Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Supervision

by Barbara Kamler, Pat Thomson

This essential guide offers a new approach to doctoral writing, written specifically for doctoral supervisors. Rejecting the DIY websites and manuals that promote a privatised skills-based approach to writing research, Kamler and Thomson offer a new framework for scholarly work to help doctorate students produce clear and well-argued dissertations. Drawing on a wide range of research and hands-on experience, the authors argue that making an original contribution to scholarly knowledge requires doctoral candidates to do both text and identity work. Their discussion of the complexities of forming a scholarly identity is illustrated by the stories and writing of real doctoral students.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, Research, Academic, Academia, Language

187 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 30, 2006

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Far too often books like this aren’t really worth reading. I’ve started reading a couple now and given up after the first few pages. The problem is that there really isn’t something called a ‘doctorate’ – and so these other authors have tried to talk about this strange amalgam of things that don’t really fit what I am trying to write or what I really need to know.

So, why is this one different? Well, this isn’t really a ‘how to’ book. And in a sense it isn’t even really about helping doctoral students to ‘write’. They start this with a longish discussion on why they hate people saying they are ‘just writing up their methodology chapter now’. This idea of writing up, which is basically saying that writing is the boring bit you do after you have done all the interesting research and all of the analysis. You know, you work out what you are going to say and then the writing up bit is just you saying it.

Except, of course, that isn’t how it works at all. The writing isn’t external to the thinking – in many ways it is the thinking. The problem is that people assume this isn’t the case and so when they have ‘writer’s block’ they think it has something to do with procrastination or them ‘not being good writers’ – whatever that can mean. And so the advice becomes something like, learn to not procrastinate! Learn these five lessons in making yourself a better writer! The authors propose that the way to fix this is to fundamentally change how you think about writing. That is, that writing isn’t about ‘writing up’, but rather about getting your ideas straight – it is about literally getting to see what you think – writing is a tool for thinking, not something you do after you have finished thinking. As such you have to start writing early in your candidature, because you have to start thinking early in your candidature.

But how should you write? One of the things you need to learn is the genre of thesis writing. The two authors here come out of functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis. That is, there is no such thing as a ‘pure text’ – texts only make sense due to the role they play in particular kinds of social interactions. They have rules and you have to understand those rules before you start messing about with them.

A doctorate is meant to contribute something new to a particular field of research. So, the doctorate needs to do a couple of things first. The very first thing it needs to do is state what is the thesis it is going to be arguing. Then it needs to position itself within the field of research. Not just that the person writing the thesis knows the main texts that have contributed to the field, but also how the controversies in the field have played out and what have been the main moves in how this has been played. So, it isn’t enough to do a summary of the main ideas in your ‘lit review’. A literature review is a quite bad name for what is really called for. It isn’t really a synopsis of all that has gone before – such a thing would be pretty well impossible to write. It also isn’t a way of showing how incredibly well read you are. Rather, it is about showing an experienced reader that you know the field and, much more importantly, you understand the gap in the knowledge that your thesis is about to plug.

The problem isn’t just in not knowing how to go about writing such a thing – but it is also in trying to work out what is the right attitude to take in writing such a thing. Let’s put this in perspective. When you write a literature review you are talking about the work of the smartest people in your field. It isn’t all that unreasonable, then, to feel a bit intimidated. This often leads to a lit review that reads a bit like this: "Foucault says… but Sontag feels … besides Barthes is particularly keen on the idea … which leaves Bourdieu rather at odds with what might otherwise be a consensus…" That is, lots of name dropping, lots of summaries of their key ideas, but how this relates to what you are going to be doing in your thesis isn't all that clear, and this can quickly get out of hand and not really amount to more than a series of thumbnail sketches with no overall purpose.

And this is, as the authors point out, a problem of attitude. Having established that the reason why you are writing this thing is to make clear why what you are contributing is a contribution to the field, you have to take what the authors refer to here as a hand-on-hips stance. They say it is best to think that you are to be the host of a particularly good dinner party. Here’s all these people that you’ve presumably read and enjoyed reading and you get to orchestrate them as they talk about how you are going to contribute something new to your joint interest. Terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure, I guess.

The other thing about this is the Goldilocks principle – you don’t want to sound too smug in what you know (by definition you are an early career academic and so basically don’t know all that much) but you also don’t want to sound obsequious either. Hence the hands-on-hips stance. You have to look in control, but not up-yourself. It’s probably a really good piece of advice to never look up-yourself – just saying.

