If the script doesn’t work, change the script

Abstract

Every career is different, emerging from different circumstances and almost always influenced by unforeseen opportunities and challenges. The script we write will be revised and edited many times. I have found my script changing at important junctures in my career. This reality is difficult to convey to researchers just starting out, but it is important to know. As have others in this series, I hope that some of the opportunities and challenges in my career can inform or support them as they travel similar roads. In looking back on my journey to and through educational research, I will try to show how striving, persistence, and taking risks helped me to forge the path I wanted to travel. I learned that following my own path rather than the current fashion, thinking outside the box to solve problems, emphasizing the quality of my work and cultivating relationships with schools all helped me to persist and to change the script when I needed to in order to reach my goals.

Download the PDF and read more about Dr. Turner's journey.