'Becoming' in Pedagogical Research

Hello – I’m Robert and I’m a member of the Research Team at LITE. In this blog, I’d like to introduce you to the work I’m developing on identity in pedagogical research (PedRes). This has taken form as both LITE strategic research – with an emphasis on understanding, fostering, and elevating PedRes as a form of educational inquiry – and my part-time PhD, based in the School of Education.

I hope you take something from reading about my ideas in this blog.

‘Where do I start?’

In my role at LITE, I’m lucky to interact with colleagues working across student education. Sometimes, this includes listening to ideas from colleagues new to PedRes. Here, questions like ‘is this for me?’, ‘can I do this?’, and, perhaps most frequently of all, ‘where do I start?’, are rarely far from the conversation.

But what does it mean to start something?

When a long-distance runner starts training for an important race, they don’t do it from a blank canvas (or so I’ve been told). They bring multiple intersecting features of their identities to the task: experiences, talents and abilities, influences, motivations, and even ethical commitments, to name a few.

Based on my experience at LITE, and interpretation of key literature, I believe the same is true with PedRes, and within that, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) (you can read more about these terms here).

Introducing the multiplicity of PedRes identities

PedRes allows us to bring the multiple, co-constitutive facets of our educational identities to the fore in our efforts to understand, develop, and inform improvements to student education. The best PedRes does this in collaboration with colleagues and students with different knowledges, skills, and experiences to our own.

But to do this – and to do this well – we all must navigate difference. Bennett et al. (2015) portray this in a SoTL context through the evocative image of ‘Chimaera’, with the heads of the ‘teacher’ (or practitioner), the ‘disciplinarian’ (or subject/industry expert), and the ‘educational researcher’. The point is that through viewing such ‘conflicts and configurations’ as a necessary part of developing as a pedagogical researcher (Simmons et al., 2013), difference becomes generative, rather than constraining. As LITE Fellow Claudia Rogers put it, we come to reveal “two sides of the same coin” (Rogers, 2025).

Within these broad identities, there are countless others we might consider: ‘educator’ and ‘learner’, ‘established’ and ‘newcomer’, data ‘gatherer’ and knowledge ‘creator’, ‘researcher’ and (reflexive) ‘participant’, ‘private’ and ‘public’, to name a few. Perhaps some of these resonate with you.

As literature in this area has developed in recent years, a common theme has been that, while far from straightforward or predictable, critically reflecting on the identities we bring to our PedRes (and having the opportunity to do this creatively and alongside others, which I will come to shortly) directly impacts our ability to make the transitions or adjustments that high-quality sustained pedagogical enquiry requires (see, for example: Whitton, Parr, and Choate, 2022; Marquis et al., 2017).

‘Becoming’ in PedRes

While it is tempting to view pedagogical researcher identity development in linear, spatial terms that prize certainty and closure (as we might do when we think about running a marathon or other forms of journey from ‘A’ to ‘B’), we risk closing off the process to the generative possibilities of new connections, turns, and yes – failures.

This is why I have come to appreciate the applicability of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s ontology of ‘becoming’, as seen throughout their work (Braidotti, 2012), to this subject. In short, this means rejecting a view of PedRes identity which relies upon fixed states and hierarchies of levels. Instead, it offers a starting point that, I would argue, speaks to the complexity and richness of this kind of work: as relational, emergent, and affective processes through which we seek educational change. ‘Becoming’, then, empowers an “entity that lasts, that endures sustainable changes and transformation and enacts them around him/herself in a community” (Braidotti, 2012, p.183).

Indeed, writing in a broader educational development context, Ian Kinchin – a leading thinker behind the concept of the ecological university – draws upon Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor of the rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988) to make the case for teacher identities that challenge a static philosophy of ‘being’ through this emergent philosophy of ‘becoming’ (Kinchin, 2023). The former, he suggests, is arborescent and sees professional identity reach a settled, but stagnant, form of ‘expert’ status. By contrast, the latter is rhizomatic – inherently unsettled and pushing at the boundaries of identity through its relationships and environments. A radical openness to learning, if you will.

