Search

Persuasive arguments attribute academics' persistent struggles in making time for writing to the increasing demands of a marketised sector on the academic role (Dickson-Swift et al. 2009; Macleod, Steckley, and Murray 2012). Whilst a significant body of literature promotes different writing interventions as potential solutions, the challenge of building and sustaining a culture in which their positive outcomes are maintained remains. In this paper, I explore the practices of academics writing for publication purposes. Drawing on the concept of academic writing as 'identity work (French 2020), I demonstrate that writing practices are entwined with wider academic and institutional identities, which either work for or against building sustainable writing cultures. I argue for a methodological shift in how writing initiatives are researched, drawing a distinction between my ethnographic case study of one writing group and others that focus either on retrospective accounts or analysing correlations between writing groups and productivity. Specifically, I argue for a focus on the ongoing "process" of becoming a writer rather than on its production. The study builds on existing literature to explain why writing groups are experienced as valuable to participants. It argues that they offer more than simply protected space for writing; they reframe participants' understandings of themselves and their academic identities and reintegrate research writing with other aspects of their role. This identity work occurs within visible, protected spaces for writing, where participants work both individually and in community, and reflection and dialogue are central.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better (Samuel Beckett). [Quoted in ‘Samuel Beckett Talks About Beckett’ by John Gruen, in Vogue, (December 1969), p. 210.]. ‘Fail Better’ is an approach which supports first-year students’ successful transition to higher education academic writing practices. ‘Fail Better’ uses a broadly academic literacies model of development to address students’ failure and struggle with writing. Rather than blaming students for ‘poor writing’, ‘Fail Better’ maintains that experiences of struggle and failure with academic writing are part of an inevitable and necessary process as students ‘write themselves’ into new disciplinary-based academic writing communities. The final part of the paper explores how subject lecturers, who are often not confident or willing writing developers, can, through the application of ‘Fail Better’ principles, offer their students a time-efficient, proactive and supportive model of writing development. It argues, moreover, that universities must reject deficit discourses around students’ struggles with academic writing and radically reconceptualise the issue of academic writing support in order to support students more effectively through their struggles and failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a three-year study of postgraduate women writers pursuing research degrees at a UK university to explore how they develop identities as academic researchers and writers. Using extracts from written texts, talk-and-text interview transcripts, and writing journals from four postgraduate students in a range of disciplines, I explore the material conditions under which postgraduate women write and the significance of such spaces for the re-invention of themselves as academic writers and researchers. Foregrounding the notion of place and space (Agnew, 2011), I present extracts from four ‘writing tales’ (after Lather, 1991) to explore academic writing at postgraduate level. The tales include ‘visible’ and ‘occluded’ (Swales, 1996) written genres in academia and document the ways in which these facilitate the enactment of postgraduate academic identity. The use of ‘tales’ as an analytical unit and as a form of representation provides a mechanism through which multiple data sources are drawn together to illuminate a highly contextualised, and potentially gendered, dimension of postgraduate academic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses how academics navigate different kinds of prestige and different systems of value around what 'counts' in academic writing, focusing particularly on the impact of the genre regime associated with research evaluation in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). It draws on data from an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project working with academics across different disciplines and different institutions in England. We interviewed people about their writing practices several times, exploring their practices, life histories, institutional contexts, and the tools and resources they draw on as they write. Academics' research writing is framed within explicit institutional and departmental strategies around the numbers and publication venues of research outputs, driven by institutions' need to succeed in the national competitive research evaluation system. Such institutional strategies do not always map well onto other values systems in which academics have been trained and within which they locate themselves. The articles analyses the interviews we carried out, exploring how academics negotiate tensions between these systems of value and considering the implications of this for what is considered to be important in academic work and, therefore, what it means to be an academic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating the letters, diaries, and memoirs of British officers and enlisted men from the Napoleonic Wars, this article explores the hitherto neglected subject of British soldiers’ perceptions of Napoleon. Soldiers often formed mixed and ambivalent views on Napoleon. At one level, this corresponds with a range of attitudes within Britain, highlighting the important connections between soldiers and domestic culture. Yet these views also reveal what soldiers as a distinct cohort prioritized about Napoleon, and how these perceptions evolved over time. They also reveal tensions and divisions within the army itself, and shed light on British soldiers and patriotism. And finally, they add to our understanding of soldiers’ writing practices, especially their cultural context and the differences between wartime writing and memoirs. A diverse and shifting set of cultural frameworks and lived experiences shaped soldiers’ writings on Napoleon – from the Black Legend and Napoleonic Legend, to the Enlightenment and Romanticism; and from Spain and its battlefields to Restoration Paris and post-Waterloo Britain. Tracing the evolution of British soldiers’ perceptions of Napoleon from the outbreak of the Peninsular War in 1808 to the mid-nineteenth century reveals a growing admiration of Napoleon and the increasing hold of the Napoleonic Legend. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article 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 article 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.

