The development of university research scholars’ and faculty’s competence in academic writing

Abstract

Introduction. The development of competence in the field of academic writing is one of the requirements for university research scholars and faculty at the current stage. The number of research articles published in academic journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science is one of the indicators of the effectiveness of the university in general and the effectiveness of each individual scholar in particular. The purpose of the study is to develop a course program for the university research scholars and faculty for the development of competence in the field of academic writing and to test its effectiveness in the course of experiential learning. Materials and methods. The study involved young faculty of various scientific specialties of Derzhavin Tambov State University (N=40). For 13 weeks, they were trained in writing the structural components of an IMRAD research article, and also studied issues related to the use of modern information and analytical resources for the selection of research literature on topics and the promotion of research articles after their publication. The objects of control were micro skills associated with writing structural fragments of an article in the IMRAD format. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out using the Student's t-test. Median data (M) were used in the analysis. Research results. It was revealed that the proposed course has confirmed its effectiveness in all controlled aspects. In addition, the study showed that the greatest difficulties for most learners, predominantly representatives of humanities, were caused by writing the sections “Methods and materials” (M = 3.05), “Results” (M = 2.95) and “Discussion of the results” (M = 3.45). The least difficulties for the participants were caused by writing the sections "Introduction" (M=4.16), "Literature Review" (M=4.8), "Conclusion" (M=4.43) and compiling a list of references (M=4.87). The paper presents in detail the subject content of the course and tasks for independent implementation by students. Conclusion. The novelty of the study is in the development of the subject content of the course for the development of students’ and scholars’ competence in academic writing. The results of the study can be used in the development of specialized academic writing courses for bachelor and master degree students, involved in research activity.