Session Information
SES F 01, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
How can universities and other institutions of higher education help staff and postgraduate students become better scholarly writers? This paper critiques a number of strategies which are being used throughout the world. These strategies include: creating strong writing cultures; encouraging flexible conceptions of good or better scholarly writing; developing supportive resource materials; using writers’ groups; providing writers’ retreats for academics; examining the role of writing mentors; creating postgraduate and staff training and writing centres. The joint authors of the paper have considerable practical experience in helping develop scholarly writers and substantial theoretical understanding of the problems involved.The concept of academic literacies is now used as a research framework for understanding writing practices in higher education. Academic literacies are mainly concerned with reading and writing practices within the disciplines and, especially, with the way in which students (and staff) learn new subjects and develop their knowledge. The approach is one of viewing literacy from cultural and social practice perspectives, perspectives which show that in higher education meanings are contested by students, staff and institutions. Indeed academic writing may generally be defined as contested knowledge in the making. The academic literacies perspective encapsulates previous study skills and academic socialization models. The study skills or student deficit model is mainly concerned with improving or fixing grammatical, linguistic and spelling and with student writing as technical and instrumental skill. The academic socialization or acculturation of students into academic discourse model seeks to inculcate students into a new writing culture by focusing on student orientation to learning and interpretation of learning tasks. It presents student writing as a transparent medium of representation. The academic literacies or students’ negotiation of conflicting literary practices model argues that literacies are social practices so that student writing should be seen as meaning making and contested. The academic literacies approach incorporates the other two models but emphasises the importance of personal identities and social meanings in writing. For example, a student’s identity may be challenged by the different forms of writing required in different disciplines. Students may feel constrained or threatened by being required to use impersonal and passive forms of writing in, for instance, the writing of scientific papers.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Badley, G. 2009a A place from where to speak: the university and academic freedom. British Journal of Educational Studies 57, 2: 146-163. Badley, G. 2009b Academic writing: contested knowledge in the making. Quality Assurance in Education 17, 2: 104-117. Badley, G. 2009c Academic writing as shaping and re-shaping. Teaching in Higher Education 14, 2: 209-219. Badley, G. 2010 Academic scribbling: A frivolous approach? (Forthcoming). Connell, J.M. 2008 The emergence of pragmatic philosophy’s influence on literary theory: making meaning with texts from a transactional perspective. Educational Theory Vol. 58 No. 1 2008: 103-122 Lea, M. and Stierer, B. 2000 Student writing in higher education: New contexts. Buckingham: SRHE & Open University Press. Lea, M. and Street, B. (Eds.) 2000 Student writing and staff feedback: An academic literacies approach, Chapter 2 pp. 32-46 in M. Lea and B. Stierer (Eds.) (2000). Murray, R. and Moore, S. 2006 The handbook of academic writing: A fresh approach. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Rorty, R. 1979 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rorty, R. 1991 Essays on Heidegger and others: philosophical papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. 1999 Philosophy and social hope. London: Penguin Books. Rorty, R. 2000 The decline of redemptive truth and the rise of a literary culture Stanford, CA: Richard Rorty’s home page. http:www.stanford.edu/~rrorty Rorty, R. 2007 Philosophy as cultural politics. Philosphical Papers, Volume 4. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Weiner, G. 1999 Getting published: A study of writing, refereeing and editing practices. Swindon: ESRC.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.