“It’s exciting and rewarding!”: structured mini writing retreats as a tool for undergraduate researchers

ABSTRACT

A good research base exists on the benefits of structured writing retreats and similar provision for academic staff and postgraduate researchers, but to date little has been published about the worth of such events for undergraduate students. This is despite the fact that undergraduate student researchers also experience external pressures, distractions and ambivalent or negative feelings towards writing just as academic staff and postgraduate students do. This paper reports on a mixed methods study of a structured writing retreat programme with third year undergraduate students over four academic years. The resulting data confirmed that one of the biggest challenges for students was finding time and space to write, which mirrors the findings of studies focused on more experienced researchers. The group of writing retreat participants had a very different experience and data revealed the power of these events for this group of students. The data presented here suggest that retreats should much more widely offered for undergraduate students in the latter stages of their degree programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate writing
• structured writing retreat
• writing support
• academic writing
• communities of practice

Acknowledgments

Thanks go to Dr Chisato Danjo, Dr Charlotte Haines Lyon and Prof Helen Sauntson for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

There are no declarations of interest to declare.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2022.2085031

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clare Cunningham

Clare Cunningham is a Senior Lecturer in English language and linguistics at York St John University in the UK. Her research has principally been focused on attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of teachers with regards to multilingualism but she has also published on pedagogical practices in English for academic practices, on issues pertaining to classroom participation and authentic teaching and learning.