How, then, might my research draw upon these ideas? And why does it matter beyond the level of the individual?

Aims and next steps

While literature has pointed to the value and nature of identity development in PedRes (most often, ‘SoTL’), we are yet to see a picture of longitudinal, evidence-based, and theoretically informed work emerge. And less still, despite the rise in ‘teaching and scholarship’ roles (HESA, 2024), identity-focused work that speaks to our contexts at Leeds and other UK ‘research-intensive’ institutions.

As such, my research aims to collaboratively develop and evaluate a rhizomatic approach – underpinned by a Deleuze-Guattarian ontology of ‘becoming’ – that colleagues responsible for fostering PedRes can adapt according to local (e.g. school or service-level) contexts. Importantly, as I suggested earlier, this does not mean responsibilising individuals, but collaboratively forging cultures that empower scholarly identity development and enquiry. In this way, my research will draw upon and add to existing work on educational cultures at Leeds (for example, watch back Anne Tallontire and Jane Dalton’s presentation via the SEC2026 Rewind).

In short, then, contributing to this knowledge gap in ways that meaningfully inform how we support PedRes is at the heart of this research. As Abel Nyamapfene put it during his fantastic keynote at SEC2026, bringing ‘behind the scenes’ scholarship to the fore both elevates its impact and reaffirms its importance for sustainable student education enhancement.

Get in touch

A priority of mine over the coming months is to learn more about current approaches for fostering PedRes at Leeds and beyond: what has been happening, contextual factors shaping this, and where things might be going. And, in turn, how my work might contribute.

Indeed, feedback and discussion will be key as this research moves forward I am inspired by the words of Rosiek et al. (2024, p.236) and their depiction of research as “immanent participation in an ongoing process of collective ontological becoming”.

So, if you’re reading this and would like to have a conversation, please reach out!

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References

Bennett, R., Hobson, J., Jones, A., Martin-Lynch, P., Scutt, C., Strehlow, K. and Veitch, S. 2015. Being chimaera: a monstrous identity for SoTL academics. Higher Education Research & Development. 35(2), pp.217–228.

Braidotti, R. 2012. Nomadic ethics. In: The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.170–197.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1988. A thousand plateaus. London: Athlone.

Kinchin, I.M. 2023. Rhizomatic teacher development in the context of the ecological university. In: New Directions in Rhizomatic Learning. London: Routledge, pp.26–40.

HESA. 2024. Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK, 2022/23. 2 February. HESA News. [Online]. [Accessed: 18 March 2026]. Available from: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/16-01-2024/sb267-higher-education-staff-statistics

Marquis, E., Holmes, T., Apostolou, K. Centea, D., Cockcroft, R. Knorr, K., Maclachlan, J.C., Monteiro, S.D., and Karamanis, T. 2017. SoTL Research Fellows Collaborative Pathfinding through Uncertain Terrain. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. 8(3), Article 9.

Rogers, C. 2025. History, huh? How our disciplinary research can shape what we do in PedRes. 21 May. LITE Blog. [Online]. [Accessed 11 March 2026]. Available from: https://teachingexcellence.leeds.ac.uk/history-huh-how-our-disciplinary-research-can-shape-what-we-do-in-pedres/

Rosiek, J.L., Adkins-Cartee, M., Donley, K. and Pratt, A.B. 2024. A Review of Posthumanist Education Research: Expanded Conceptions of Research Possibility and Responsibility. Review of Research in Education. 48(1), pp.220–247.

Simmons, N. 2013. Conflicts and Configurations in a Liminal Space: SoTL Scholars Identity Development. Teaching & Learning Inquiry. 1(2), pp.9–21.

Whitton, J., Parr, G. and Choate, J. 2022. Developing the education research capability of education-focused academics: building skills, identities and communities. Higher Education Research & Development. 41(6), pp.2122–2136.