Drawing on a text-oriented action research ethnography of the writing practices of UK-based social workers, this paper focuses on a key but problematic aspect of everyday, professional textual practice - the production of "case notes." Using data drawn from interviews, workshops, texts and observation, the paper locates case notes within social work everyday practice and explores the entextualization of three distinct case notes. The heuristic of imagined, prescribed and actual trajectories is used to track specific instances of entextualization and to illustrate why the production of case notes is a particularly complex activity. A key argument is that in the institutional imaginary, and reflected in the institutionally prescribed trajectory, case notes are construed as a comprehensive record of all actions, events and interactions, prior to and providing warrants for all other documentation. However, they are in actual practice produced as parts of clusters of a range of different text types which, together, provide accounts of, and for, actions and decisions. This finding explains why case notes are often viewed as incomplete and raises fundamental questions about how they should be evaluated. The complexity of case notes as an everyday professional practice is underscored in relation to professional voice, addressivity and textual temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Iberica is the property of Asociacion Europea de Lenguas para Fines Especificos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite existing work on the situated and sometimes alienating nature of academic writing practices, the implications of the specifically spatial nature of these practices continue to pose questions for teaching and learning in higher education. This paper addresses these questions through a study of the views and experiences of students and teachers of academic writing in postgraduate teacher education (n = 33). Specifically, it introduces a concept, xenolexia, which complements that of alienation by recognizing the dynamic nature of academic writing, texts and practices without reifying them. Discussing the fundamentally spatial nature of this dynamism, the concept of xenolexia is used to analyse perceptions of academic writing practices as 'foreign'. The features of this 'foreignness' are examined from the point of view of both teaching and learning, and lessons about identity and dynamism in academic writing are drawn for writing pedagogies in postgraduate teacher education contexts.

This collaborative article reflects on a set of shared practices that were inspired by a Year 3 undergraduate Literary Studies module, which took place in 2018. In co-teaching and learning on this module, the authors found their disciplinary and pedagogic norms unsettled and set adrift (unhomed). This article traces how their processes of working together – in and beyond the University classroom – stimulated a critique of the rational individualist principles which had unconsciously steered their learning and teaching practices until this point. The article includes case studies from the experiences of three students who took the module, and a narrative frame that speaks from the perspective of a collaborative 'we' (which includes students and 'teacher'). The article tests out writing practices which reorient the customary Humanist terms in which educational research is conducted, and which disrupt the objective voice in which pedagogical reflection is often narrated. From this vertiginous perspective, the article also considers the authors' particular entanglements with the cultural politics of the contemporary UK Higher Education Institution (HEI), and the role of unhomed Humanities teaching as part of the 21C University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing need to design learning experiences in higher education that develop collaborative and mediated social writing practices. A wiki way of learning addresses these needs. This paper reports findings from a case study involving 58 postgraduate students who in small groups participated over eight weeks in a mediated collaborative writing project with and through wiki contexts. The project was not assessed but designed for task-based domain learning. Evaluation of the project was conducted using data drawn from multiple sources collected before, during and after the project. Findings show that participation in the project had a positive relationship with student exam performance, and web familiarity. Patterns of individual and group wiki project participation, and sex differences in participation, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral study remains the most popular form of research degree globally. The student and supervisor relationship is an integral part of the postgraduate researcher (PGR) experience. Supervisory relationships can be complex and multi-faceted, with differing expectations from both supervisor and PGR. However, comparing different perspectives of the PGR supervisory journey is relatively unexplored. This study aimed to explore how both PGRs and supervisors perceive the evolution of supervisory relationships throughout the doctoral journey. Employing a mixed methods design, the findings indicate that there is a transition in the dynamics of the relationship between the supervisor and the student which changes during this process. The role of the supervisor moves from being a more knowledgeable other operating in an advisory capacity, described by one participant as a 'balance of expertise' that 'swings' as the relationship evolves. Drawing upon Jindal-Snape's multiple and multi-dimensional transitional theory, the results suggest that managing expectations, supporting the transition to doctoral study, the role of peer support for PGRs and supervisors are fundamental to a positive supervisory experience. The global pandemic affected the supervisory relationship and research journey posing some challenges for data collection; however, it facilitated opportunities to adapt and evolve supervisory practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on an in-depth narrative of a Chinese woman, early career researcher based in a UK business school, to consider questions of subtle racism in academia. Specifically, engaging with our informant's testimony, and reading it in the context of critical organizational debates on race, we offer episodic accounts of the subtle racism that she has encountered in academia to