Academic writing workshop-ing to support students writing bachelor’s and master’s theses: a more-than-human approach

ABSTRACT

Students seem to encounter various challenges when writing bachelor’s and master’s theses, indicating a need to support them in their writing processes. In this study, academic writing workshops for students writing bachelor’s and master’s theses were developed and investigated during three years of a participatory action research project. The study uses a more-than-human approach to students’ thesis writing to explore how academic writing workshop practices are produced. Based on diffractive analytical engagements, this study conceptualizes the workshop practices as the enactment of academic writing workshop-ing in the spacetimemattering of the workshops. The workshop-ing recognizes the workshops as active doings with students and writing tutors in social and material realities; workshop-ing is an enacted practice, rather than preexistent or preceding. The study contributes to the existing literature with insights about how different entanglements matter in thesis writing practices and how workshop-ing can become productive in supporting students’ thesis writing.

KEYWORDS:

• Thesis writing
• writing workshop
• writing tutor
• academic writing
• supervision

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study is funded by Svensk-Österbottniska samfundet; Aktia Foundation Vaasa; and Högskolestiftelsen i Österbotten.