The doctoral writing conversation: establishing a generic doctoral writing programme

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the number of people enrolled in doctoral study has increased dramatically across the world. In practical terms, this has meant that universities now receive increasingly diverse students with regard to ethnicity, age, language, culture, and background preparedness for higher degree study. Students can, and often do, begin their doctorates with scant understanding of the precise expectations and rigorous demands of thesis writing. Yet, regardless of academic discipline, successful completion of a doctorate requires a written thesis. To help students master thesis writing requirements, a proliferation of self-help writing books, blogs, specific writing techniques, and programmes have emerged. This paper describes an approach developed at a New Zealand university where a generic doctoral writing programme, the Doctoral Writing Conversation, has evolved to make explicit to students the implicit language understanding that accomplished academic writers use to produce text. Utilising the idea of language as a tool to mediate understanding, the paper will explore how the programme is structured and functions but will also describe some of the insights I have gained along the way. ARTICLE HISTORY

Los bloqueos de escritura en la elaboración de las tesis doctorales

“…En cuanto a las estrategias de superación, los tesistas reportaron que el acompañamiento, la motivación, el apoyo del tutor y la autorregulación de la escritura son acciones que ayudan a obtener el éxito en la culminación de la investigación. Estas opiniones coindicen con lo que se infiere de Odena y Burgess (2017), Agné y Mörkenstam (2018) y Johnson (2018); puesto que un proceso de facilitación adecuado entre ISSN 2452-5855 DOI: 10.5354/2452-5855.2020.57595 https://revistadepedagogia.uchile.cl/ tesista y tutor que establezca retroalimentaciones productivas, en un marco de colaboración y apoyo, incide en la finalización de la tesis. Adicionalmente, la metacognición tal como lo establecen Velásquez, Remolina y Calle (2013), permite autorregular el pensamiento y forman parte de las habilidades que se deben desarrollar en la escritura académica (Castelló, Bañales y Vega, 2010).…”

Towards an enhanced view of doctoral writing environments: Learning alliances to reconceptualise practice

“…Moving from a ‘hit and miss’ approach to providing the types of sessions that students wanted (or did not want) to more hands-on activities that focused on specific writing requirements of different chapters and thesis types (monograph or thesis by publication) was based on student feedback, student attendance, and institutional acceptance and promotion. A more detailed discussion of how the DWC approach was developed appears in Johnson (2018).…”

“…Language and writing expects in particular, as key contributors to doctoral learning alliances, can help students while also supporting supervisory practice. Although this paper has not included reference to the role of supervisors, their importance in shaping the DWC has been described elsewhere (Johnson, 2014a; Johnson, 2018). In addition, a new course for doctoral supervisors has been developed as a part of our Postgraduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning, and one component of the course will be the sharing and discussion of key insights from the DWC.…”

Impact of writing workshops on doctoral student wellness

“…However, writing is a complex activity tied to changing social, cultural, and disciplinary discursive practices (Badenhorst, 2018) and learning to write in context is an ongoing endeavour (Lea and Street, 2006). Doctoral students benefit from support which emphasises thesis writing as an ongoing developmental and dialogic process through peer review and discussion across disciplinary boundaries (Delyser, 2003;Aitchison, 2009;Johnson, 2018), empowering them to negotiate their own thesis writing journey, and to handle the inevitable challenges along the way. Empowering students in this way, by focusing on process rather than product, leads to higher levels of wellbeing (Stubb, Pyhältö and Lonka, 2012).…”