

Anna Olsson Rost taught history in secondary school prior to completing her PhD in 2016, and she is now a Senior Lecturer and Program Leader in (Secondary) Teacher Education at Manchester Metropolitan University.