Claire Aitchison, Janice Catterall, Pauline Ross and Shelly Burgin University of Western Sydney,...

Claire Aitchison, Janice Catterall, Pauline Ross and Shelly Burgin

University of Western Sydney, Australia

1Aitchison WDHE 2010

Traditional means by which students learn doctoral writing (ie within the student supervisor dyad) are being reconsidered in response to changes such as:◦ Expectations of quality assurance and

accountability◦ Requirements for public dissemination of research◦ International competition for research graduates◦ Changing teaching and learning practices in HE◦ Changing student/staff demographics


Despite an increasing body of literature documenting change and innovation in doctoral education, we still understand relatively little about how:◦ graduate students actually learn research

writing, ◦ supervisors teach/facilitate/develop the writing of

their students◦ What happens to students and supervisors during

this process


This paper draws on data from a study into the writing experiences of higher degree students and their supervisors in one large science, health and technology-based university faculty.

It reports on the tensions over roles and identity experienced by supervisors and students as played out in the production of the thesis and related texts


Positionality Performativity Discursive construction

◦ (Delanty, 2008)

We were particularly interested in aspects of identity construction through writing:

◦ The autobiographical self◦ The discoursal self◦ The authorial self (Ivanic, 1998)


Target: Academic supervisors and higher degree research students

Data collected via:

1) On-line survey

2) Focus groups (7 groups with 28 supervisors in total)

3) Individual interviews (9 students)

Science (54%), Nursing (18%), Biomedical (7%), Maths and Computing (7%), Engineering (14%)

Theme coding using Nvivo


What are the experiences of writing during doctoral candidature for students and supervisors?

◦ How writing has been a feature ◦ The relative importance and degree of difficulty of

different types of research writing◦ Role of the supervisor◦ Most helpful way of developing writing skills


Proliferation of emotional responses

How identity (and voice) played out in the development of writing


Joy and pleasure◦ “I really enjoyed the challenge … rewarding”◦ “a joy”

Frustration, anger, resentment◦ “ I hate every bit of it” ◦ “horrible process” ◦ “Gruelling”◦ “I have felt like giving up. I just get stuck in a

little hole…if I go to my supervisor I just get pushed back in the hole”


Pedagogy by natural selection ◦ “if it wasn’t a struggle, it wouldn’t be worth it”

◦ “For us in the area of science, it has a focus on scientific method rather than writing, and, I’m afraid they’re on their own”

◦ “there’s no shortage of students and you want to cut your losses early if they’re not going to perform, particularly in the current metrics”

◦ “if they can’t take critique they shouldn’t be doing a PhD”


Nurturing pedagogies◦ “we have a responsibility to help them”

◦“you have to be bothered to build a relationship where they know you do care for them, and you’re investing in them …”


Supervisor as taskmaster:◦ “So I say, …’We can’t keep going over this. Here, give it here …

because we’ve got to get you graduated… we can’t go on writing this thing”. “Just get on with it … it isn’t anything personal”

As proxy for the institution and the discipline:◦ “... the expectation that we won’t sign off on anything

before it is submitted, if it’s not perfect”◦ Students need to “write like a scientist... clinical,

unemotional and objective”Supervisor as editor / fixer: “ sometimes I probably correct

[ie re-write] whole paragraphs. It’s the same idea but presented in a technical way”

As academic literacies (AL) teacher: “ I’ve always felt competent, competent and competent”

Not as AL teacher: “I assume students are literate … my argument is this – a PhD graduate should be able to write … without anyone helping them”I don’t have time ... I’m not an English lecturer at either”


Positionality ◦ Supervisors recognised that ultimately they were

accountable for the quality of the final thesis, but didn’t necessarily agree they were responsible for ensuring students’ mastery of advanced academic writing.

Performativity◦ In order to achieve the former (quality thesis) some

supervisors explicitly developed students’ writing skills, others abrogated or handed on this task, others did considerable amounts of the writing themselves.

Discursive construction◦ Supervisor’s recognition of the connection between the

final thesis and their own public identity was a significant influence on their performance around the text.


As learner-writer: ... He said go away and rewrite it, get some external help” ... At one

meeting I burst into tears and cried two hours while he went through and said “ that’s not a sentence”, “ that’s not a sentence...”

As novice writer becoming peer:

One supervisor gave feedback on logic and structure as well as editing vocab and grammar. At first they would offer suggestions, but in the last year would just circle things and expect me to know how to improve”

The writer negated:... Drafts went back and forth to supervisors whose modus

operandi was ‘learn by doing’ ...the trouble is, the more it gets re-written, the more foreign to you it becomes – not yours. In the early stages it might be questions like, ‘ what does this mean?’ but later on they rewrite it”.


Positionality Students were positioned differently by different supervisors and at different stages of candidature; from learner-> novice-> peer, accompanied by changing pedagogical practices ie from instruction, overwriting and fixing -> feedback, discussion and suggestion.

PerformativityMostly students wanted to learn how to write as disciplinary scholars but for some students (and supervisors) writing was only a means to an end and a frustrating impediment to getting the research ‘out there’. There was a preparedness to do whatever was required in these cases.

Discursive constructionStudents struggled to develop an authentic writerly voice, juggling their own and their supervisors’ histories and beliefs, with institutional, disciplinary and examiner expectations.


Writing was shown to be the site for the contestation of shifting and sometimes conflicting discoursal identities.

In this science-based College, references to the ways of science (objectivity, the scientific method etc) were frequent, and yet experiences around writing were far from objective and emotion free.


Claire Aitchison, Janice Catterall, Pauline Ross and Shelly Burgin University of Western Sydney,...

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