Writing in and across Disciplines
SUPPORTING WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES – INTO THE CONTEXTUAL VORTEX.
Lisa Maria Clughen¹, Christine Hardy²
1. Nottingham Trent university, Nottingham, England 2. Nottingham Trent university, Nottingham, England
In our book, Writing in the Disciplines: Building Supportive Cultures for Student Writing in UK Higher Education (2012), we reported on research into writing that was undertaken across institutions in UK Higher Education (HE). The book is underpinned by a view of writing as a social practice (Street, 1984) and discusses how tutors have responded to calls to recognise its social and cultural situatedness (Barton Hamilton & Ivanic, 2000; Clark and Ivanic, 1997). Reflecting on this research, in this paper, we emphasise the importance of context when considering the challenges of writing and its support. We present some of these challenges and reposition them within current contexts international, national and local. Deploying data from the research, we discuss both the case for, indeed the urgency of, giving heightened attention to student writing in HE and the intricacies involved if such attention is given. Themes explored include the variable nature of writing in the disciplines and the spiralling complexity of writing support – once one accepts, for example, the need to lend a disciplinary flavour to writing support, how is this done? How are disciplinary practices identified? Who is the writing tutor? How might we address the social side of writing and pay attention to the writers themselves? Such complexity, once situated within the dynamic nature of social contexts, means that potential solutions to identified issues in writing support may also slip from our grasp as contexts change. Might sociocultural writing support find itself in a vortex, a whirl of constant reinvention?
References
Barton, D., Hamilton, M. and Ivanic, R. (2000) Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context . London: Routledge.
Clark, R. and Ivanic, R. (1997) The Politics of Writing . London: Routledge.
Clughen, L. and Hardy, C. (2012) Writing in the Disciplines: Building Supportive Cultures for Student Writing in UK Higher Education. Bingley: Emerald.
Street, B. (1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice . New York, NY: Cambridge university