AERA: Saturday 1

Writing the Doctorate; Writing the Scholar

Barbara Kamler and Pat Lorna Thompson

When students sketch out the nature of the field relevant to their inquiry, they are mapping a field of knowledge production.

Doctoral students might butt up against the published "experts"
• find that they drwon in the literature,
• he says; she says (a list) -- student makes a list of the key people, as academic deities
• use metaphors
o lost, drowning, wandering in a maze
o stuffing an octopus in a jar
• instead use the metaphor f the dinner party
o not a thousand people
o some who should sit close, and some who sit far away
o some you want to listen to ; hear from; and some who you need to invite but don't really want to hear from
Reviewers and experts are privileged (beginnings of sentences). Consider "joint texting" -- where is the student's view? If student agrees, assert the statement first and simply bracket the sources.
• "I focus on ..." "In sum, it appears..." " It seems then..." In this proposal I attempt to..."
• Book: Helping Graduate Students Write
takeaway: I should read their book...

Mike Rose "A Description of a Professional Writing Course in Graduate Education"
• Course entails people bringing in 3-5 pages of their work, and discuss with others
• Read prose out loud -- even academic prose -- to expose awkward sentences, and begin to form writing as a craft that can be improved.
• Writing creates a scholarly identity -- one is know through their writing.
takeaway: If my advisor doesn't get a writing group going, I need to do it!

Gary Anderson and Kathryn Herr: "Writing the Action Research dissertation"
• Performativity and performance (a literary rhetoric of performing science)
• Third person passive (I didn't find the findings; they just --objectively-- emerged)
• Positivistic writing strategies
• "Language is the window pane for the data to shine through" (old/bad)
• new writing strategies like Action-oriented self studies and activist
• we've learned to "ape the hard sciences in hopes that their respect rubs off onto us"
• many doctoral students are performing participatory-action research in their professional settings
takeaway: Positivistic is old and bad (ok, it's more nuanced than that...)

Kathryn Herr
• multiple identities bring on unique writing styles
• vulnerability
takeaway: um...

Lynn McAlpine and Anthony Paré "Entering the Text: Learning Doctoral Rhetoric
• architects and virtual blueprints -- above the draft
• proposals can be quite long at McGill
• Paul Pry and "laminations"
• Local lore and practice (administrivia: deadlines, regulations, procedures, local by-laws)
• The supervisor as the Discipline itself (situating the new menber, anticipating response of potential readers)
• Evoking readers implicitly (intros, transitions, sequence, location) the traffic flow in buildings (widen this hallway, etc.)
• From eaves dropper (undergrad) to ventriloquist (masters) to participant (doctoral)
• War stories: Normalizing the experience ("why, when I was your age...")
• Supervisors help the student snavigate the politics -- who's hot, and who's not)
• In grad school we are asked to "write up" but the rest of our careers, we're asked to "write down"
takeaway: I want this kind of support...

Chris Golde
• In Science, a dissertation is 3-4 journal articles with maybe a common intro and conlusion; in history, it's a book posing as a dissrtation; in education it's a 5-chapter thing that you need to later carve it into publishable papers. what other options are there?
• What role can digital media have in changing dissertations and academic writing in general?
• 3 roles played by faculty advisors:
1. Coach: this is what you need to do
2. Referee: this is good/bad
3. Player in game: because they're being judged by their students' work
• There's not enough time for supervisors to help their students craft their work
• What are the roles of other faculty and peers?
takeaway: How do I do a Science-type dissertation?