Empowering Academic Writers: The Role of a Writing Retreat and Social Cognitive Theory

The objective of this study was to explore faculty perceptions and experiences of a newly developed writing retreat designed to boost scholarly productivity.

An immersive scholarly writing retreat was designed and implemented in January 2023 among 4 female pharmacy faculty from different institutions. In addition to daily scholarly writing, reflective journaling was completed during and 4 to 6 weeks after the retreat. Written reflections underwent qualitative analysis via initial exploratory inductive thematic analysis and subsequent deductive thematic analysis based on Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) to capture and represent themes.

Eight journals were analyzed, 1 per participant during and postretreat. Participants reported positive emotions and productivity during the retreat with sustained benefits. Four themes were identified, including The Role of Emotions in Writing, The Impact of Mindset on Writing, The Exploration of New Writing Strategies, and The Power of Social Connection. These themes aligned with SCT, emphasizing cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors that determine motivation, learning, and action.

This article describes a faculty writing retreat and the role of cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors that influence scholarly productivity. Aligned with principles of SCT, the retreat was shown to facilitate effective writing habits, associate positive emotions with writing, minimize writing resistance, build positive social connections, and increase sustainable scholarly productivity. This information provides a scalable framework for other faculty members to optimize and enhance their scholarly endeavors.