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PhD students need help developing a 'writing voice', educationists say
25 September 2008
Report says doctoral candidates are not prepared for research-driven environment, writes Zoe Corbyn
Academics are failing to prepare their doctoral students to participate in a research-driven university environment, according to scholars in the UK and Australia.
Alison Lee, a professor of education at the University of Technology in Sydney, this week said that not enough doctoral research was being published, either in the form of journal articles or books.
"We see the lack of widespread and systematic publishing of doctoral research... as a significant problem in the effectiveness of doctoral education in preparing students to participate in research cultures - a problem that requires serious pedagogical attention," she writes in a co-authored paper "Bringing pedagogy to doctoral publishing" in the October edition of Teaching in Higher Education.
Dr Lee laid the blame for the problem, which she said was particularly acute in the social sciences, firmly at the feet of PhD supervisors.
Speaking to Times Higher Education, she criticised the traditional PhD model where the research was followed by a set period of "writing up", which was then followed by "sporadic and ad hoc" attempts to secure publication of the work. She said this left students ill-prepared for the textual practices of scholarship.
Dr Lee called on academics to incorporate the practice of writing for publication - be it for conferences or through writing groups - into the heart of students' doctoral experience.
Students needed to be educated in developing a "writing voice" appropriate for different journals, working out when and where to publish and how to deal with rejection, Dr Lee said. She said "new-route" PhDs, in which a student does not write a thesis but receives their PhD by the publication of journal articles, were an important innovation.
Patricia Thomson, professor of education at the University of Nottingham and author of the book Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Doctoral Supervision, said there was variation in how much support doctoral students received between subjects, countries and institutions.
She said that, although there was an "increasing awareness" of the problem in the UK, more action was needed. "Things such as the Roberts review - which raised the question about career formation - has put some of this on the agenda but it has not necessarily produced a lot of attention about how this is to happen," she said.
She said that, while some doctoral students received some generic research training, it was often "pretty low level".
She called for writing groups and writing retreats, which are often on offer to early career researchers, to be "pushed down" to doctoral education.
Dr Lee's paper used two case studies to illustrate the type of support that could be given to students. One was a peer-review writing group for students planning to publish during their PhDs and the other was a process to supervise publishing from a doctorate.
zoe.corbyn@tsleducation.com.
Readers' comments
I read this article with interest. Greater awareness of the importance of doctoral writing support and the sharing of best practice across UK universities is essential. <p>At Cambridge we offer a range of high-level academic writing development courses and events. A recent example is the Writing Skills Summer School we ran in August for postgraduates in the arts, humanities and social sciences. A blend of workshops, independent writing time, and peer review work in small groups, the Summer School enabled students to work on a specific writing piece (such as a journal article or conference paper) while also honing their academic writing skills. <p>I would be happy to discuss in more detail the range of writing support we offer our postgradute students at Cambridge with any interested peers in other institutions.
Having writing skills and having your writing ability developed through workshops is one thing, but being given the time to write is another thing entirely. Writing skills workshops wouldn't have helped me one bit. What might make the crucial difference to a newly employed postdoc's written output is a few weeks of dedicated time to write some journal articles based on their PhD research, which some employers give only grudgingly.
i'm an international student studying at one of the UK leading universities and unfortunatilly i had no training in writing and there are no courses or short courses to help me write. people who are not a native speakers are being tested and judged by the english standrads and this is un fair i challenge all the doctors and educators to write 2 pages in my language which is Arabic. my supervisor is putting me under so much pressure by keep telling me i'm going to fail. with very little attention from the University and reserach department i'm feeling down for the last few years it seems all they care about is money my university also assigned me a supervisor who never supervised any PhD student it is like the blined is leading the blined my supervisor is warning and scaring me from reporting my issues to the University really it is unfair in addition to this the University i'm i
in addition to this the University i'm in assigned me a supervisor that never supervised any PhD student ! he is like training on me .. trile and error type of thing !
Dr. Mills -I would certainly be interested in discussions - I feel strongly that PhD students are often left to their own devices in this important respect (see also the thread on "I think critically therefore I am")
PhD Students need to develop a whining voice you mean - how else to get out of all those missed deadlines..
I am a PhD student at Cambridge and the free courses mentioned by Dr Catherine Mills helped me and others in developing our academic voices. I am also fortunate that I am working with a brillient supervisor who first identified and pointed out my problem to me (lack of an academic voice). We then spent a whole year working on it. The solution is a supervisor who cares and a university which understands the needs of its PhD students. I am fortunate to have both.
"The solution is a supervisor who cares". Spot on. You can pretty much skip the rest.
I apologise in advance for the offence this will cause but feel the need to say it anyway. In response to the comments from 'international student', if this is an indication of the standard of your written English then you should not be undertaking a PhD in English. I agree few in England would be able to write in Arabic - this is why they do not do so.
I meet many potential doctoral students with good first degrees and often MRes/MSc degrees, but who are unable to express themselves in writing. It's amazing. I'm prepared to give PhD students heart and soul as a supervisor, but I can't provide remedial English tuition as well. Not to native speakers, anyway!
To Gilly thanks for your comments but with all respect i think you are missing the point in here. my point is overall PhD student need extra help in writing ( english or arabic students) but as an international student or a non native English speaker we should get extra help and direction on how to write. looking at the tuition fees we pay it is almost 3 or 4 times more than the English students. so why we are paying that much if we are not getting the sufficient support? on the other hand why do UK universities accept international students who are not a native English speakers why can't they say sorry we can't take you guys? why can't they give conditional offers ? say yes but after you take a writing course or an english course like they do to the undergrad students ?
The reason international students pay more is that they are not taxpayers and are not likely to become taxpayers, therefore it would not be appropriate to use taxes to subsidize their courses as with native students. My university doesn't hesitate to reject applications if the student's level of English isn't high enough.