conceptualize experiences of in-betweenness of racial minorities excluded from dominant diversity discourses. In her case, subtle racism appears to emanate from a set of gendered and racialized tropes, culminating in the "model minority" myth. This article captures how racism is encountered differently by different populations; specifically, it illuminates how racism materializes in culturally-dependent, idiosyncratic forms, which should not be de-contextualized from the historical, political, and social dynamics that engender it. In so doing, it contributes to recent efforts to speak out against racism in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines potential barriers to the academic success of international master’s students studying in higher education in the UK and identifies key elements that draw together university policy and culture and classroom practice to enable this group of students to ‘hit the ground running’. These barriers are viewed through the lens of academic shock and academic integrity. Key themes are discussed including the importance of factors such as language barriers, misunderstandings, and anxiety, as well as the importance of providing clear definitions of what constitutes academic integrity violations in UK universities. The timeframe of one academic year, in which full-time international master’s students are required to acquire new knowledge and skills often impedes the successful completion of early assignments set during their first term. Solutions for addressing these barriers are proposed and aimed at supporting the achievement of international master’s students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the first 'Writing Space' project, held in the Department of Performing Arts, University of Winchester. The purpose of this project was to test a structure that would engage diverse writers in an inclusive, nonhierarchical conceptual dialogue, leading to the production of a series of short, experimental texts. The article considers the relationships produced between participating writers/artists and performers, as well as the dialogues that took place within and between the performed texts themselves. The article is presented as a series of linked speculations about the range of relationships taking place between texts, writers and performances. Commenting on some of the more conventional thinking within the UK theatre, I argue that greater awareness - or interest in - the collaborative and dialogic element within theatre and performance writing practices could lead to a transformation of dramaturgical strategies among and between writers and other artists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much qualitative research on student learning in higher education has focused on a key distinction between surface reproduction of `knowledge' and a deeper understanding of it. This distinction has also been found in research on student practice and understanding of essay and discursive writing. This paper reports on results from a study of 40 interviews conducted with students taking creative writing courses at three different higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. Interviews were conducted with students of various levels of experience and expertise in creative writing and included students taking a single undergraduate module in creative writing and students enrolled in a highly selective Masters program in Creative Writing. The interviews focused on the students' conceptions and practice of creative writing while taking their respective courses. The analysis of the interview transcripts revealed an underlying subjectivist epistemology in the students' general assumptions and perception of the nature of Creative Writing vis-à-vis other forms of academic writing. Linked to this epistemology, the analysis disclosed a typology of four differing conceptions of student understanding and practice of creative writing within two overall transcribing and composing categories of conception. These categories closely resemble student's conceptions of writing practices in other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The migration phenomenon, in which the mind travels ahead of the body, especially among would-be travellers, has received scholarly attention within migration studies. Research in this area has not unpacked the cognitive migration experiences of those who have already moved. This autoethnographic article explores the feelings, thoughts and experiences of an individual living abroad in the United Kingdom but cognitively imprisoned at his ancestral home in Igbo land. It draws on the concept of cognitive migration and the author's own experiences and feelings to introduce and explain the phenomenon of cognitive immobility, which exemplifies the dialectical conflict between the aspirations of longing for and emotions of belonging to a place against a simultaneous desire to remain distant from it. This article advocates the recognition of this cognitive experience of being trapped in place while mobilised in-person elsewhere in migration studies, providing a lens to view such experiences that have erstwhile received inadequate attention. This article contributes to the growing body of knowledge in relation to cognitive migration processes and experiences of those contemplating or participating in human mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores people's acts of disengagement from activist campaign and group spaces in the context of border struggle activism in Germany and the UK as fugitive practices of refusal. These acts of disengagement took the form of remaining silent or intentionally distracted, sleeping during activist meetings, distancing oneself from activist groups during conversations, or completely withdrawing from these spaces. The paper approaches these acts, first, as practices of refusal that expose notions of the political rooted in liberal struggles over power and freedom as not only risky but also inherently self‐defeating and, second, as radically optimistic and vitalising practices of recovery and care that insist on alternative modes of thinking, practising, and experiencing sociality and the political that can inspire us to consider political agency in relation to wider abolitionist projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates Roman writing habits through the evidence of metal styli. An assemblage of more than 400 styli from London constitutes the basis of the analysis, which