CREATING A WRITING CURRICULUM FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN DOCTORAL PROGRAMS

Writing in and across Disciplines

CREATING A WRITING CURRICULUM FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN DOCTORAL PROGRAMS

1​ 2 Cheryl E. Ball​ , Tim Anstey​

1​

West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV USA Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway

2​

Over the last two decades, the Research School at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) has raised the level of scholarly output by offering a research­based PhD in four disciplinary areas typically known for their practical aesthetic approaches: architecture; design; form, theory, and history; and urbanism and landscape. With the exception of the Institute for Form, Theory, and History, long­form academic writing (from articles to monographs) does not have a tradition in the coursework for these fields. But the PhDs in all institutes at AHO produce either a monograph or a compilation of articles with an exigence (i.e.,“kappe”; see also Buchler et al, 2008; Lee 2010). As a visiting scholar in academic literacies and academic publishing, the first speaker sought to develop a writing curriculum with the second speaker, an architectural historian and the new PhD director, that would formalize the implicit instruction PhDs had received as part of the Research School in the past. This presentation uses case studies and examples to describe the rhetorical instruction that AHO has used informally for its PhDs over the last decade and has recently codified into an assignment sequence, to show improvements to PhDs’ learning outcomes and academic literacies practices. Following Lillis and Scott’s work on academic literacies as a field of inquiry as well as Lillis and Curry’s work on literacy brokers, we discuss how AHO honors the practice­based roots of its PhD students while instructors function as literacy brokers, leading students through academic­literacies inquiry to raise the level of research production in this multidisciplinary program.

References

Buchler, D., Biggs, M., Sandin, G., & Ståhl, L. (2008) Architectural Design and the Problem of Practice­Based Research. ​ Cadernos de Pos­Graduaçao em Arquitetura e Urbanismo​ . 2 (2).

Lillis, T. & Scott, M. (2007) Defining Academic Literacies Research: Issues of Epistemology, Ideology and Strategy. ​ Journal of Applied Linguistics.​ 4 (1) p. 5­32.

Lillis, T. & Curry, M. (2006) Professional Academic Writing by Multilingual Scholars: Interactions With Literacy Brokers in the Production of English­Medium Texts. ​ Written Communication​ . 23 (1) p.3­35.

Lee, A. (2010) When the Article is the Dissertation: Pedagogies for a PhD by Publication. In C. Aitchison, B. Kamler & A. Lee. (eds.), ​ Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond​ . New York: Routledge.