Academics across the world face increasing pressure to publish. Research shows that writing retreats have helped by creating dedicated writing time and building collegiality. A new form of 'structured' writing retreat was created to increase its impact by taking a community of practice approach. This paper reports on an evaluation, funded by the British Academy, in which participants were interviewed one year after structured retreat. They reported many changes in their approaches to writing and in their sense of themselves as writers and some of these changes were sustained on return to campus. This paper argues that structured retreat increases learning through participation and helps academics to mainstream writing in their lives and careers. We conclude by suggesting that, since publishing is a mainstream academic activity, it makes sense to mainstream this intervention in academic careers.

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In order to develop physiotherapy practice and interventions, it is essential that both service development and research be brought into the public domain. Writing for publication requires a high level of writing skills, and clinicians facing competing demands for their time need strategies for productive writing. These skills and strategies are not always developed in undergraduate or postgraduate courses. This study assessed a writing for publication course for allied health professionals. It explored the writing skills and strategies that participants developed during the course. It also assessed whether these skills and strategies were sustained in clinical workplaces after the course. Clinical professionals, including physiotherapists, who had attended the 6-month course were identified. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 of the 14 participants (four males, 10 females), including six physiotherapists. The results show that course participants reported a range of benefits, which included improved skills and increased confidence. They also increased their published output. However, participants also identified the need for ongoing support. This paper identifies the main issues in establishing writing for publication as part of the allied health professional role

This version is available at https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/28805/ Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Unless otherwise explicitly stated on the manuscript, Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Please check the manuscript for details of any other licences that may have been applied. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or private study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge.Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to the Strathprints administrator: strathprints@strath.ac.ukThe Strathprints institutional repository (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk) is a digital archive of University of Strathclyde research outputs. It has been developed to disseminate open access research outputs, expose data about those outputs, and enable the management and persistent access to Strathclyde's intellectual output. Research, scholarship and publication are central to the work of higher education. Accepted by Studies in Higher EducationHowever, even academics with the necessary research and writing skills can struggle to publish as often as they would like. Research suggests that a writing retreat is one solution; there is a process going on there that addresses the problem, but how it does so has not been fully explained. We used a novel approach, containment theory, to explain why the functions of a structured retreat work. We argue that a retreat does more than simply provide time to write; it is a model for academics to meet the demands of research assessment. Finally, we conceptualise this as strategic engagement -a model for producing regular writing for publication while continuing to meet other professional demands.2

Introduction and BackgroundThe UK higher education sector produces graduates with a high level of knowledge in both theoretical and practical chemistry. In contrast, communication skills development has traditionally been less well advanced in the chemistry curriculum. However, it has been argued for some time and there is a growing acceptance that there is a need for structured guidance on communications (1). Educational researchers and teachers of chemistry alike have argued that knowledge of chemistry in itself is not enough; it is now well established in the literature on chemistry education that skills relevant to chemistry should be developed in the undergraduate degree. In fact, there is evidence that developing these skills can enhance the cognitive development and performance of chemists (2). Additionally, it is our experience that students have begun to realize the value of developing what have been called "transferable skills". Employers have also begun explicitly to value communication skills. All of this evidence provides a foundation for the wide range of communication skills courses that have evolved in the past decade to meet this perceived need (3). For educators in chemistry the question is how best to develop effective communication skills training.The descriptive papers in the literature offer a variety of purposes, modes of delivery, and assessment or non-assessment. The research papers show that claims for the effects of these courses can be supported by evidence of skills development and improved learning of chemistry. There has also been recognition by chemistry educators of the need to integrate communication skills in the curriculum, even at the expense of other subjects (it should be noted that, in most cases, the UK undergraduate chemistry curriculum is fixed, with only a few elective classes) (1).At Strathclyde the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry collaborated with the university's Centre for Academic Practice (center for staff and educational development) to develop a communications skills course which, by drawing on different strands of research and practice, would be both educationally sound and relevant to chemists and would have a firm theoretical basis. Advice was also taken from industrial contacts. The result is a range of communications skills activities that run over three years of the four-year undergraduate degree. The Strathclyde course is an integrated course, not only in the sense that all its components are interrelated, but also in the sense that the communications activities are related to other course work. This paper outlines each of the three units, providing the practical guidelines and, more briefly, the theoretical underpinning that chemistry lecturers can use in their teaching.

Written output is a key topic in higher education for individuals and institutions. The importance of writing development for academics is established in the literature. What has not been examined is the effect of this development on participants’ teaching. While writing development delivers in terms of professional skills and the research assessment exercise, lecturers reveal that this form of effective staff development often has a knock-on effect, leading to effective educational development. One innovative approach to writing development for academics is a credit-bearing module on academic writing. During and after this module self-reporting and tracking were recorded. Analysis of writings, discussions and emails over the course of a year shows that participants took good practice learned about writing for publication into their teaching. These lecturers made genuine connections between research and teaching roles, integrating their work for the research assessment exercise with the aims of the Institute for Learning and Teaching.