explores their similarities with examples from other sites in Britain and continental Europe during the Imperial period. The geographical and social distribution of styli suggests that certain types were employed or made in specific locations by different social actors, and that the major political and military centres of the Empire shared a common material culture of writing. The analysis also suggests that styli types of the northern European regions possibly developed from 'military styli' brought by soldiers and bureaucrats during the conquest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the metaphors that are used to represent dementia in British tabloid newspapers over a ten-year period (2010–2019). The analysis takes a corpus-based approach to metaphor identification and analysis, utilizing in particular the corpus linguistic technique of collocation analysis. Metaphors are considered in terms of the 'targets' they frame, which include the following aspects of dementia: (i.) prevalence; (ii.) causes; (iii.) symptoms and prognosis; (iv.) lived experience; and (v.) responses. A range of metaphors are identified, with the tabloids exhibiting a particular preference for metaphors which construct dementia as an agentive and violent entity and people with dementia as passive victims, and which foreground preventative responses to dementia such as pharmacological intervention and individual behavior change. It is argued that such metaphors have the potential to contribute to dementia stigma and place focus on preventing or eliminating dementia while backgrounding responses which may help people to "live well" with the syndrome in the here-and-now. Metaphors which frame dementia as a companion or which the experience of dementia as a journey are put forward as potentially less stigmatizing alternatives which might better reflect the particularities of this complex public health issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critical literature review of empirical work from 1990 to 2015 on teachers as writers. It interrogates the evidence on teachers’ attitudes to writing, their sense of themselves as writers and the potential impact of teacher writing on pedagogy or student outcomes in writing. The methodology was carried out in four stages. Firstly, educational databases keyword searches located 438 papers. Secondly, initial screening identified 159 for further scrutiny, 43 of which were found to specifically address teachers’ writing identities and practices. Thirdly, these sources were screened further using inclusion/exclusion criteria. Fourthly, the 22 papers judged to satisfy the criteria were subject to in-depth analysis and synthesis. The findings reveal that the evidence base in relation to teachers as writers is not strong, particularly with regard to the impact of teachers’ writing on student outcomes. The review indicates that teachers have narrow conceptions of what counts as writing and being a writer and that multiple tensions exist, relating to low self-confidence, negative writing histories, and the challenge of composing and enacting teacher and writer positions in school. However, initial training and professional development programmes do appear to afford opportunities for reformulation of attitudes and sense of self as writer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early phase of doctoral education is a critical yet under-researched period in PhD programs, when doctoral researchers must solidify their thesis projects prior to embarking on data collection. What makes this time particularly challenging is that new doctoral researchers synthesize their research thinking while they are still learning the expectations and nature of PhD research. This study draws on Emirbayer and Mische's (1998) chordal triad of agency to explore how PhD researchers' goals and experiences (individual contexts) influence how they approach doctoral research and develop their thesis projects during the first year of the PhD. The results of this small-scale longitudinal multiple case study of five first-year UK PhD social science researchers suggest that there are at least three approaches PhD researchers may adopt in developing their research projects, influenced by personal histories and post-PhD goals—pragmatic/strategic, idealistic, and realistic. In turn, these approaches may change over time as PhD researchers acquire experience and encounter critical events. Implications include the need for attention to a diversity of PhD researchers' needs and goals, which may necessitate additional support or training in tailored areas, and a call for questioning the capacity of PhD researchers to contribute to/stretch the structures surrounding thesis writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are multiple vantage points from which historians have observed the ways in which both diseased and healthy bodies (as well as their constituent parts) have served as tools of knowledge generation, instruction and coercion in the hands of medical practitioners. From spaces of formal, specialist education such as the medical school to more informal environments and modes of learning, there is a seemingly never-ending array of environments, actors and materials to consider when trying to construct a representative survey of the two fields. Focusing primarily on the British case, this article takes a selective view of the different kinds of environments, actors and approaches historians have used to understand pedagogies of health and medicine in the modern period before suggesting new avenues of potential inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1748, the London publisher Robert Dodsley pioneered a new contribution to the eighteenth-century print market: the pocket memorandum book. A forerunner of the modern-day Filofax, the pocket memorandum book was an annual publication that bundled together a variety of useful and entertaining printed information along with preformatted memorandums and accounts pages, left blank for their owner to fill in. The immense popularity of this genre in eighteenth-century Britain has not been reflected in modern scholarship on life-writing and autobiographical practice. This article explores the early evolution of the genre, and shows how individuals could use memorandum books to build up a storehouse of personal knowledge. In doing so, it recovers the contemporary value placed on the pocket memorandum book as indexical to a person's life and, by