"Everything is in the Lab Book”: The Role of the Lab Book Genre in Writing, Knowledge-Making, and Identity Construction in Academic Medical Physics Labs

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the nature and functions of the lab book genre in the discipline of medical physics. Specifically, it investigates how the multimodal nature of the lab book facilitates knowledge-making and identity construction in an academic medical physics community located in a Canadian university. The study employs the theoretical framework of Writing, Activity, and Genre Research (WAGR) in combination with the theoretical notions of communities of practice (CoP) and multimodality. The data collected include observational field notes, multimodal lab books collected from, and semi-structured interviews conducted with, five participants with a range of experience in the academic medical physics community. Findings of the study indicate that the lab book, particularly its multimodal features, serves as an important knowledgemaking artefact within the medical physics community. The genre is found to perform multiple roles, including, but not limited to, providing a means of reifying experimental results and a space for community members to participate and negotiate their professional identities within the discipline of medical physics. Implications for further research of the nature of knowledge in medical physics, as well as implications for multimodal genre analysis, are discussed.

“Everything Is in the Lab Book”: Multimodal Writing, Activity, and Genre Analysis of Symbolic Mediation in Medical Physics

“…The illustrative example discussed in the article is part of a longitudinal multiphase qualitative research project, which focused on the culture of a group of medical physicists working at a university medical physics unit who were at different stages of their careers at the time of the study (Doody, 2015). The research project followed an emergent research design, which enabled us to be responsive to unforeseen events occurring during the research process (e.g., Charmaz, 2006, p. 25) and allowed us to approach the research process as generative; that is, working with data revealed new questions, hypotheses, and insights, which were integrated into the research agenda (and at times shifted it), so that findings were corroborated through the subsequent stages of data generation and analysis (Schwandt, 2001, p. 100).…”

One-Credit Writing-Intensive Courses in the Disciplines: Results from a Study of Four Departments

“…As stated earlier in this chapter, learning to become an effective disciplinary writer requires more than the acquisition of a set of skills and knowledge (Blakeslee, 1997;Dall'Alba & Sandberg, 2006;Gee, 2005;Poe et al, 2010); writing takes place within a social and cultural context (Collins et al, 1989;Doody, 2015;Maher, 2008) and in the context of forming disciplinary identity (Brown et al, 2005;Gee, 2005). For this reason, investigating the attitudes and beliefs of scientists and emerging scientists is vitally important (Kagan, 1990).…”

A Review of Microhistories of Composition

“…Sometimes we get a little closer. Like early anthropologists who visit the tribal village, we might get as far as the lab to observe and document their textual practices and the social and cultural contexts in which these practices take place (Bazerman 1988(Bazerman , 1998Doody, 2015;Graves, 2005). But we know little of how scientists think as writers-about their beliefs, attitudes and experiences of writing-even though learning to adopt the attitudes and beliefs of their seniors will be essential to our science students in the future as they develop both their professional identity and their fluency as disciplinary writers (Beaufort, 2007;Dall'Alba & Sandberg, 2006;Gee, 2005;Harding & Hare, 2000;Poe et al, 2010).…”