‘CONDITIONS AND PROCESSES’: UNDERSTANDING PROFESSIONAL ACADEMIC WRITING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE IN

Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction

‘CONDITIONS AND PROCESSES’: UNDERSTANDING PROFESSIONAL ACADEMIC WRITING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Amanda French

Birmingham City University, Birmingham, U.K.

This paper focuses on an under­researched aspect of the higher education writing debate, namely lecturers’ perspectives and experiences of academic writing and their own academic writing development. It argues that in the UK at least, despite the importance of academic writing to academic careers, university lecturers are rarely given any training or support around developing their academic writing, nor are they encouraged to see themselves as writing developers for their students (Lea and Stierer 2009). The theoretical stance taken draws on New Literacy Studies (Barton and Hamilton, 2000) and locates academic writing and writing development within a critical and situated theory of practice. In the research used for the paper participant lecturers’ discussed the conditions and processes around academic writing that they experienced as undergraduates, postgraduates and in their post­doctoral careers as published academic writers. It is argued that these accounts embody an interesting paradox, namely that academic writing is often treated unproblematically as a measurable standard in higher education when actually it is very difficult to define ​ (Ivanic, 1998; Lillis 2001).

The paper also explores theories of habitus and identity arguing that academic writing practices play a vital part maintaining and developing lecturers ‘professional’ identities in higher education (Archer, 2008). The conclusion argues the case for a way of researching writing that is not about standards or best practice but which aims instead to explore new and innovative ways of thinking about how a more complex conceptualisation of academic writing can be understood and applied by lecturer and students.

References

Archer, L. (2008) Younger academics’ constructions of ‘authenticity’, ‘success’ and professional identity.

Studies in Higher Education, Vol 33, No 4, pp. 385­403.

Barton, D. & Hamilton, M. (2000) Literacy practices. In: Barton, D., Hamilton, M. & Ivanic, R. (eds.)

Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context. ​ Routledge: New York.

Ivanic, R. (1998) Writing and Identity: the discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. John Benjamins: Amsterdam.

Lea, M. R. & Stierer B. (2009) Lecturers’ everyday writing as professional practice in the university as workplace. Studies in Higher Education, Vol, 34, No. 4, pp. 417­428.

Lillis, T. (2001) Student writing: access, regulation, desire. Routledge: London.