extension, to their character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents emergent findings from an empirical research study conducted during Covid lockdown with 52 undergraduate students at a UK university November 2020–April 2021. The research study, which adopts a teacher-practitioner stance, builds on a 2012–2019 programme of research (represented by publications including Barnard 2019) which explores the potentials and dangers that digital technologies hold for pedagogy and education. It is located in the field of Creative Writing and uses the discipline's pedagogical practice of 'workshopping' as a case study. The Creative Writing workshop centres on the exchange of information and critically informed comment by participating students (generally in small groups), and, as such, has similarities with seminars in other disciplines. Hence it is hoped that this article will be of benefit both in the home discipline and more widely. The contention of this article is that, to maintain quality in the delivery of participatory online teaching, it is necessary to ensure an ongoing feedback loop between individuals' bodily existence 'IRL' ('In Real Life') and the section of cyberspace that they carve out and inhabit collaboratively during virtual seminar groups. It considers how the cliché of the 'digital native' can inhibit learning and the role of affect in enabling productive online and engagement. In taking initial steps towards development of a pedagogy of affect in which a 'neutral terrain' is established that enables students to apply and develop close reading skills in an online environment, it presents a new theoretical position on what constitutes effective pedagogy in the context of participatory virtual classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious faith, despite being a protected characteristic under UK law, is under-studied in higher education. In this article, I answer the call for studies that demonstrate the difference that religious adherence can make to the student experience of higher education instruction and assessment. In my qualitative study, I used ideas from ethnomethodology, FOUCAULT's archaeological work, academic literacies, and the Wittgensteinian perspective of WINCH to characterise the meeting of religious faith and sociological constructionism as a discursive problem occasioned by a born-again Christian student. I show how this discursive problem was described after it had been solved, pragmatically if not academically, in the student's writing. The solution comprised an interdiscursive technique of presenting faith-inspired ideas without pressing them into the service of an argument structure. My analysis of materials demonstrates a series of considerations that would not be relevant to non-religious students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing is not, and has never been, our only means of communication or communion. In the university, writing continues to occupy the dominant position in terms of how ideas 'should be' communicated – and, more importantly, assessed. This is the case even in the visual arts where it is well understood that written language can feel limiting. This article considers the impact that the value afforded to the traditional academic essay has on working-class students, whose relationship to writing often differs from the norm. Impacts that are often conveniently forgotten – and set to become worse under the current UK government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the results of an investigation into selected MA in Education students’ interpretation of feedback to their written assignments in a teaching and learning institution in the UK, using the framework of cultural capital and acculturation. A case study method was adopted to investigate four participants’ thoughts and experiences with feedback over a period of two semesters. Participants were asked to go through a think-aloud process while responding to feedback from tutors to their assignments. Results of the think-aloud were used as springboard for interviews conducted with students. The article argues that students’ diverse and variable interpretations of tutor feedback can be explained by Bourdieu’s notion of ‘connaissance’ or knowledge as cultural capital. Additionally, students were found to have subscribed to the ‘acculturation’ process modelled by tutors in feedback provision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In disciplines with long histories in higher education, academic literacies, including writing practices, are less contested than in newer academic fields such as art and design. The relatively recent incorporation of such fields and schools into the university sector has required these fields to create academic writing practices consistent with existing academic models or to justify their distinctive disciplinary practices. Recently, for example, much has been written about the distinctiveness of practice-based, reflective and creative written genres, such as the exegesis and the studio or practice based thesis, as the distinctive voice of art and design. However, such models have yet to gain broad acceptance in the higher education sector, where scientific (e.g. empirical research report) and humanities (e.g. essayist tradition) practices are far more familiar and of overarching significance. Similarly to the sciences and humanities, the field of art and design in fact names a broad grouping of communities of practice, e.g. graphic design, fine arts, fashion design, with a range of expectations regarding practice and writing. Whatever disciplinary consensus is reached regarding legitimate writing practices in art and design, it is important not to obscure these differences and make the same mistake that has hampered clarity in writing instruction for mainstream academic fields, a problem that is at the core of the academic literacies program for change and enlightenment. The Writing Purposefully in Art and Design Network (Writing-PAD) aims to support and disseminate the range of genres associated with writing in art and design. In the second part of this article, an account of the purposes, practices and scope of the Writing-PAD network demonstrates the characteristics of and consensus on forms of academic writing in art and design. Together with our introductory review we hope to promote discussion about the necessary balance of consensus and dissensus that art and design fields require to remain vibrant.

