Insider School: Explicating Tacit Knowledge in Teaching Doctoral Students Disciplinary Conventions and Strategies

• In Event: Roundtable Session 39
  In Roundtable Session: Mentoring College and Graduate Students

Abstract

Doctoral students need to develop knowledge about their disciplinary communities in order to engage successfully as scholars. In a qualitative study of 11 doctoral students' experiences in learning to write the various academic texts that represent much of their public work as researchers, there was a wide range of opportunities to learn. This paper develops a case study of a student who received exceptional mentoring in academic writing. Her major professor modeled writing processes for drafting and recursive revisions through sharing her own in-process and reviewed papers. Mentoring also included co-authoring and providing close support in student’s first single-authored paper. This intense writing apprenticeship created opportunities for the professor to share tacit knowledge and strategies for navigating competitive publishing dynamics.

Author

• Elizabeth Anne Daigle, Appalachian State University