Advanced academic literacy development: a case study of a successful Chinese doctoral student

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the process and its effect for a doctoral student's advanced academic literacy (AAL) development in the context of student-supervisor relationship (SSR). The data sources comprise an authentic three-year tutorial record and 68 reflective learning journals written by a successful Chinese doctoral student of linguistics. The case shows that the participant developed a cognitive, cooperative, dialogic and instructive student-supervisor relationship and her learning activities in doctoral education are rich and constructive. The participant built her expertise mainly through knowledge acquisition and by a significant amount of academic writing practice for publication. Aided by her supervisor, the participant successfully joined as a research member the given sociocultural community. This socialisation promotes her professional identity transformation. The findings also reveal some weaknesses in the participant's AAL development, such as a lack of solid theoretical knowledge base, meaningful peer interaction, and in-depth integration into the international academic community.

KEYWORDS:

• Advanced academic literacy
• student-supervisor relationship
• doctoral student
• academic writing

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editors and the reviewers for their careful reviews and valuable comments. This research was partially funded by China National Social Science Funding (under the project NO. 13BYY086).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Rong Ma http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4869-418X

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially funded by China National Social Science Funding (under the project NO. 13BYY086).