First steps

Being a professional academic writer, this first step into the blogosphere is one I take with some degree of trepidation. Frankly I find some comfort in the highly structured and rationalized forms of expression that are so typical of academic writing. Writing more in my own voice is somewhat new. At the same time, however, I find myself continually frustrated with the narrow audience that most of my professional writing addresses. We in the academy truly do write for ourselves most of the time, and judge our success as scholars largely by how prolific we are in writing for one another. So, not knowing where this shall lead, if anywhere, I step into a new forum of expression. And I drag a cohort of doctoral students with me. They also will be creating blogs (which will be linked to this site and one another) in an exercise in exploring the potential of blogs as an alternative medium of expression; as learning environments, and potentially as communicative tools in organizational and professional settings. We shall see where it leads. For my part, this blog will tend to wax philosophical. I work in a highly normative and, frankly, conservative field. I intend to use this environment as a forum for expressing the more personal intellectual side of my perspectives on education, organizational change, leadership, and social justice.