Open Collections

Processes of academic source-based writing in graduate school : a socio-pedagogical approach to students' interactions with source texts

University of British Columbia

Source-based writing is replete with decisions about what to include from others’ work and how to include it. The processes of source selection and source integration are integral yet occluded aspects of writing from sources (Pecorari, 2006). Issues pertaining to appropriate versus inappropriate source use have been among the controversial topics of discussion among university students and instructors (e.g., as noted in Harwood & Petrić, 2011, and Shi, 2016), yet current scholarship is still in need of an explicit understanding of the process of source-based writing—in particular, among graduate-level students as emerging scholars in their fields. In light of such exigency and to better understand the source-based writing practices of student writers at graduate levels, my doctoral research project aimed at exploring the processes of source selection and source integration in the research-paper writing of eight domestic and international Master’s and PhD students in the field of education at a major Canadian university. Data included drafts of research papers students prepared as part of their course requirements, related source texts, three rounds of text-based interviews with students, and individual text-based interviews with their course instructors. Employing a socio-pedagogical approach by interweaving the conceptual frameworks of Community of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), Forms of Capital (Bourdieu, 1991), and Dialogism (Bakhtin, 1986), this study provided the ground to cross-examine not only each participant’s writing progress over multiple drafts, but also to compare the practices of the Master’s and doctoral participants as they strived to join the expert dialogues in their communities through collecting acceptable forms of textual capital. Macro analyses of data depicted perspectives of participating graduate students toward source-based writing, their dilemmas and solutions in the process of source use, contributing factors to their problematic and/or successful source-use practices, and available support to them. Micro analyses of these Master's and doctoral students’ written texts and oral accounts identified a wide range of motivations for source selection and purposes for the use of various types of source integration in their research-paper writing. This study offers insights for institutional and educational action plans to support students’ interactions with source texts.

Text

2019-04-09

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/69549

Teaching English as a Second Language

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/