‘That ain't going to get you a professorship’: discourses of writing and the positioning of academics’ work with student writers in UK higher education

Abstract

A growing body of academic literacies research has enhanced our understanding of university writing as contested, institutionally situated practice with important consequences, particularly for students as they learn to negotiate the writing demands of university study. Less empirical attention has been paid to the practices of subject academics as they guide, set, and assess student writing. This paper is based on an ethnographically oriented study of 14 UK university teachers in diverse institutional and disciplinary contexts. Data presented illustrate the ways in which competing discourses of writing as ‘skills’ and as ‘learning’ are played out in individuals’ practices, in their institutional contexts. Analysis shows how a dominant discourse of writing as ‘skills’ becomes associated with particular ideas about the value of writing work, how and by whom it should be done, and points to consequences for students, teachers and for the role of academic writing in teaching and learning at university.

Keywords:

• academic literacies
• academic labour
• student writing
• discourse
• higher education pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Participants in the study occupied a range of institutional roles, and included part-time staff and postgraduate students involved in disciplinary teaching: they used a variety of terms to identify themselves professionally (tutor, academic, lecturer, teacher, etc.). Here, the term ‘academic teacher' is used to encompass this range.

2. These terms were used to characterise institutions of different types across the study, selected in order to incorporate likely variation in the UK HE sector more broadly: below, participants’ institutional affiliations are indicated using these categories. The Russell Group is a small group of elite, prestigious institutions. ‘Post-1992' refers to institutions which became universities following the 1992 Higher and Further Education Act. ‘New' refers to former HE colleges inaugurated as universities in the last 15 years.