Sharon McCulloch | University of Central Lancashire (original) (raw)
Papers by Sharon McCulloch
Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 15, 2019
Writing & Pedagogy, 2018
This paper highlights the importance, when researching writing across the lifespan, of addressing... more This paper highlights the importance, when researching writing across the lifespan, of addressing a range of aspects of social context which change over time, particularly focusing on tools, values, relationships and identities. It illustrates this argument by drawing on a range of empirical studies exploring different aspects of writing in university settings, working with adults at a range of levels from Masters through doctoral study to academics’ working lives, and reflects on the implications of this research for lifespan writing studies more generally. The projects drawn on include a study of multimodal feedback on postgraduate student writing and students’ responses to this; a detailed study of academics’ writing practices in the context of structural changes in Higher Education; and an interview study with PhD students participating in writing retreats, reflecting on their writing experiences.
Drawing on findings from this work, we argue that shifts in material, social and institutional dimensions of context have a significant impact on what individuals write and on the writing practices that they develop. We particularly highlight the role of changing tools for writing and values around writing, and the importance of transformations in identity and relationships. We argue that the tradition of literacy studies research, drawn on by all the projects described in this paper, provides the theoretical and methodological resources to approach such aspects of academic writing development across the lifespan, by adopting a holistic perspective on writing which locates writing as situated practice and thereby provides insight into these social and contextual influences.
Discourse, Context and Media (2018), 2018
Almost every aspect of an academic’s role involves specialised forms of writing, and the range of... more Almost every aspect of an academic’s role involves specialised forms of writing, and the range of digital platforms used to produce this has increased. Core genres such as the journal article and monograph remain central, but the ways they are now commonly produced via file-sharing software and online submission systems are changing them. Digital media also allows academics to stay up to date with their field, connect with others, and share research with wider audiences. Furthermore, academics are increasingly expected to maintain online identities via academic networking sites, and to create and disseminate knowledge via hybrid genres such as tweets and blogs. However, these platforms also represent a potential threat to academics’ values and sense of identity. This paper reports on an [name of funder] research project investigating the writing practices of academics across different disciplines at three English universities. Through academics’ accounts of their experience with and feelings about the role of digital media in their professional writing, this paper explores the factors that complicate their engagement with new genres of writing. The findings reveal a tension between the values of social media, which see knowledge as user-generated and decentralised, and the forms of knowledge creation that are rewarded in academia.
Research in Learning Technology, 2017
This paper explores academics' writing practices, focusing on the ways in which they use digital ... more This paper explores academics' writing practices, focusing on the ways in which they use digital platforms in their processes of collaborative learning. It draws on interview data from a research project that has involved working closely with academics across different disciplines and institutions to explore their writing practices, understanding academic literacies as situated social practices. The paper outlines the characteristics of academics' ongoing professional learning, demonstrating the importance of collaborations on specific projects in generating learning in relation to using digital platforms and for sharing and collaborating on scholarly writing. A very wide range of digital platforms have been identified by these academics, enabling new kinds of collaboration across time and space on writing and research; but challenges around online learning are also identified, particularly the dangers of engaging in learning in public, the pressures of 'always-on'-ness, and the different values systems around publishing in different forums.
Aslib Journal of Information Management , 2017
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies a... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies and their interpretation on academics’ writing practices in three different higher education institutions and across three different disciplines. Specifically, the paper discusses how England’s national research excellence framework (REF) and institutional responses to it shape the decisions academics make about their writing.
Design/method/approach – 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one STEM discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focused on different aspects of academics’ writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data was coded using the qualitative data analysis software, Atlas.ti.
Findings – Academics’ ability to succeed in their career was closely tied to their ability to meet quantitative and qualitative targets driven by research evaluation systems, but these were predicated on an unrealistic understanding of knowledge creation. Research evaluation systems limited the epistemic choices available to academics, partly because they pushed academics’ writing towards genres and publication venues that conflicted with disciplinary traditions and partly because they were evenly distributed across institutions and age groups.
