Research methods for investigating academic writing: practices and text perspectives Caroline Coffin, The Open University, UK Sue Hood, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Academic Literacies. 1. History and aims Dissatisfaction with: – available academic thinking in seeing problems and solutions in academic writing as (primarily) TEXTUAL –deficit framing of students’ language/writing within public media Institutional/policy context = widening participation Small number of researchers informally organised, located in different positions within institutions Geographically - UK but also interest in South Africa and elsewhere

What drives Academic Literacies? It is the definition and articulation of what constitutes the ‘problem’ that is at the heart of much academic literacies research (Lillis and Scott, 2008, pg.9)

What is the nature of the ‘problem’ if it is not textual? issues of identity and identification conventions and practices constraining as well as enabling meaning making

What we learn about the ‘problem’ of a text from looking at the text alone is limited… How else can we learn about the ‘problem’ of a text? Listen to people’s perspectives on texts and focus on what people do, why, with what semiotic resources, with what consequences…e.g.

through written tutor comment on text student’s talk around text tracking histories of texts e.g. through different drafts and revisions making observations through field notes of the more obviously relevant and the less obviously relevant (note the importance of detailed descriptions of the particular situations of particular individuals) collecting documentation….

2. Epistemologically... What marks out those (approaches to researching academic writing) which can be characterised as adopting an ‘academic literacies’ approach, is the extent to which practice is privileged above text. (Lillis and Scott, 2008, pg. 10)

Academic writing - conceptualized as literacy practices Literacy practices - ‘general cultural ways of utilising written language’ (Barton and Hamilton, 2006) Literacy events instantiate in observable ways, and provide evidence for, literacy practices

A need to analyse texts in relation to the bigger picture (i.e. events and practices) as a means of understanding the disciplinary underpinnings, ideological forces, and power relations and conflicts surrounding the production of written text in academic contexts and identifying competing ways with words in order to challenge aspects of the status quo which might disadvantage some students

Methods multiple methods/theories of data collection and analysis, from range of academic traditions..

Tools of analysis for students’ written texts Linguistics Stylistics Argument(ation) Rhetoric

Tools of analysis for ‘texts’ (written, spoken) related to text histories Interactional sociolinguistics/ linguistic ethnography Theoretical frames from sociology, critical geography etc. (e.g. ‘scales’ to understand link between local and global practices)

Commitment to sustained engagement in sites Valuing of both Etic (‘expert’ traditions) and Emic accounts, discourses and perspectives

3. Ideologically Ac. Literacies: Challenges deficit discourse Challenges normative and form focused approaches which do not give enough attention to context (e.g. some EAP genre approaches and some SFL text based approaches which lead to what they call ‘identify and induct apprenticeship pedagogies’) Questions dominant academic practices e.g. the non-dialogic, unidirectionality of the teacher- student relation

Focuses on transformation e.g. –exploring alternative ways of meaning making in academia –considering the tools brought by student writers to the academy as legitimate tools for meaning making

Questions and concerns If traditional ways of structuring and building knowledge are to be challenged, on what grounds? If dominant academic practices such as assessment tasks, assessment feedback etc are to be challenged, on what grounds?

How should pedagogic genres and discourse relate to the disciplinary genres produced by experts? Do they/should they only share some of the features? Who should make the changes – disciplinary insider experts, linguistic/literacy outsider experts, both?

Maton (2000): in order to challenge existing practices and make demands for reform, it is necessary to consider more critically the ways discourse is functioning in pedagogic contexts. There is a need for a clearer understanding of what is at stake in valuing, promoting or privileging particular kinds of academic literacy practices over others.

References Lillis, T. and Scott, M. (2008) Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy, Journal of Applied Linguistics, vol –32 Maton, K ‘Recovering pedagogic discourse: A Bernsteinian approach to the sociology of knowledge’. Linguistics and Education 11 (1) Maton, K Knowledge-knower structures in intellectual and educational fields. In F. Christie & J.R. Martin (eds) Language, knowledge and pedagogy. London: Continuum.