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a feminist approach to research focusing on the organising power of texts and language. This paper explores how to analyse texts in IE while considering the importance of reflexivity and accountability to feminist research. Based on a five year study of UK university audit processes, I developed a three-part IE text analysis approach which sits on a spectrum of closeness to the text(s) under analysis: (i) text – close analysis of one text or a small array of texts; (ii) process – mapping across a textually-mediated process and (iii) discourse – identifying a textually mediated discourse. Additionally, I make three analytic points about how texts organise: the importance of reader interpretation (researchers and users of texts); the strategic multi-layered translation work done by readers to fit into institutions and anticipate readerships; and, the importance of non-readers who can make mythologised understandings of texts material through writing future texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts an academic literacies perspective to argue for a critical approach to the writing practices of the online university classroom. It describes an on-going action research project in an online Masters in Online and Distance Education (MAODE) programme at the UK Open University, which aims to create an online writing resource to support distance learners in developing a critical awareness of the writing practices on the programme. The paper presents the results of an evaluation study of this resource during the 2005 presentation of the MAODE, and discusses the evidence from this study that such a resource can provide a space for students to critique the dominant literacies of the online university.

This paper reports on a three-year action research project action investigating the relationship between assessment as a social structure and the agency of students within a preparatory course for postgraduate international students at a UK Russell Group University. Action research into academic writing assessment within this highly constrained context was informed by critical realism, which allows for impacts of assessment on students to be conceptualised as 'absence', in this case of agency and for change to be understood as the 'absenting of absences.' An initial reconnaissance stage precipitated the implementation of an intervention called processfolio. The first intervention cycle involved one class of 14 students; the second cycle widened the scope to three classes. A range of data sets was employed at each cycle, including interviews, and the students' processfolios. Students demonstrated varying stages of critical consciousness of assessment as a constraining social structure and, through the processfolio, some found space to resist and make agentic choices. Through the iterative process of action research, it became clear that the real purpose of the processfolio was to use assessment itself as a tool to absent the negative impacts of these assessment practices, thereby subverting and disrupting assessment as a social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expectation to create written publishable work as an academic credential can seem a burdensome imperative rather than a fulfilling activity. A writing group community enables academics (teachers and researchers) to re-visit the joy of writing and to develop their writing repertoire and writer's voice. This article captures the experience of writing group participants in a UK widening participation university. This writing group and its associated model is deconstructed and evaluated, to assess impact on confidence for writing and development of academic identity, allowing for useful recommendations and practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the forefront of many UK universities' current strategies is a commitment to ongoing processes of internationalisation; continued progress in becoming increasingly international also sits alongside adherence to policies and practices relating to widening access and participation for home students, to achieve greater equity in terms of who can experience and participate meaningfully in university education. However, it could be argued that these two areas of focus are somewhat disparate, even at odds, with the former often being somewhat associated with revenue generation, and the latter aiming to meet goals of fairness in society. In this paper, I explore the rationale and scope for UK universities bringing these two seemingly disparate agendas more in line, with a view to achieving greater equity in the access and participation of both local and global cohorts of students in UK universities. A critical evaluation of theoretical and empirical literature exploring these two agendas elucidates the parallels in the ways both international and non-traditional home students encounter the university domain, both from a general perspective, and with a specific focus on linguistic challenges faced by these student groups. Concluding remarks outline possible directions which might better address the wide-reaching aims of addressing and nurturing the widening access/participation-internationalisation nexus. Abbreviations: HE: higher education; IaH: internationalisation at home; HEI: higher education institution; ESL: English as a second language; TESOL: teaching English to speakers of other languages; BME: black and minority ethnic [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Happiness is often seen as the product of a good life, and can be attached to normative institutions such as marriage. The pursuit of happiness has been critically scrutinised, including by queer theorists and particularly Sara Ahmed who proposes a concept of aliveness. This article explores what it means to put liveability into conversation with critical engagements with happiness. Using transnational empirical material regarding what makes lives liveable for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people in India and the UK, we argue that this dialogue not only expands upon the existing critiques of happiness, but also rethinks liveability as a form of struggle between 'living' and 'surviving'. Challenge and struggle can be central to feeling alive. This emerges most prominently