Originality/value – This work fills a gap in the literature by offering empirical and qualitative findings on the effects of research evaluation systems in context. It is also one of the only papers to focus on the ways in which individuals’ academic writing practices in particular are shaped by such systems.
Patter (Blog), 2017
Blog post on Patter, (22 March 2017)
Blog post at London Metropolitan University, Take5 blog, (24 April 2017).
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Jun 2013
Existing studies of source use in academic student writing tend to i), focus more on the writing ... more Existing studies of source use in academic student writing tend to i), focus more on the writing than the reading end of the reading-to-write continuum and ii), involve the use of insufficiently ‘naturalistic’ writing tasks. Thus, in order to explore the potential of an alternative approach, this paper describes an exploratory case study concerning the ways source material was used by two L2 MA students while involved in a real-life reading-to-write task. Think-aloud sessions were conducted with students at a UK university as they read to write during the dissertation component of their programme. Analysis of the resulting protocols revealed that they engaged with their source material in qualitatively different ways, in both the frequency and range of their reading-to-write behaviours. Specifically, the students differed in the ways they responded to their sources as they read, the ways they elaborated on what they read and drew inferences, and the extent to which they showed intertextual awareness. The findings suggest that, for these writers, the process of “using” source material begins early in the reading-to-write process and involves more complex interactions with sources than may be suggested by the use of ‘one-shot’ reading-to-write tasks of the type used in much reading-to-write research.► An exploratory case study of two L2 postgraduate students' use of source materials. ► Think aloud used to examine a naturalistic reading-to-write process. ► Differing degrees of engagement with source material are evident. ► Findings suggest a need for more naturalistic studies of reading-to-write. ► Greater pedagogical focus on critical reading may be helpful.
International Journal for Educational Integrity, 2012
Although much of the research into source use by international students has tended to focus on is... more Although much of the research into source use by international students has tended to focus on issues of plagiarism, there has recently been recognition that their difficulties in this respect may be more pedagogical than moral. However, much remains to be known about the nature of such students" source use. In order to throw light on the ways in which novice L2 writers use source material in their writing and to understand what difficulties they experience, this paper reports on a small case study involving a group of Japanese postgraduate students. Analysis of five Pre-Master"s dissertations written by these students, as well as interviews conducted with the writers, revealed that they varied in their ability to handle source material effectively. In many cases, their use of source material appeared to be symptomatic of weak authorial stance and apparent lack of a clear argument. Based on these findings, the study concludes with the recommendation that instruction on the use of source material focus to a greater extent on its rhetorical function in constructing knowledge.
Although coherence is an essential quality of academic writing, it is not always clearly defined ... more Although coherence is an essential quality of academic writing, it is not always clearly defined and can therefore be challenging both to teach and to learn.
The Language Teacher, 2008
1 my SHARE • ResouRces Appendix A. Sample word of the week Word of the week To underpin • Type of... more 1 my SHARE • ResouRces Appendix A. Sample word of the week Word of the week To underpin • Type of word Verb (transitive) • Pronunciation 3 syllables • Other information 2 word stems under + pin •
Conference Presentations by Sharon McCulloch
BAAL conference, Leeds, 2 September 2017 , 2017
Academics’ everyday professional writing practices are very extensively mediated through email. ... more Academics’ everyday professional writing practices are very extensively mediated through email. In our recently completed ESRC-funded research project, The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation, email was by far the most commonly mentioned digital platform for writing across our 75 interviewees. As one of them told us, “Everything is done by email now.” Given this ubiquity of email in the ecology of academics’ communication, and particularly given that email has been a feature of the academy for at least 20 years, we might assume that established expectations and patterns around working with emails would have developed by now. However, our research reveals an enormous diversity in practices and attitudes around email. This paper explores specific aspects of this diversity in the way interviewees in our data discussed their engagements with email. In particular, we will explore people’s affective responses to email, and the evaluative stances they adopt (“I email far, far too much”); the range of metaphors our participants used to describe email (“this spectre that hangs over academic life”); and their ascription of agency, responsibility and guilt around email communication (often individualising a problem which clearly has more systemic roots). Systematic analysis of how people talk about email can provide important insights into the implicit understandings and cultural expectations around emails which are prevalent in academic life. Identifying and clarifying diversity in expectations and practices can address some of the unspoken reasons why email can be such a problematic feature of many academics’ professional lives and can provide a point of comparison with other digital resources. Implications can also be drawn more widely for other professional contexts in which email communication is significant.