This book gives really wonderful advice on how to structure and think about how you should go about writing your thesis – but the best part of this book is Chapter 7 – The Grammar of Authority. Honestly, even if you never plan to write a doctoral thesis, it is worth getting this book for this chapter alone.

The problem with many, many books on grammar is that they don’t really tell you anything worth knowing. They are far too often lists of the things that give the writer of the book the creeps – you know, split infinitives or Oxford commas – but other than having you say, “Yes, I know…just awful” this stuff really isn’t going to help you write anything.

The topics covered here are quite different. There is a wonderful discussion on nominalisation. There is also a fascinating discussion on passive sentences and the problems of agentless sentences, particularly in relation to academic writing. And then a lovely discussion on Theme and Rheme and how to mix up your themes to add interest to your writing and also to analyse themes so you can diagnose your own writing.

So, what did all that mean? Well, nominalisation is something academic writing specialises in. Essentially, there is a difference between writing and speech. In speech we are very verbal. When we speak we are generally talking about actions that have happened and so we use lots of verbs and therefore lots of clauses. But when we write we change a lot of those verbs into nouns and noun forms - hence, nominalisation - nome being Italian for 'name'. By changing verbs to noun forms you can generally reduce the number of both words and clauses you are using. So, this makes nominalisation good. This also makes your writing increasingly dense to read. And so the normal advice books like this give is that you should limit the nominalisation you use in your writing. Good advice, in itself, but the problem is that if you have too little nominalisation your writing reads like it has been written by a child. Again, the real worthwhile advice is to learn the effect nominalisation has, both positive and negative, and go find Goldilocks.

A lot of academic writing uses either passive constructions or agentless constructions. Right – passive voice is when the subject of the sentence has the action of the verb done to them. So, an active voice sentence goes, The dog bit the man. A passive voiced sentence goes, The man was bitten by the dog. An agentless sentence goes, the man got bitten. The more you move away from active sentences the easier it is to hide who is doing what to whom. Want to see the consequences of this?

Here are two paragraphs from Kevin Rudd’s Sorry Day speech:

“To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

“And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”

Right – who is it that broke up the families and communities again? Who is it that caused the indignity and degradation? Well, the text literally doesn’t say. These are agentless sentences.

Now, Paul Keating’s Redfern Speech:

“It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.”

Isn’t it amazing what a little agency can do for a sentence…

As someone once said: there are two kinds of silence, one is golden and the other is just yellow.

This really is a wonderful book – Chapter 5 on how to insert yourself into your thesis and why is really excellent, as is the wonderful metaphor about persuading an octopus into a glass. This offers really useful advice and not just advice, but a set of tools that can be used to really learn the craft of academic writing – writing that doesn’t have to be turgid and constipated.

[Alix Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written for supervisors, mostly about dissertation writing within the humanities. As a student about to undertake a PhD by publication in science, I couldn’t recommend it more highly. The idea of writing as being central to developing ideas and identity seems key to any PhD. Essential reading

[Fiona Humphries · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on extensive experience, the authors have written an accessible and informative book which is pitched just right for doctoral students like me. Fabulous!

[Dora · Rating 3 out of 5]

As is explained in the foreword, the book is primarily aimed at doctoral students' supervisors rather than the students themselves, but I've come across a few sources that recommend the book for students. They were right. There were sections (e.g. the entire final chapter about how to facilitate students' writing and research identity development on an institutional level through writing workshops and the like) that are completely irrelevant for doctoral students, but there were also some extremely valuable insights to be gained from the book, as well as a number of recommended sources to turn to for more hands-on writing advice.

[Pauline McGonagle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chapter 3 sent by a friend when I was paralysed revising my 'Literatures Review'. " Persuading an octopus into a jar" described it perfectly and the dinner party metaphor is such an excellent way of taking the fear and anxiety out of the academic conversation this section of the thesis aims to show. I I can't recommend it enough or thank my friend enough for sharing it.

[Rania · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find this book very useful for doctoral students in the social sciences. There are various tips on writing style and on publishing research papers in the field. Being of average length is a bonus and it is easy to read unlike some books about the same tipoc.

