The doctoral writing conversation: establishing a generic doctoral writing programme

ABSTRACT

Over the past few decades, the number of people enrolled in doctoral study has increased dramatically across the world. In practical terms, this has meant that universities now receive increasingly diverse students with regard to ethnicity, age, language, culture, and background preparedness for higher degree study. Students can, and often do, begin their doctorates with scant understanding of the precise expectations and rigorous demands of thesis writing. Yet, regardless of academic discipline, successful completion of a doctorate requires a written thesis. To help students master thesis writing requirements, a proliferation of self-help writing books, blogs, specific writing techniques, and programmes have emerged. This paper describes an approach developed at a New Zealand university where a generic doctoral writing programme, the Doctoral Writing Conversation, has evolved to make explicit to students the implicit language understanding that accomplished academic writers use to produce text. Utilising the idea of language as a tool to mediate understanding, the paper will explore how the programme is structured and functions but will also describe some of the insights I have gained along the way.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluation
• Doctoral writing
• Educational Practice
• Higher Education

Acknowledgement

The author gratefully acknowledges the ongoing collegial support of Ms Andrea Haines, Centre for Tertiary Teaching and Learning, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. The author also acknowledges the collegial support from the Wilf Malcolm Institute for Educational Research (WIMER), University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

E. Marcia Johnson has been the Director of the Centre for Tertiary Teaching & Learning (CeTTL) since 2012. Coming from a background in eLearning and Applied Linguistics Marcia has taught and researched in Canada, Japan, and New Zealand. Marcia and her team have introduced a number of cross-disciplinary, cohort-based initiatives to improve the student experience of learning, particularly doctoral writing and academic integrity. In particular their weekly Doctoral Writing Conversation has facilitated the development of a range of strategies to help PhD students become successful thesis writers.