Paper presented at the Norwegian Forum for English for Academic Purposes, Oslo (9 June 2017).
This presentation discusses findings from an ERSC-funded research project investigating the writi... more This presentation discusses findings from an ERSC-funded research project investigating the writing practices of academics at three English universities. The data drawn on in this paper relate specifically to the ways in which digital technologies around writing bring issues of academic identity into sharp focus.
Academics have always participated in disciplinary networks, but the gradual shift towards "social scholarship" (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014), in which social networking is part of the research, writing and publishing process, has amplified the need for connectedness. Digitisation has brought not only greater opportunities for collaborative writing, but also the expectation that academics will engage in practices such as maintaining online profiles and sharing output on digital forums. Some have argued that these activities risk crowding out the quiet time needed to get scholarly writing done and that they represent a potential threat to academics' sense of identity.
Drawing on a social practice approach to literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 2000), interviews were conducted with academics from three different disciplines and institutions. These focused on the detailed processes and practices involved in academic writing, including the role of digital technologies and relationships with others in text production.
Although scholarly writing is often characterised as a solitary activity, a central aspect of almost all the writing processes in this study was the importance of relationships. More and faster collaborative writing was facilitated by digital platforms such as email, Skype, and file-sharing software. However, relationships played a pivotal role even in forms of writing that were, prima facie, solo endeavours. For example, during periods of writing, informal discussions with colleagues or friends, either face-to-face or via online professional networks, could be extremely productive. Similarly, connecting with others by sharing work online was described as an important part of participants’ scholarly identity.
In this sense, rather than distracting from the work of writing, relationships with others were highly valued and central to the scholarly identity our participants held dear. These findings highlight the centrality of writing relationships in academic identity and the role of digital technologies in enabling them.
This paper reports on findings from project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in... more This paper reports on findings from project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK, on the dynamics of knowledge creation. Taking a social practice approach to literacy (Barton, Hamilton & Ivanič, 2000), the project ethnographically investigates the writing practices of academics at three English universities. The data presented here come from interviews with 15 academics, each of whom work in one of three disciplinary areas: Mathematics, History, or Marketing.
The paper explores the effect on academics’ writing practices of the UK’s national research evaluation exercise (REF), which includes the requirement to demonstrate “impact” by showing that research has a demonstrable “effect, change or benefit” beyond academia, in areas such as the economy, environment, policy, culture, health, or society at large. We know that writing practices vary across disciplines, yet the REF assesses every department and academic against the same yardstick, regardless of disciplinary norms.
The results presented in this paper show that academics’ writing practices are under pressure from the sometimes conflicting demands of this research evaluation exercise and disciplinary values. For example, UK academics working in Marketing described conflicts between publishing within their discipline and publishing in the top-ranked journals, which tend to be US-based. Historians talked of pressure to churn out journal papers instead of monographs, and mathematicians spoke about the difficulty of disseminating complex mathematical findings to a lay audience beyond academia. In this sense, many struggled to hold their disciplinary ground in the face of the new audit culture in higher education.
In this presentation, the LUMS student learning advisor will describe several schemes through whi... more In this presentation, the LUMS student learning advisor will describe several schemes through which students take an active role in globalising their Lancaster experience by helping to research and design academic support schemes. These involve students from diverse educational backgrounds working as partners in both providing and using academic support, with benefits for all in terms of cross-cultural communication, leadership experience and development of good academic practices.
Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 15, 2019
Writing & Pedagogy, 2018
This paper highlights the importance, when researching writing across the lifespan, of addressing... more This paper highlights the importance, when researching writing across the lifespan, of addressing a range of aspects of social context which change over time, particularly focusing on tools, values, relationships and identities. It illustrates this argument by drawing on a range of empirical studies exploring different aspects of writing in university settings, working with adults at a range of levels from Masters through doctoral study to academics’ working lives, and reflects on the implications of this research for lifespan writing studies more generally. The projects drawn on include a study of multimodal feedback on postgraduate student writing and students’ responses to this; a detailed study of academics’ writing practices in the context of structural changes in Higher Education; and an interview study with PhD students participating in writing retreats, reflecting on their writing experiences.
Drawing on findings from this work, we argue that shifts in material, social and institutional dimensions of context have a significant impact on what individuals write and on the writing practices that they develop. We particularly highlight the role of changing tools for writing and values around writing, and the importance of transformations in identity and relationships. We argue that the tradition of literacy studies research, drawn on by all the projects described in this paper, provides the theoretical and methodological resources to approach such aspects of academic writing development across the lifespan, by adopting a holistic perspective on writing which locates writing as situated practice and thereby provides insight into these social and contextual influences.
Discourse, Context and Media (2018), 2018
Almost every aspect of an academic’s role involves specialised forms of writing, and the range of... more Almost every aspect of an academic’s role involves specialised forms of writing, and the range of digital platforms used to produce this has increased. Core genres such as the journal article and monograph remain central, but the ways they are now commonly produced via file-sharing software and online submission systems are changing them. Digital media also allows academics to stay up to date with their field, connect with others, and share research with wider audiences. Furthermore, academics are increasingly expected to maintain online identities via academic networking sites, and to create and disseminate knowledge via hybrid genres such as tweets and blogs. However, these platforms also represent a potential threat to academics’ values and sense of identity. This paper reports on an [name of funder] research project investigating the writing practices of academics across different disciplines at three English universities. Through academics’ accounts of their experience with and feelings about the role of digital media in their professional writing, this paper explores the factors that complicate their engagement with new genres of writing. The findings reveal a tension between the values of social media, which see knowledge as user-generated and decentralised, and the forms of knowledge creation that are rewarded in academia.
Research in Learning Technology, 2017
This paper explores academics' writing practices, focusing on the ways in which they use digital ... more This paper explores academics' writing practices, focusing on the ways in which they use digital platforms in their processes of collaborative learning. It draws on interview data from a research project that has involved working closely with academics across different disciplines and institutions to explore their writing practices, understanding academic literacies as situated social practices. The paper outlines the characteristics of academics' ongoing professional learning, demonstrating the importance of collaborations on specific projects in generating learning in relation to using digital platforms and for sharing and collaborating on scholarly writing. A very wide range of digital platforms have been identified by these academics, enabling new kinds of collaboration across time and space on writing and research; but challenges around online learning are also identified, particularly the dangers of engaging in learning in public, the pressures of 'always-on'-ness, and the different values systems around publishing in different forums.
Aslib Journal of Information Management , 2017
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies a... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of research evaluation policies and their interpretation on academics’ writing practices in three different higher education institutions and across three different disciplines. Specifically, the paper discusses how England’s national research excellence framework (REF) and institutional responses to it shape the decisions academics make about their writing.
Design/method/approach – 49 academics at three English universities were interviewed. The academics were from one STEM discipline (mathematics), one humanities discipline (history) and one applied discipline (marketing). Repeated semi-structured interviews focused on different aspects of academics’ writing practices. Heads of departments and administrative staff were also interviewed. Data was coded using the qualitative data analysis software, Atlas.ti.
Findings – Academics’ ability to succeed in their career was closely tied to their ability to meet quantitative and qualitative targets driven by research evaluation systems, but these were predicated on an unrealistic understanding of knowledge creation. Research evaluation systems limited the epistemic choices available to academics, partly because they pushed academics’ writing towards genres and publication venues that conflicted with disciplinary traditions and partly because they were evenly distributed across institutions and age groups.
Originality/value – This work fills a gap in the literature by offering empirical and qualitative findings on the effects of research evaluation systems in context. It is also one of the only papers to focus on the ways in which individuals’ academic writing practices in particular are shaped by such systems.
