Examining First-Year Nondominant Students’ Experiences as Academic Writers: An Identity Perspective

• In Event: Writing in Undergraduate and Graduate Education

Abstract

The paper explores how 4 first-generation college students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds construct their identities as academic writers in their freshman year at a four-year Californian institution of higher education. This qualitative and interpretative study uses identity and identity in writing as a theoretical lens and examines a variety of data sources to reveal the connection between student identity, academic (disciplinary) writing, and the disciplinary Discourses. The aim of the study is to illuminate how students’ understanding of self is affected in the process of negotiating academia. Using a case study approach, the study examines the acts of negotiation, resistance, accommodation and acculturation that students employ as they confront instructional and institutional messages regarding becoming academic writers.

Author

• Dora Panayotova, University of California - Santa Cruz