The role of disciplinary epistemologies in
HE academic writing:
Views and pedagogical applications from
near and far
Julio Gimenez
Centre for English Language Education
Centre for Research in Higher, Adult and Vocational Education
A bit of background
• Dissatisfaction with my teaching and research approach to academic
writing: traditional but generic
• Opportunities for student writers to engage with the ways their disciplines
structure a piece of academic writing = conceptualising and
communicating disciplinary knowledge (e.g. history: engage with
examining evidence and the ideologies involved in a situation or historical
event)
• Concepts like ‘criticality’, ‘voice’, and ‘evidence’ are not generic but
discipline-specific
• Look more closely at how disciplines conceptualise and communicate
disciplinary knowledge in writing: Midwifery, nursing, business and
engineering
• Work by colleagues (‘near and far’):
– Iliana Martinez (Argentina): Biology and agricultural sciences,
– Anna Jones (Australia): Medicine and history, and,
– Inmaculada Fortanet Gomez (Spain): Business studies
Traditional (generic) approaches to
teaching academic writing
• Academic writing is a generic skills which,
once learnt, can be transferred (writing ≠
academic writing)
• Attributes of academic writing such as
‘criticality,’ ‘voice’ and ‘evidentiality’ are also
generic and transferable
• The traditional ‘essay’ is the key form of
writing/academic genre that all students need
to learn (‘essayist culture in HE’ Lillis (2001))
But
Criticality
• Engineering: skill for creative problem-solving;
sound decisions
• Midwifery: explain links between theory and
practice, understand ideology and social
change
• Business studies: skill for conceptual problemsolving; logical evaluations
And
Authorial presence
• As academic writers, nurses prefer ‘authorial
absence’, even when writing reflectively and
evaluating evidence from research
• Midwives choose to be present as authors of
their own reflective practice
• And engineers would write impersonal
accounts of experiments but personal
evaluation of projects
Questioning, reflecting, researching
• Questioning my own pedagogical practices for
teaching academic writing within the
disciplines
• Reflecting upon my class as a space for
creating opportunities for students as writers
of disciplinary texts
• Researching how the disciplines conceptualise
and communicate disciplinary knowledge in
writing
What for?
• To understand how criticality, voice and
evidentiality are (or not?) epistemologically
conceptualised in a number of disciplines:
nursing, midwifery, business, and engineering,
• To see whether these conceptualisations
shape academic practices (reading, writing
and presenting) at undergraduate level.
Some literature informing my work
• Disciplines and epistemologies: Becher (1989,
1994)
• Discursive representation of knowledge: Parry
(1998)
• Generic attributes: Hyland (2000), Jones (2009)
• Discipline-specific writing: Fortanet Gomez
(2004), Hyland (2004), Jones (2009), Martinez
(2009)
Some findings…
Disciplinary epistemologies
Becher (1989): key features of knowledge base
KNOWLEDGE
Nursing
Engineering
Midwifery
Business
Becher (1989: 36)
• “…the process of locating a discipline in relation
to its neighbours is in itself of limited interest,
and should be seen as no more than a
preliminary to other more fundamental issues.
Boundaries, after all, do not exist merely as lines
on a map: they denote territorial possessions that
can be encroached upon, colonized and
reallocated. Some are so strongly defended as to
be virtually impenetrable; others are weakly
guarded and open to incoming and outgoing
traffic.”
Discursive representations
Parry (1998):
• the way writers discursively assert knowledge; and
• the conventions disciplines follow for structuring
discourse.
