While the idea of the scholar-practitioner is not new, and the term ‘pracademic’ has been smattered in research literature across various fields, the concept of the pracademic is only recently beginning to gain traction in the education community. It remains scarcely documented and has not yet been comprehensively theorised. So, is the term ‘pracademic’ just another made-up edu-word, a senseless attempt to label and divide educators along research-practice lines, or a concept worthy of inquiry and elaboration?

In my view, the notions of pracademic and pracademia are worthy of exploration. In some ways, all educators are pracademics, whether that be scholars who engage practitioners in their research, or practitioners who engage with research and those working in the academe. It can include the myriad of collaborations and interactions between those operating mostly in schools and those operating mostly in universities. Yet, much scholarship still fails to make it to those working in schools, and the expertise and wisdom of practitioners is still often missing from research and policy conversations about education.

Pracademia might be seen as a space or spaces; or as a stance, a deliberate situatedness in the grey, messy in-between space. It encompasses a way of being that embraces the bridging or knotting together of research and practice in ways that engage with multiple stakeholders or influence in multiple directions.

In my book Transformational Professional Learning: Making a Difference on Schools
(2020), I explored my own positionality as a pracademic, after hearing myself labelled as such by Professors Andy Hargreaves and Christian van Nieuwerburgh. I wrote in the Introduction:

“The unique perspective I bring to the field of professional learning is one of boundary-spanning teacher-leader-researcher who works to bridge the gap between research and practice. In the structure and writing of this book I model the way that I bring the lens of practising teacher and school leader to research, and bring a research lens to my daily work. I connect the dots between scholarly and practical domains, to operate in the space (or as the bridge) between the world of education research and that of classroom and school. This bridging work brings a research lens to schools, where teachers and school leaders enact theory into practice, tempered by their wisdom of practice and the emotional and human elements of education that shape their behaviours each day.”

In the Foreword to that book, Andy Hargreaves also described the emerging pracademic voice in education:

“Deborah Netolicky is part of a new breed of thought leader in education known as the pracademic. My autocorrect function on my laptop sometimes translates this as paramedic!! In fact, the two words and the worlds they capture are not all that far apart. … Pracademics span the worlds of research and practice. … the pracademic is here to stay, and Deborah Netolicky is providing us with an excellent example of what we can uniquely learn from this new kind of voice that has come onto the modern educational landscape.”

Moving beyond that book, and those reflections, led to more conversations with other pracademics, and further conversation around pracademic spaces, identities and behaviours. At the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) conference in January, my ‘extreme speech’ on the main stage explored pracademic identity, and I was part of a symposium on pracademia—with Trista Hollweck, Paul Campbell, Leyton Schnellert and Danette Parsley as discussant—titled ‘Pracademics: Exploring the tensions and opportunities of boundary-spanners who straddle the worlds of academia and practice’.

Now, as these conversations continue, tensions and complexities around pracademia in eduction continue to bubble up. Trista, Paul and I are now editing a Special Issue of the Journal of Professional Capital and Community on ‘Pracademia: Exploring the possibilities, power and politics of boundary-spanners straddling the worlds of practice and scholarship’. Yesterday, we presented some of our thinking at the virtual International Professional Development Association conference. Questions with which we engaged include:

• What is a pracademic and who decides?
• What does it mean to be a pracademic in different educational spaces?
• What issues and/or tensions arise in the complex negotiation of the dual worlds of practice and scholarship?
• What role do identity and belonging play in pracademia?
• What does pracademia offer the field of education? 
• Is the term limiting or empowering, divisive or productive?

We also shared three metaphors we are playing with that represent the ways in which we are defining the concept of pracademia with all its plurality, complexity and multiplicity.

Watch this space as this work continues to grow.