The rise of non-dissertation track master’s programmes: An academic literacies approach

ABSTRACT

Although dissertations have traditionally been part of master’s programmes, non-dissertation track master’s programmes are on the rise across the world. This paper reports faculty views on MA TESOL dissertations (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) in five Anglophone countries. Drawing on the academic literacies tradition and informed by Bourdieusian concepts of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘symbolic violence’, the results suggest that the need for more student intake has affected the presence or absence of the dissertation component in MA TESOL programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• MA TESOL dissertations
• academic literacies
• habitus
• field

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mostafa Hasrati

Mostafa Hasrati is an English and Communication Professor at George Brown College, Toronto, Canada. He is also an adjunct associate professor in applied linguistics at Razi University of Kermanshah, Iran. He is interested in sociopolitical aspects of scholarly publication, and his works have appeared in Studies in Higher Education, Journal of English for Academic Purposes and Quality in Higher Education.

Parvaneh Tavakoli

Parvaneh Tavakoli is an associate professor in applied linguistics at the University of Reading, Whiteknights, UK. Her main research interest is in the interface of second language acquisition, second language teaching and language testing.