Interdisciplinarity as an opportunity in Argentinian and Ecuadorian writing groups

ABSTRACT

At the university level, writing groups have shown to be useful to teach and learn research writing as well as to advance academic-scientific publication and to discover collaboration opportunities among members from different disciplinary fields. At the same time, peer review, an important practice in the academic sphere, is learned within the groups through mutual peer feedback. A key feature of a writing group’s formation and progress is connected to how it is organised. One of the variables that seems to influence a group is interdisciplinarity. Nevertheless, the impact of the greater or lesser disciplinary distance in a group’s functioning has not been analysed in depth to determine its advantages or disadvantages. This article analyses interdisciplinarity of writing groups in two Latin American countries. In Argentina, the writing groups were formed by master's and doctoral students in the process of writing their thesis, while the writing groups in Ecuador were formed by early career academics and experienced research professors. The analysis of interview and group session transcriptions of the groups in both countries indicates that disciplinary distance mainly presents advantages if the distance is not too great, if there is, as one member put it, a ‘close distance.’ In this sense, research writing becomes, it seems, a meeting point for members, facilitating enriching exchanges.

KEYWORDS:

• Faculty
• graduate students
• publications
• thesis
• writing circles

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the writing groups’ participants in Argentina and Ecuador who made the initiative possible and provided us with opportunities to better understand how this type of pedagogical tool works in different latitudes. We would also like to extend our thanks to the reviewers who helped us to improve the article with their thoughtful reading and detailed and rich feedback. As a matter of fact, their comments did not only allow us to improve the article, but they were given in a kind manner, helping us to undertake the revision process with a better spirit. This work was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Técnica, Argentina: PICT 2014-2793. This article is also part of the research project “Análisis del funcionamiento de grupos de escritura de investigadores de la Universidad de Cuenca: interacción y percepciones,” winner of the XVII Concurso Universitario de Proyectos de Investigación de la Dirección de Investigación de la Universidad de Cuenca (DIUC).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The authors prefer the use of ‘disciplinary distance’ instead of ‘disciplinary difference’ as it better denotes a certain degree of closeness between disciplines instead of a clearly delimited boundary between fields.

2 Data extracted from the transcriptions are written in indented paragraphs and in italics to distinguish them from author quotes. We used ‘[…]’ to indicate that part of the transcription has been omitted and brackets ‘[ ]’ to clarify or reinstate information necessary to understand the participants’ statements. The group and discipline to which the participant belongs is indicated between parentheses at the end of the quote.

3 Data from interviews and writing group sessions were translated by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Técnica, Argentina: PICT 2014-2793. This article is also part of the research project “Análisis del funcionamiento de grupos de escritura de investigadores de la Universidad de Cuenca: interacción y percepciones,” winner of the XVII Concurso Universitario de Proyectos de Investigación de la Dirección de Investigación de la Universidad de Cuenca (DIUC).