when LGBTQ people feel part of a collective struggle, or when they feel others are supporting them in their individual struggle. Delinking a normative understanding of happiness from liveability brings us closer to everyday struggles as a way to chart out paths through hegemonic orders and normativities. A good life can have 'flowers and sunshine' but it is not necessarily, or always, happy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a persistent "gender gap" in boys' literacy in the United Kingdom. This article reports on one technology-based intervention that may aid teachers in supporting boys to develop creativity within their writing. Boys from a Year 3 class used Minecraft – a sandbox computer game – to create virtual worlds that might help them to visualize the environments they write about. Through pre- and post-tests of writing samples and focus group interviews with students, the study finds positive potential in the technology-based intervention. Discussions with the students showed that the boys did not believe they were good writers and they were not aware of what was expected of them when writing. However, it was also clear from the discussions that the boys enjoyed engaging with an interactive stimulus, which aided their thinking and provided them with new creative ideas for their writing. The results from the written task were inconclusive, suggesting the need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim/Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify the challenges Saudi doctoral students studying in UK universities face with their supervisors, shed light on their experiences, and examine the extent to which these experiences impact their ability to complete their thesis. Furthermore, the aim is to examine the aspects of supervision the students found to be effective during their studies. Background The overall intention of this article is to provide more information about the experiences and challenges Saudi mathematics students face with their doctoral supervisors in UK universities. Therefore, overcoming these difficulties will enhance the academic success rates of Saudi students, and will help them to complete their studies on time when studying at UK universities. Methodology This was a multi method project resulting in the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. It started with a questionnaire, which was administered to 300 Saudi doctoral students, 32 of whom subsequently agreed to be interviewed. The sample was randomly selected from doctoral students who were specializing in curricula and methods of teaching mathematics and other related areas. Contribution This study added information to the literature on Saudi mathematics students' experiences and challenges with their doctoral supervisors in UK universities. This also represents the first study to be context on this subject within Saudi Arabia. Findings There are some positive and negative challenges experienced between doctoral students and their supervisors, which are comprised of four main dimensions: team supervision, the supervisory relationship, the elements of effective supervision in their current supervisors, and supervisors' written feedback. Additionally, based on their experiences, the students stated the specific elements of supervision that were effective, including general knowledge of the research area and research methods, receiving continued support from the supervisory team, and the establishment of regular and realistic deadlines, friendliness, approachability and flexibility, the provision of detailed feedback on students' work, joint meetings with both first and second supervisors, constructive criticism, and sufficient interest in their research. Recommendations for Practitioners The stakeholders in Saudi Arabia should take advantage of the answers given by the participants to help those and future students. Furthermore, this study invites doctoral students to solve the challenges they face with their supervisors immediately, in order to be able to complete their thesis on time. Additionally, it is important that university and departmental administrative bodies consider tracking their study paths to better assist students. Furthermore, universities should be clear regarding the different roles and responsibilities of the students and their supervisors before the candidates commence their studies. Recommendation for Researchers Further research is needed to explore supervisors' views and experiences, as well as staff supporting and coordinating doctoral programs who may have a more holistic view of the supervisory process. Impact on Society The study participants' experiences of their doctoral studies could be highly beneficial for comprehending the problems that confront them when studying, which will enable better assistance to be provided. Future Research Future studies could be extended to other areas of the education field. Furthermore, particular measures can be implemented to enhance supervision, which could be associated with satisfaction levels and/or the performance of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article -- the first part of a two-part contribution -- considers the current and past state of research on the history of adult education in Britain. Although there has been a broadening of interest among historians of adult education, the field remains to an extent in the shadow of the "Great Tradition" of liberal education epitomised by university tutorial classes and the Workers' Educational Association, as well as the contested historiography of independent working-class education. The article takes issue with three distinctions that have been widely made in the literature: between vocational and non-vocational education, between different motivations for participation in adult learning, and between "sponsored" and "independent" working-class education. It is shown that these distinctions are productively undermined by a shift in the focus of historiography from education to learning, and in particular by the growing interest among historians in popular reading and writing practices in the past. This is one of a number of ways in which the history of adult education has overlapped with, and contributed to, other areas of historical research. [For Part II, see EJ1260665.]

