Constructing research findings: a tool for teaching doctoral writing
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/483684 , vital:78786 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2023.2280264
- Description: Making a contribution to knowledge is a cornerstone requirement of the PhD. It requires candidates to provide new understandings about a phenomenon to push the boundaries of an intellectual field. To achieve this ‘boundary pushing’, the findings offered in the research must have relevance for contexts beyond the site of study. In effect, the knowledge generated in one context needs to be transferable to other contexts. This aspect of research writing is broadly acknowledged; however, learning how to implement it in practice is less widely understood. Drawing on the concept of semantic gravity from Legitimation Code Theory, this paper offers a conceptual account of knowledge and an associated set of practical writing strategies for weaving different forms of knowledge together. The paper offers a writing tool which can be used by supervisors in the humanities and social sciences to make writing expectations clear and as a metalanguage for feedback practices.
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- Date Issued: 2023
Science and language, knowledge and power
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin , Iqani, Mehita , Madondo, Nkosinathi
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/480573 , vital:78456 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-sajsci-v119-n11-a9
- Description: All scientific knowledge is encoded in socially constructed forms of communication with language being the primary mode. When language is understood as a socio-cultural practice and a resource for meaning-making, it has significant implications for how we understand knowledge-building in disciplines and the inherent power relationships that are created in the way we use language to construct different kinds of knowledge and position knowledge in the field. It also has implications for how we share and validate knowledge with and to others. If science is to be used for social justice, understanding science communication necessitates considerations of language, knowledge and power.
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- Date Issued: 2023
Fail early and fail fast: the value of group supervision for doctoral candidates
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/483695 , vital:78787 , https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2021.1969543
- Description: This part-reflective, part-conceptual article focuses on the issue of supervision models and the need to move away from the dominance of the traditional master-apprentice model which continues to persist in many social sciences and humanities contexts. Drawing on communities of practice theory, I critically reflect on my own PhD supervision experience in Australia in relation to my current South African context in order to highlight how varying forms of a group model of supervision can enhance the doctoral experience by creating more opportunities for PhD candidates to engage in social learning. Furthermore, the article discusses some of the challenges associated with maintaining group coherence in a community of practice due to the fundamentally social nature of knowledge and the associated contestations around the legitimacy of knowledge and ways of knowing and the effect this has on a community. The article concludes with a suggestion of how this challenge can be mitigated through the creation of smaller, theory-based research ‘clusters’ within larger doctoral programmes.
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- Date Issued: 2021
Building knowledge with theory: Unpacking complexity in doctoral writing
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/439480 , vital:73600 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/cristal/article/view/203971
- Description: The use of theory to analyse and interpret empirical data is a valued practice in much social science doctoral research. A crucial aspect of this practice involves generating sophisticated theoretical understandings and critiques of phenomena in our social world. Despite the importance of theory, however, few concrete explanations of how to ‘theorise’exist in literature. This paper addresses this gap by demonstrating how a set of conceptual tools can be used to unpack what the craft of theorising looks like in explicit terms, and to reveal how this ability develops over time during the drafting process of dissertation writing. It does this by drawing on select texts from a successful doctoral dissertation, as well as an earlier draft version. In doing so, the paper provides an in-depth explanation of an essential process of doctoral research that is inherently known by many supervisors, yet seldom unpacked in explicit terms.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Learning how to theorize in doctoral writing: A tool for teaching and learning
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445824 , vital:74435 , ISBN 9781003028215 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003028215-8/learning-theorize-doctoral-writing-kirstin-wilmot
- Description: Doctoral writing is an elusive research practice. Given their size, individuality and disciplinary complexity, analysing doctoral dissertations is a complex task – one that makes defining exact rules for students to follow difficult, if not impossible. In order to open up access to increasingly diverse students, there is a need to make this tacit writing practice explicit. To do so requires a more detailed understanding of what doctoral writing involves. This chapter illustrates an approach that can provide such an understanding. Drawing on the concept of ‘semantic gravity’ from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), the chapter focuses on a student’s progression from ‘raw’ data description to fully realized theoretical discussions of data. The findings demonstrate how, through the drafting process, specific movements in writing – notably, from strongly contextualized to more abstract meanings – are developed over time. In showcasing these findings, the chapter reveals how LCT is able to make this aspect of doctoral writing explicit and demonstrable to students and supervisors.
