The Failure of Dissertation Advice Books: Toward Alternative Pedagogies for Doctoral Writing (original) (raw)

Beyond the scope of this paper: Troubling writing across paradigms in education dissertations

International Review of Qualitative Research

While qualitative researchers include reflexive analyses about their research processes in publications, they are generally less forthcoming about their writing processes. Here we suggest that reflection on the thinking that happens in the writing process itself is a key analytic practice researchers can use to understand and transform the world. We invite readers to examine with us how productivity as a discourse in doctoral education relegates the act of writing to just another task to be completed, one more stage within the hierarchical processes of what we call PhDness.

Doctoral students writing: where's the pedagogy?

Writing occupies a key role in doctoral research because it is the principal channel students use to communicate their ideas, and the basis on which their degree is awarded. Doctoral writing can, therefore, be a source of considerable anxiety. Most doctoral candidates require support and encouragement if they are to develop confidence as writers. Drawing on interviews with two international doctoral students at an Australian university, this paper examines the writing practices the students have encountered and discusses them in the light of recent research on doctoral writing pedagogy. Analysis of the students’ experiences in terms of Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ framework suggests that this perspective fails to account adequately for the power relations that impact on the students’ learning opportunities. Examining the students’ experiences also highlights the importance of good pedagogy in supporting the development of scholarly writing in the doctorate.

Power effects, normalising advice and evolving knowledge of doctoral writing

Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie

Prescriptive advice about doctoral writing often fails to recognise the complexities of the doctoral journey. Linguistic and cultural backgrounds are negated where advice about writing converges around a norm. In this paper, we explore the role of ‘advice’ in our growth as thesis writers by examining our literacy history and tensions we faced while writing our theses. We pursue a duoethnographic process (Sawyer & Norris, 2013), a process that facilitates the construction and reconstruction of perspectives. From our differing backgrounds, we experienced discourses of ‘advice’ in alternative ways. We identify opposing 'advice' trends which, in turn, provided a space for our agency. Inspired by Foucault’s (1977) ‘power/knowledge’ we think of past experiences and encounters along our doctoral journey as power effects which shaped our views on advice. We conclude by outlining how insights for our teacher-selves inform how we speak about impacts and advice with doctoral students....

Doctoral writing: pedagogies for work with literatures

AERA Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, …, 2006

Introduction Writing the dissertation lies at the centre of doctoral education. It is through writing that students make their findings known to the public and develop a sense of themselves as authorised scholars. Yet, in many universities, writing is treated as ancillary to the real work of ...

“A structure that other people are directing”: Doctoral Students’ Writing of Qualitative Theses in Education

The Qualitative Report, 2022

Research suggests the teaching of the writing of doctoral thesis is decontextualised and that a traditional form, antithetical to a student’s paradigm or theory, has become canonized. Written to disrupt the traditional journal article form, this article explores the traditional form of theses through interviews with eight doctoral students in a School of Education. 5A’s creativity theory, where actors, audiences, actions, artifacts, and affordances combine to produce creative outputs, illuminates how students’ decisions are shaped by their apprehension of an academic audience as well as their own low positional identities as actors. A focus on contextualised teaching of writing of doctoral theses and further research into writing theses for different audiences are recommended.

The Dissertation House Model: Doctoral Student Experiences Coping and Writing in a Shared Knowledge Community

Cell Biology Education

The problem of PhD attrition, especially at the dissertation-writing stage, is not solely related to mentoring, departments, or disciplines; it is a problem that affects the entire institution. As such, solutions require collaborative efforts for student success. Building on Yeatman’s master–apprentice model, which assumes mastering disciplinary writing in singular advisor–student contexts, and Burnett’s collaborative cohort model, which introduced doctoral dissertation supervision in a collaborative-learning environment with several faculty mentors in a single discipline, the Dissertation House model (DHM) introduces a model of doctoral dissertation supervision that involves multiple mentors across several disciplines. On the basis of more than 200 students’ reflections, we find that challenges in completing the dissertation extend beyond departmental and disciplinary boundaries. The DHM’s multidisciplinary approach preserves the traditional master–apprentice relationship between f...

Helping Doctoral Students Write – pedagogies for supervision

Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education, 2012

This text is an in important addition to the literature on research students' academic writing. In their book, Barbara Kamler and Pat Thompson identify and de-mystify the pedagogies which underpin academic writing at doctoral level. What makes their book stand out from the many, largely skill-based, classic texts on postgraduate academic writing (such as Evans, Watson, 1990;; and those on the technicalities of academic writing such as Turabian, 2007) is the emphasis on the development of scholarship; communication with peers as novice members of the academic community; and the ability to critique academic literature with both depth and precision.