Investigating the academic literacy journeys of graduate international students

University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

Updated: about 22 hours ago

Location: Sheffield, ENGLAND

School of English

PhD Research Project Self Funded

Prof Nigel Harwood

Application Deadline: Applications accepted all year round

Details

This PhD project will investigate the experiences of international students studying as

graduates in the UK. Projects may focus upon the difficulties students encounter inside and

outside of class, and/or upon their disciplinary enculturation (or non-enculturation).

Applicants can choose to focus on Master’s or doctoral students, studying one specific

discipline or a range of disciplines. In their research proposals, applicants will draw upon

seminal research which focuses on the academic journeys of graduate students, often in the

form of case studies (e.g., Berkenkotter et al., 1988; Blakeslee, 1997; Casanave, 2002;

Harwood & Petric, 2017; Ivanic, 1998; Krase, 2003; Leki, 1995, 2007; Lillis, 2001; Spack,

1997), as well as upon more recent work in the area (e.g., Petric & Castello, 2024).

Applicants will also likely draw upon seminal frameworks to help make sense of the data,

such as that of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and upon writing

on AcLits (see, e.g., Lea, 2017).

Applicant Profile

Applicants wishing to apply to research this project would be supervised by Professor Nigel

Harwood, who has conducted research on the dissertation supervision experiences of

Master’s students (see Harwood & Petric, 2017). You will be expected to be familiar with

Nigel’s research, as well as other seminal work on academic literacy and academic

enculturation.

It is envisaged that your research proposal will be predominantly qualitative; therefore you

should have studied qualitative research methods at master’s level, and be familiar with

qualitative interviewing and qualitative coding of interview data.

References

Berkenkotter, C., Huckin, T. N. and Ackerman, J. (1988). Conventions, conversations, and the writer:
Case study of a student in a rhetoric Ph.D. program. Research in the Teaching of English, 22: 9–44.
Blakeslee, A.M. (1997). Activity, context, interaction, and authority: Learning to write scientific
papers in situ. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 11: 125-169.
Casanave, C.P. (2002). Writing games: multicultural case studies of academic literacy practices in
higher education. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Harwood, N. & Petric, B. (2017). Experiencing Master’s Supervision: Perspectives of International
Students and their Supervisors. Routledge.
Ivanic, R. (1998). Studies in Written Language and Literacy: Writing and Identity - The Discoursal
Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. John Benjamins.
Krase, E. (2003). Sociocultural interactions and ESL graduate student enculturation: A cross
sectional analysis. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of Tennessee.
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge
University Press.
Lea, M.R. (2017). Academic literacies in theory and practice. In B. Street & S. May (Eds.), Literacies
and Language Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer.
Leki, I. (1995). Coping strategies of ESL students in writing tasks across the curriculum. TESOL
Quarterly, 29: 235–260.
Leki, I. (2007). Undergraduates in a Second Language: Challenges and Complexities of Academic
Literacy Development. Routledge.
Lillis, T. M. (2001). Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire. Routledge.
Petric, B. & Castello, M. (2024). The Thesis Writing Journeys of Bachelor’s and Master’s Students: A
Transnational European Perspective. Multilingual Matters.
Spack, R. (1997). The acquisition of academic literacy in a second language: A longitudinal case
study. Written Communication, 14: 3–62.

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