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- Date Issued: 2020
‘Nothing so practical as good theory’: Legitimation Code Theory in higher education
- Authors: Winberg, Christine , McKenna, Sioux , Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445850 , vital:74437 , ISBN 9781003028215 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003028215-1/nothing-practical-good-theory-christine-winberg-sioux-mckenna-kirstin-wilmot
- Description: Universities are grappling with multiple shifts that have made the processes of supporting student learning and enabling the professional development of academic staff ever more challenging. Common sense approaches abound but do little to address the complexities of the issues being faced in our institutions. This book brings together a rich collection of studies that uses a powerful common framework, Legitimation Code Theory, to attend to these concerns about higher education studies. The chapters provide specific real world examples of how this framework acts as conceptual lenses, analytical tools and as teaching resources to open conversations about how it is we come to know and what it is that is deemed worth knowing. In Part I ‘Student Learning across the Disciplinary Map’, the authors explore ways of understanding and supporting student achievement across different disciplinary contexts – from STEM disciplines and fields to the Arts and Humanities – and at different levels – from introductory higher education courses to doctoral-level studies. Part II, ‘Professional Learning in Higher Education’, takes an in-depth look at academic staff development in higher education. Each chapter in the book focuses on pertinent issues in higher education practice, from how to support an increasingly diverse student body, to how to support university teachers in contexts of rapid change and growth. This chapter provides an introduction to the conversation and offers an entry into the LCT tools used in this collection: Specialization, Semantics and Autonomy.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Designing writing groups to support postgraduate students’ academic writing: a case study from a South African university
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66267 , vital:28926 , https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2016.1238775
- Description: publisher version , This paper reports on a writing group pilot programme implemented at a South African university. Drawing on literature, anonymous student evaluations and facilitator observations, it discusses the use of writing groups for supporting postgraduate academic writing practices. Developed within a broader postgraduate academic writing support programme, the paper discusses a case study of two pilot writing groups: a multidisciplinary long-term group and a disciplinary short-term ‘writing-intensive’ group. The findings indicate that the overall experience of the writing group was a positive one, with each group presenting varied ‘success’ aspects as well as challenges. Insights gleaned may contribute to our understanding of how these groups can be utilised to support postgraduate students and how different kinds of groups can be developed to serve particular student needs. The paper concludes with a discussion of the inclusion of a disciplinary expert, which proved particularly useful in this pilot.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Writing groups as transformative spaces
- Authors: Wilmot, Kirstin , McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/${Handle} , vital:44576 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1450361"
- Description: Curriculum transformation is a central concern for higher education in response to rapidly expanding technologies, globalisation and the widening diversity of the student and staff body. This is particularly true for South Africa, which is still grappling with inequalities and pressure for social redress in its universities. Early responses to supporting students took the form of add-on, ‘deficit-model’ approaches which understood poor student retention and success rates as emerging from students’ lack of neutral literacy ‘skills’. Recent initiatives have begun to adopt more socio-cultural understandings of literacy that seek to challenge traditional power structures and cultivate horizontal peer-orientated spaces for learning with a focus on practice rather than on product. Writing groups, as spaces for academic writing development, embrace this orientation and are argued to provide a transformative framework that foregrounds proactive student learning and experience, while still accommodating disciplinary learning through peer engagement. Drawing on the successful implementation of such forms of support at a research-intensive university, this paper argues that writing groups can play a critical role in both personal (student) transformation and broader curriculum transformation. Data include anonymous questionnaires and surveys with participants and coordinators of the writing groups. An inductive, constant comparative analysis indicated that students feel empowered in this space to develop not only their writing practices but also their transforming identities as scholars. Writing groups were found to provide ‘safe spaces’ where academic practices can be made explicit and where they can be challenged. The paper therefore argues that writing groups can play a small but key role in broader transformation efforts.
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- Date Issued: 2018