DISCOURSE
Epistemologies and attributes
Based on Gimenez (2008; 2012)
Discipline
NURSING
Knowledge base
Criticality
Mainly empirical
Relationship
between health
and illness;
reflection upon
practice
Development
of competence;
potential to
generate action
in practice
Creative
problem-solving;
sound decisions
positivist model
ENGINEERING
applied model
Evidentiality
Hierarchy of
evidence
(RCTs - expert
opinion)
Scientific
evidence;
professional
experience in
some contexts
Voice
Objective,
impersonal in
most
Circumstances,
even when
reflecting
Mostly
impersonal,
but personal
when
evaluating
Epistemologies and attributes
Based on Gimenez (2008; forthcoming)
Discipline
MIDWIFERY
constructivist
model
BUSINESS
applied model
Knowledge base
Scientific, but
also
competence,
intuition,
personal and
embodied
knowledge
Competence;
basis for skills
development
Criticality
Explain
links between
theory and
practice,
understand
ideology and
social change
Conceptual
problemsolving; logical
evaluations
Evidentiality
Voice
Holistic entity:
scientific,
objective and
empirical facts,
but also clinical
experience and
embodied
knowledge
Impersonal but
relative to
what is being
explained,
personal
Descriptions &
reflections also
important
Balanced mix
of scientific
evidence and
professional
practice
Mostly
impersonal
but personal
evaluations
also important
Conceptualising ‘criticality’
Criticality as a generic skill: “Critical thinking is a cognitive activity,
associated with using the mind. Learning to think in critically analytical
Generic
and evaluative ways means using mental processes such as attention,
categorisation, selection, and judgement.” (Cottrell, 2005: 1)
Criticality in the Disciplines (1): “… critical application of research
knowledge from the social and human sciences … action, reflection and
evaluation… integration of contextual, analytic, explanatory and
practical understanding…. (QAA Benchmark Statement for Social Policy
and Administration and Social Work, 2000: 11)
Criticality in the Disciplines (2): “… including self awareness, openness
and sensitivity to diversity in terms of people, cultures, business and
management issues.…. (QAA Benchmark Statement for General Business
and Management, 2007: 4)
Discipline-Specific
Conceptualising ‘Voice’…
Voice & Individuality: In order to think critically, one must have an
individual voice (Ramanathan and Atkinson, 1999)
Generic
Voice & Responsibility: “…in association with knowledge claims and
beliefs voice acknowledges the writer’s responsibility for them and
property rights over them” (Ivanic, 1998: 308)…. by not using “I”,
“the writer is withdrawing from all responsibility” (p. 306).
Voice & Identity: First person as a key element for establishing the
individual identity of an author (Hyland 2002; 2009; Ivanic, 1998)
Voice in the Disciplines: “In nursing students are required to ‘project
an impersonal voice and avoid using the first person singular’”
Discipline-specific
Conceptualising ‘Evidentiality’
Evidentiality & Positioning: linguistic encoding of information
source… expressing the speaker’s/writer’s attitude towards
Generic
knowledge (Kim, 2005)
Evidentiality & Argumentation: Statements or assertions
serving to strengthen the argument… support for the truth of a
proposition, especially those deriving from empirical
observation or experience (Kemerling, 2002)
Evidentiality in the Disciplines: In midwifery evidence also
encompasses clinical experience and what Fullbrook (2004)
defines as embodied knowledge, that is, informal knowledge
learnt from personal experience and observation. Evidence is
also conceived of as expert knowledge; consultation with
Discipline-specific
stakeholders (including clients) as well as evaluation of
previous policies.
Generic & Transferable?
Discipline-specific?
A transferable attribute (skill) is ‘an ability learnt in
one context which can be applied in another’
(Transferable skills modules in HE, Skills Portal for
Oxford University Researchers, 2010).
Jones (1999: 96) the transferable skills argument
‘‘ignores the importance of the disciplinary culture
and community of practice’’.
what would be most helpful for
student writers?
Some thoughts…
• Academic writing is largely discipline-specific;
• ‘Criticality,’ ‘voice’ and ‘evidentiality’ are central to
academic writing in higher education;
• These attributes are not generic and transferable
but discipline specific and epistemologically
determined;
• How different disciplines conceptualise these
attributes poses challenges for undergraduate
student writers- especially those studying across
disciplines;
• Current approaches to teaching academic writing
may be inadequate.
Towards an alternative pedagogy
Discipline-specific pedagogical interventions
which encourage students to examine the
relationship between disciplinary
epistemologies, attributes, and academic
practices in higher education
Pedagogical interventions so far
Student writers as researchers of academic
practices in their own disciplines
Student writers as analysts of academic
practices in their own disciplines
• Students as researchers of their own disciplines:
(1) knowledge: what it is, how it is framed, how it is
linguistically realised;
(2) attributes: (e.g. criticality, voice and
evidentiality) how they are conceptualised and
determined, how they are linguistically realised;
(3) discourses & practices: how knowledge and
attributes are discursively represented in the
academic practices of their disciplines.
• Students as analysts of disciplinary practices in
their disciplines:
(1) Disciplinary analysis: how practices are
epistemologically shaped;
(2) Discourse analysis: how practices are
discursively represented in their disciplines;
(3) Genre analysis: how knowledge and
attributes that constitute the academic practices
of their discipline are linguistically realised in
writing.
Concluding thought
If students are to become effective participants
in disciplinary practices in HE, and therefore
core participants in the discursive construction
of disciplinary knowledge, academic writing
and its disciplinary attributes should be
explicitly taught within the disciplines, and this
should become the responsibility of content
and writing lecturers alike.
The role of disciplinary epistemologies in
HE academic writing:
Views and pedagogical applications from
near and far
Julio Gimenez
Centre for English Language Education
Centre for Research in Higher, Adult and Vocational Education