Patter (Blog), 2017
Blog post on Patter, (22 March 2017)
Blog post at London Metropolitan University, Take5 blog, (24 April 2017).
Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Jun 2013
Existing studies of source use in academic student writing tend to i), focus more on the writing ... more Existing studies of source use in academic student writing tend to i), focus more on the writing than the reading end of the reading-to-write continuum and ii), involve the use of insufficiently ‘naturalistic’ writing tasks. Thus, in order to explore the potential of an alternative approach, this paper describes an exploratory case study concerning the ways source material was used by two L2 MA students while involved in a real-life reading-to-write task. Think-aloud sessions were conducted with students at a UK university as they read to write during the dissertation component of their programme. Analysis of the resulting protocols revealed that they engaged with their source material in qualitatively different ways, in both the frequency and range of their reading-to-write behaviours. Specifically, the students differed in the ways they responded to their sources as they read, the ways they elaborated on what they read and drew inferences, and the extent to which they showed intertextual awareness. The findings suggest that, for these writers, the process of “using” source material begins early in the reading-to-write process and involves more complex interactions with sources than may be suggested by the use of ‘one-shot’ reading-to-write tasks of the type used in much reading-to-write research.► An exploratory case study of two L2 postgraduate students' use of source materials. ► Think aloud used to examine a naturalistic reading-to-write process. ► Differing degrees of engagement with source material are evident. ► Findings suggest a need for more naturalistic studies of reading-to-write. ► Greater pedagogical focus on critical reading may be helpful.
International Journal for Educational Integrity, 2012
Although much of the research into source use by international students has tended to focus on is... more Although much of the research into source use by international students has tended to focus on issues of plagiarism, there has recently been recognition that their difficulties in this respect may be more pedagogical than moral. However, much remains to be known about the nature of such students" source use. In order to throw light on the ways in which novice L2 writers use source material in their writing and to understand what difficulties they experience, this paper reports on a small case study involving a group of Japanese postgraduate students. Analysis of five Pre-Master"s dissertations written by these students, as well as interviews conducted with the writers, revealed that they varied in their ability to handle source material effectively. In many cases, their use of source material appeared to be symptomatic of weak authorial stance and apparent lack of a clear argument. Based on these findings, the study concludes with the recommendation that instruction on the use of source material focus to a greater extent on its rhetorical function in constructing knowledge.
Although coherence is an essential quality of academic writing, it is not always clearly defined ... more Although coherence is an essential quality of academic writing, it is not always clearly defined and can therefore be challenging both to teach and to learn.
The Language Teacher, 2008
1 my SHARE • ResouRces Appendix A. Sample word of the week Word of the week To underpin • Type of... more 1 my SHARE • ResouRces Appendix A. Sample word of the week Word of the week To underpin • Type of word Verb (transitive) • Pronunciation 3 syllables • Other information 2 word stems under + pin •
BAAL conference, Leeds, 2 September 2017 , 2017
Academics’ everyday professional writing practices are very extensively mediated through email. ... more Academics’ everyday professional writing practices are very extensively mediated through email. In our recently completed ESRC-funded research project, The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation, email was by far the most commonly mentioned digital platform for writing across our 75 interviewees. As one of them told us, “Everything is done by email now.” Given this ubiquity of email in the ecology of academics’ communication, and particularly given that email has been a feature of the academy for at least 20 years, we might assume that established expectations and patterns around working with emails would have developed by now. However, our research reveals an enormous diversity in practices and attitudes around email. This paper explores specific aspects of this diversity in the way interviewees in our data discussed their engagements with email. In particular, we will explore people’s affective responses to email, and the evaluative stances they adopt (“I email far, far too much”); the range of metaphors our participants used to describe email (“this spectre that hangs over academic life”); and their ascription of agency, responsibility and guilt around email communication (often individualising a problem which clearly has more systemic roots). Systematic analysis of how people talk about email can provide important insights into the implicit understandings and cultural expectations around emails which are prevalent in academic life. Identifying and clarifying diversity in expectations and practices can address some of the unspoken reasons why email can be such a problematic feature of many academics’ professional lives and can provide a point of comparison with other digital resources. Implications can also be drawn more widely for other professional contexts in which email communication is significant.
