Researching student becoming in higher education

Abstract

The ‘alternative’ methodological approach that I discuss in this paper is one that I suggest can be employed for exploring higher degree research student becoming, that is, for exploring the relationship between learning, writing and identity or subject formation. This approach is informed by an unlikely amalgam of theoretical framings arising from the broad disciplinary home of sociolinguistics and postmodernist theorisings of subject formation. This apparently uncomfortable combination, however, incorporates a view of ‘alternative’ that references Elizabeth Grosz' use of ‘difference’ to mean elaboration, whereby something can become more than itself or other than its past while retaining a certain continuity with its past. The approach that I work with in this paper aims to provide such an elaboration – to provide a more nuanced view of what it means to become a postgraduate research writer than would be possible using either of its constitutive theoretical framings alone.

Keywords:

• performativity
• postgraduate research writing
• research methodologies

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments in preparing for publication.

Notes

Nominalization is a term used in SFL to describe the device used to reword processes (verbs) and properties (adjectives) as nouns. It is a high prestige form that also allows development of an argument ‘step by step, using complex passages “packaged” in nominal form as Themes’ (Halliday, 1994, p. 353).

The interview excerpts presented here are from a series of longer interviews. ‘A’ indicates that Anna is speaking and the number indicates the speaker turn in the context of the longer interview. ‘*’ indicates an identifying name that has been removed from the transcript. ‘–’ indicates false start/restart. ‘XXX’ indicates that the original recording of the interview is unclear at this point.