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Working together: two qualitative approaches to researching writing support for doctoral students

This dissertation addresses two problems with advanced academic writing pedagogy. First, doctoral students must participate in academic discourse communities, yet they report being underprepared to do so (Boquet et al., 2015; Caplan & Cox, 2016). Second, studies (e.g., Curry & Lillis, 2004; Matsuda & Tardy, 2007; Tardy & Matsuda, 2009) suggest that L1 and L2 voices are not well integrated in the institution and that this lack of integration systemically privileges the dominant culture.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the role relationships play in helping culturally and linguistically diverse doctoral students negotiate and acquire advanced academic discourse. I pose the overarching research question: Given a discipline-specific writing center for graduate students in a College of Education, what role does interaction play in helping students to participate in academic conversations? The two papers in this collection employ qualitative classification and discourse analysis to investigate writing-related interactions among peers. Data include audio-recorded writing consultations and interviews, post-session reports, field notes, and artifacts.
Taken together, findings from this research highlight the role interaction can play in writing support, development, and research. This research has implications for developing writing pedagogy and support programs to facilitate productive academic socialization. In response, the researcher calls for more robust academic writing support in order to improve access and resources for diverse student populations and decrease attrition and time to degree for all students.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uiowa.edu/oai:ir.uiowa.edu:etd-7860
Date01 August 2018
CreatorsAldrich, Carrie
ContributorsThein, Amanda Haertling
PublisherUniversity of Iowa
Source SetsUniversity of Iowa
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations
RightsCopyright © 2018 Carrie Aldrich

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