Paper presented at the Norwegian Forum for English for Academic Purposes, Oslo (9 June 2017).
This presentation discusses findings from an ERSC-funded research project investigating the writi... more This presentation discusses findings from an ERSC-funded research project investigating the writing practices of academics at three English universities. The data drawn on in this paper relate specifically to the ways in which digital technologies around writing bring issues of academic identity into sharp focus.
Academics have always participated in disciplinary networks, but the gradual shift towards "social scholarship" (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014), in which social networking is part of the research, writing and publishing process, has amplified the need for connectedness. Digitisation has brought not only greater opportunities for collaborative writing, but also the expectation that academics will engage in practices such as maintaining online profiles and sharing output on digital forums. Some have argued that these activities risk crowding out the quiet time needed to get scholarly writing done and that they represent a potential threat to academics' sense of identity.
Drawing on a social practice approach to literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 2000), interviews were conducted with academics from three different disciplines and institutions. These focused on the detailed processes and practices involved in academic writing, including the role of digital technologies and relationships with others in text production.
Although scholarly writing is often characterised as a solitary activity, a central aspect of almost all the writing processes in this study was the importance of relationships. More and faster collaborative writing was facilitated by digital platforms such as email, Skype, and file-sharing software. However, relationships played a pivotal role even in forms of writing that were, prima facie, solo endeavours. For example, during periods of writing, informal discussions with colleagues or friends, either face-to-face or via online professional networks, could be extremely productive. Similarly, connecting with others by sharing work online was described as an important part of participants’ scholarly identity.
In this sense, rather than distracting from the work of writing, relationships with others were highly valued and central to the scholarly identity our participants held dear. These findings highlight the centrality of writing relationships in academic identity and the role of digital technologies in enabling them.
This paper reports on findings from project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in... more This paper reports on findings from project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK, on the dynamics of knowledge creation. Taking a social practice approach to literacy (Barton, Hamilton & Ivanič, 2000), the project ethnographically investigates the writing practices of academics at three English universities. The data presented here come from interviews with 15 academics, each of whom work in one of three disciplinary areas: Mathematics, History, or Marketing.
The paper explores the effect on academics’ writing practices of the UK’s national research evaluation exercise (REF), which includes the requirement to demonstrate “impact” by showing that research has a demonstrable “effect, change or benefit” beyond academia, in areas such as the economy, environment, policy, culture, health, or society at large. We know that writing practices vary across disciplines, yet the REF assesses every department and academic against the same yardstick, regardless of disciplinary norms.
The results presented in this paper show that academics’ writing practices are under pressure from the sometimes conflicting demands of this research evaluation exercise and disciplinary values. For example, UK academics working in Marketing described conflicts between publishing within their discipline and publishing in the top-ranked journals, which tend to be US-based. Historians talked of pressure to churn out journal papers instead of monographs, and mathematicians spoke about the difficulty of disseminating complex mathematical findings to a lay audience beyond academia. In this sense, many struggled to hold their disciplinary ground in the face of the new audit culture in higher education.
In this presentation, the LUMS student learning advisor will describe several schemes through whi... more In this presentation, the LUMS student learning advisor will describe several schemes through which students take an active role in globalising their Lancaster experience by helping to research and design academic support schemes. These involve students from diverse educational backgrounds working as partners in both providing and using academic support, with benefits for all in terms of cross-cultural communication, leadership experience and development of good academic practices.
""Much research has been done into source use in academic writing, but this has often focused on ... more ""Much research has been done into source use in academic writing, but this has often focused on how source material is presented in written text to the exclusion of how students engage with sources in the reading-to-write process.