Student assessment literacy, and staff assessment practices can be enhanced through constructive dialogue, designed to help build better shared understandings, and in which both students and staff can meaningfully contribute. Such a dialogue has great potential to increase student engagement with their own learning. Focusing on a UK university law school's staff–student partnership initiative called Getting It Right: Assessment and Feedback in Translation (GRAFT) and aimed at improving assessment feedback practices, this paper demonstrates how students and staff working as partners in this context can make a major contribution to assessment literacy and student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role does writing play in secondary art & design education? In the context of current debates on access and participation in the visual arts, the nature of art discourse and the value of creative subjects within the curriculum, what impact do the existing requirements have on students, teachers and the broader arena of the visual arts? This article presents the findings‐to‐date of an ongoing pilot study which set out to explore these questions. Drawing on interviews with teachers and exam board representatives, and a review of student texts and exam board documents and resources, the study found that even though writing is only a minor part of what is an essentially practice‐based subject, it was a source of significant concern and confusion. A marked disconnect was revealed between intent and practice, which in turn highlighted a series of underlying values and beliefs that seemed to further drive this disconnect. The study calls for a wider discussion of the way writing is framed, used, supported and assessed in the art & design classroom, and the need to ensure that any pedagogy and resources developed align with the values as well as curriculum of art & design. It also previews how strategies created in the context of developing more inclusive and flexible writing skills among curators and other art museum professionals may offer a useful model. The study is part of a larger investigation into the discourse/s of the visual arts, with a focus on issues of access and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416), was a Christian mystic whose writings, Revelation of Love and A Book of Showings, are the earliest surviving texts in the English language written by a woman. The question that has puzzled scholars for centuries follows: How could a woman of her time express her vision in such innovative and literary language? The reason scholars have puzzled over this for centuries is that women had been denied access to traditional education. Some scholars have answered this problem through close textual comparisons linking her text to those in the patristic tradition or through modern feminist theory. Yet, wider forms of education can account for her innovative language. She drew from a rich reservoir of rhetorical models readily available to her in oral discourse and visual art. This article establishes Norwich as a vibrant cultural hub, filled with interconnected textual, oral and visual rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the physicist John Tyndall's journal writing in the mid-nineteenth century and focuses on how Tyndall used his journal during a series of transitions that occurred when he was a young man: when he went from being a surveyor to a public school instructor and then from a Ph.D. student and budding experimenter in Germany to Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution in London. As well as providing insight into these various transitions, the journal more importantly shows how Tyndall developed a particular ethical conception of self, based on his readings of Carlyle, Emerson, and Fichte, and how that sense of self shaped—and was shaped by—his early experimental practices. Thus, the article is a case study in the development of a particular scientific self that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, whose novel claim to authority was based on a particular fusion of the ethical and the epistemological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the nature and role of courses designed to train creative workers, policy-makers and related actors, in the skills necessary for cultural management, enterprise or intermediation and their relationship in apprehending the sector. The article takes a case study approach, engaging with university policy, student research, reflections from graduates and staff who have participated in a suite of integrated MA awards at a UK university. We find that the programme created environments in which practitioners and intermediaries were positioned in reflexive relation to their experiences and roles. We outline the insights and understandings that have emerged as students explored their own orbits in relation to both critical and instrumental research on the cultural sector, and in relation to perceptions of the transformations in sector and how it is conceived. The case study sets out an agenda for exploring the relationship of research, pedagogy and practice after the creative industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine digital literacy and explicate how it relates to the philosophical study of ignorance. Using data from a study which explores the knowledge producing work of undergraduate students as they wrote course assignments, we argue that a social practice approach to digital literacy can help explain how epistemologies of ignorance may be sustained. If students are restricted in what they can know because they are unaware of exogenous actors (e.g. algorithms), and how they guide choices and shape experiences online, then a key issue with which theorists of digital literacy should contend is how to educate students to be critically aware of how power operates in online spaces. The challenge for Higher Education is twofold: to understand how particular digital literacy practices pave the way for the construction of ignorance, and to develop approaches to counter it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research exists on the effectiveness of pedagogical methods in relation to the development of Chinese students' critical thinking (CT), there has been little research on Chinese students' experiences around CT in relation to their own contexts. This paper reports on the findings of a study that investigated the experiences of the use of CT by 29 Chinese postgraduate students studying in a range of contexts in China and the UK. All student participants were engaged in second language education at Master's level. Data were collected mainly through ethnographic interviews and analysed within the framework of positioning theory. The findings reveal that the students' use of CT skills was not only a demonstration of ability but also a consequence of their positioning. In the context of thesis writing, the students' positioning was exercised as perceived rights and duties regarding knowledge, directed by their own goals for personal development. The study has implications for research and teaching of CT in cross-cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature reviews are a genre that many graduate students do not fully understand and find difficult to write. While the genre, language and rhetorical moves of literature reviews are widely researched, less research focuses on citation use in literature reviews. Teaching students 'how-to' write the literature review through explicit genre awareness is not enough. What is needed, is a focus on the discursive nature of citations since citations are a core ingredient in literature reviews. The complexity of citing, referencing and using sources is difficult to teach in university classrooms, especially in courses that focus on content knowledge. When it is taught, it is often imparted to students as conventions with particular organisational features around citation styles. Or it is taught within the discourse of morality and academic dishonesty that surrounds plagiarism. What is lacking is a pedagogy that relates citing to the more complex discursive practices that are implicit and deeply embedded in particular time-bound contexts. The purpose of this research was to explore citation patterns in 23 draft and final masters' student literature review papers to better understand the ways in which students use sources in literature reviews with the aim of informing pedagogy. Findings indicate that the concept of intertextuality, specifically, transgressive intertextuality, intertextual engagement and discursive intertextuality can help with the teaching and learning of literature reviews and citation use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]