This presentation reports on a case study that examined source use by three L2 postgraduate students at a UK university in both their reading-to-write process and their written dissertations. Specifically, the presentation reports on one aspect of these students’ source use: The extent to which they made purposeful comparisons both between sources and between sources and their own work (see Petrić, 2007). A series of think-aloud sessions was conducted with the three students as they read-to-write during the dissertation component of their Master’s programme, and the resulting verbal protocols were coded for instances of purposeful comparison. The citations in the resulting dissertations were also analyzed for such purposeful comparisons. The findings indicated that there was a relationship between the ways in which these students made purposeful comparisons in their reading-to-write and the ways in which they deployed citation in their final written products. The student who synthesized source material most effectively and made more purposeful comparisons in her dissertation, also established more links between sources when she was reading. This suggests that important aspects of source use in writing may be linked to students’ engagement with sources as they read. One implication of this is that, in teaching student writers about source use, more attention should be paid to the reading-to-write process.
""
This presentation reports on an exploratory case study concerning the ways in which two postgradu... more This presentation reports on an exploratory case study concerning the ways in which two postgraduate second-language students used source material while involved in a real-life reading-to-write task. Analysis of the resulting verbal protocols revealed that they engaged with their source material in qualitatively different ways.
This presentation reports on how prepared L2 writers feel to tackle undergraduate writing in both... more This presentation reports on how prepared L2 writers feel to tackle undergraduate writing in both the US and the UK. It briefly surveys the types of writing tasks students engage in and provides insights into student needs and frustrations. The findings are relevant for those involved in EAP/IEP course planning.
This presentation reports on research into Japanese graduate students’ use of source materials in... more This presentation reports on research into Japanese graduate students’ use of source materials in their academic writing. Qualitative analysis of their writing shows that some writers tended to present their source material in such a way that it actually undermined rather than supported their own argument.
This presentation explores how teachers of academic writing in Japan can help their students to m... more This presentation explores how teachers of academic writing in Japan can help their students to make the transition from the style of narrative writing they learned in high school, to that expected at university level. In particular, the presenters will focus on how students can be helped to use the surface features of academic writing, such as discourse markers, more effectively by developing strong written arguments that conform to Western rhetorical expectations.
This paper reports on the first phase of an ESRC-funded research project aimed at exploring how k... more This paper reports on the first phase of an ESRC-funded research project aimed at exploring how knowledge is produced and distributed through the writing practices of academics, and how these are shaped by the contemporary context of higher education, including managerialism, and research assessment.
As part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and to secure funding from research councils, academics are expected to demonstrate that their work has economic or social impact beyond academia. This 'impact agenda' is one of the ways in which scholarly research may engage with the notion of social justice. However, impact may be more complex in nature than is accounted for in research assessment exercises, and may be interpreted in different ways across different disciplines, with some lending themselves to social justice more readily than others.
The data presented in this paper draws on interviews with academics at three different universities and in three disciplinary areas: Mathematics, History and Marketing. We discuss how they interpret policies requiring them to demonstrate economic and social impact, and how this interacts with their views on the wider role of academics in society.
The findings of the project indicate that there is no unified notion of social justice across the disciplines, and that understandings of this concept, including how easily it can be achieved and the extent to which it is prioritised by the institution, influence the choices academics make in their writing practices. For example, although many of our participants talked about the importance of making their research accessible or “making a difference”, the perceived beneficiaries of this included commercial companies and government agencies. Some interpreted impact in terms of financial transparency, seeing this as a form of social justice towards students or taxpayers.
Academic discipline emerged as a complicating factor in understandings of serving society, with impact being seen as more difficult to achieve in some disciplines than others. Furthermore, efforts to engage in social justice-related activities were also at times compromised by competing priorities such as demands on participants’ time.
Overall, the findings indicate that the valued forms of knowledge creation in the working lives of our participants are complex and contested. The ways in which social justice is conceptualised by our participants and how it serves as a driver for the choices they make, interact with their disciplinary traditions, their career stage, and personal priorities, as well as how they interpret policy on impact.
This paper explores academics' writing practices, focusing on the importance of digital platforms... more This paper explores academics' writing practices, focusing on the importance of digital platforms in their processes of collaborative learning. It draws on interview data from the first phase of a research project working closely with academics across different disciplines and institutions to explore their writing practices, adopting the perspective of understanding academic literacies as social practices. The paper outlines characteristics of academics' ongoing professional learning, demonstrating the importance of collaborations on specific projects in generating learning in relation to intellectual and disciplinary aspects of writing, writing strategies and structures, and using digital platforms. A very wide range of digital platforms have been identified by these academics, enabling new kinds of collaboration across time and space on writing and research; but challenges around online learning are also identified, particularly the dangers of engaging in learning in public, the pressures of 'always-on'-ness, and the different values systems around publishing in different forums.
![Research paper thumbnail of Being an academic: The changing writing practices of academics and how they influence professional identity [paper 0111 at the SRHE Annual Research Conference 2015]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/39746144/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This paper explores how changes in higher education are transforming academics’ writing practices... more This paper explores how changes in higher education are transforming academics’ writing practices and sense of professional identity. It reports on preliminary findings from an ERSC-funded project that involves interviewing a range of academics from three different disciplines across three contrasting higher education institutions in the UK about their literacy practices around research, teaching and admin-related writing. The data reveal that research-related writing and the creativity it entails lie at the core of what it means to be an academic, but that assessment exercises such as the research excellence framework and attendant pressures to publish in certain forums were influencing both people’s writing practices and their accounts of their academic identities. The implications of this for scholarship are discussed.
The organisational landscape of academic working life has been transformed over the last two deca... more The organisational landscape of academic working life has been transformed over the last two decades as a consequence of challenges such as massification, the Research Excellence Framework, and digitisation. These factors, affecting most contemporary universities, ultimately impact how knowledge is produced and disseminated by the academic workforce. Writing practices (including research, teaching, and admin-related writing) are thus increasingly shaped by agencies within and far beyond the academy.
This paper reports on preliminary findings from an ESRC-funded research project which ethnographically explores the writing practices of academics in the organisational landscape of the modern university. The focus is on knowledge creating activities, much of which are exemplified in academics’ writing practices, and how these are instantiated through material artefacts and technologies.
The focus of this paper is the utility of ‘technobiographic’ accounts as one component of the methodology employed. A technobiography is presented as way to research lived experience with digital media, phases of change over time, and how and why particular habits of use emerge. Through an account of our preliminary findings, we argue that technobiographies are a vital window into academics’ lived experiences with technology and the subtle and nuanced ways in which practices of knowledge creation are contested.
To be cited as:
Bhatt, I. & McCulloch, S. (2015). Being an academic today: the dynamics of knowledge creation in the contemporary University, paper presented at the Quadrangular Conference 2015 'Organisational Practices within Contemporary Landscapes' Monday 14th September, Management School, Lancaster University.
Talk at Stockholm University, March 2016 The creation of knowledge through writing of various ty... more Talk at Stockholm University, March 2016
The creation of knowledge through writing of various types is central to the role of an academic. This includes scholarly, pedagogic and administrative writing, as well as emerging genres relating to public engagement. Factors such as the rise of research evaluation and managerial accountability practices in higher education have brought new pressures and opportunities for the writing academics do.
This talk reports on findings from a UK-based research project investigating the writing practices of academics across different disciplines at three English universities from a literacy studies perspective. To this end, we interviewed academics from, broadly, a STEM discipline, a humanities discipline and an applied discipline about their writing.
The results indicate that policies aimed at evaluating research output are affecting academics’ writing practices in terms of what to publish and where. This in turn had a largely negative impact on their sense of disciplinary identity.
The research has also highlighted the wide range of new and hybrid genres of writing that academics are expected to engage in. These include forms of writing aimed at attracting funding, maintaining an online presence, and disseminating research to lay audiences. The extent to which such forms of writing were embraced or resisted varied across discipline and professional role.
Locating social justice in higher education., 2020
McCulloch, S. & Tusting, K. (2020). Chapter in McArthur, J. & Ashwin, P. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978135... more McCulloch, S. & Tusting, K. (2020). Chapter in McArthur, J. & Ashwin, P. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978135008676
Academics Writing: The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation, 2019