[Leanne Powner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straightforward and practical, though less helpful in the US context where the supervisory relationship is not as pronounced and peer collaboration is more widely developed. Still worth a light read by American faculty, though, especially ch 6.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a doctoral student this was soooooo helpful.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara Kamler and Pat Thompson’s Helping Doctoral Students Write takes both a pragmatic and philosophical approach to its subject. Pragmatically, it aims to provide faculty who advise doctoral students with strategies for working with doctoral students of all stripes on a variety of texts (conference papers, abstracts, literature reviews, and dissertations). Philosophically, it aims to show said faculty that writing is not merely a practical set of skills. Kamler and Thompson are emphatic that students and faculty alike need to understand there is a close connection between writing and research, and that seeing writing as constitutive of the creation of an academic identity rather than as a task to be conquered is integral to being a successful student, advisor, and writer.

Given this philosophical approach to writing, it is unsurprising that Helping Doctoral Students to Write is very different in tone than many writing advice books aimed at graduate students. Indeed, Kamler and Thompson begin their book with a screed against the frequency with which many such manuals refer to the necessity to “write up” research as if research and writing were mutually exclusive acts and writing had no relationship to one’s identity as a doctoral researcher. Nonetheless, this is not to say their book is without use value. They provide a number of specific examples of common problems with doctoral writing as well as sample revisions. Many such examples illustrate how doctoral students struggle to assert their evaluations and analysis into their work, instead crafting prose that is summative rather than critical. Kamler and Thompson also provide a series of helpful examples illustrating both failed and successful attempts to insert “the personal” into writing, either by way of using the first person or (more importantly) by being sure writing always establishes the stake the writer has in the text.

Even more useful than these examples are the generalizeable strategies Kamler and Thompson provide for diagnosing and revising doctoral writing. For example, they provide several lists of questions they prompt students to address at various research stages. They also show how using familiar templates for summarizing research assists beginning researchers to see their work as part of a larger scholarly conversation. Throughout, their emphasis is on working within the stylistic and disciplinary conventions of all fields, and they helpfully point out that the wide variance here means that any attempt to improve writing must begin with a solid understanding of what constitutes “good” or “sound” writing in a specific genre or field.

Kamler and Thompson conclude their book with a series of suggestions regarding how the practice of working with doctoral student writers might become better institutionalized in the future. In keeping with their book’s target audience of faculty advisors, their advice might overemphasize the role that disciplinary faculty must play in such institutionalization a bit too much. Certainly, mentors outside a student’s discipline could utilize many of the strategies Kamler and Thompson highlight to assist graduate students in similar ways. However, I think Kamler and Thompshon are correct that the process of writing (rather than merely the product) must be a part of departmental doctoral instruction and mentorship in order for students to best benefit and make use of other writing support services (e.g., writing centers or cross-disciplinary workshops) in a university. As a faculty member who works most closely with graduate students in workshops and individually at Northwestern’s writing center, I can certainly attest to the fact that the students who utilize our services to augment the advice and support they receive within their departments tend to have healthier attitudes toward and practices of writing than students who work in the writing center to compensate for a lack of guidance elsewhere.

Helping Doctoral Students Write, then, is a great resource for faculty or any one else who wishes to provide such guidance to graduate students. Likewise, it would also be helpful to doctoral students who wish to better understand and diagnose the various types of writing they will produce prior to completing their degrees. However, such students should be warned that Kamler and Thompson gloss over early steps associated with various writing genres (e.g., how to come up with appropriately narrow research questions or paper topics), and that most of their strategies begin with the assumption that a draft of some sort is complete. In other words, students who want advice on how to get started on a writing project might find better advice elsewhere.

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kamler & Thomson's book "Helping doctoral students write" (2014, 2nd edition) has been a truly helpful book in introducing me to great ideas and practices with regards to my preparation as a doctoral supervisor. I look forward to imparting some of their great advice and examples to my students, enabling them to succeed in their doctoral studies and subsequent journal publications.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kamler, Barbara, and Pat Thomson. Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. Routledge, 2014.

If you need one book to run a graduate writing support program, this is the one to get. It ranges from how grammar can assert scholarly position to dimensions of discourse.

“As academics, we are represented by our writings and we are judged by them. ...scholarsly productivity and aparent standing in the field are measured on the basis of citations, ublishers and actual writings. But scholars also pass judgement on each other, as peers, on the basis of the books, artiles, and papers published. ...The texts is an extension of the scholar, a putting of ‘self’ out there which is either successful--or not” (15).

Nice bit about identity: 1- identity is a narrative we tell about ourselves; 2- Idenity is plural, not singular; 3-Identity is not fixed, but fluid; 4- Identities are continually being made and remade in action; 5-Identities and their performances are discursively formed (16-7)

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the book is aimed at advisors, this is a fabulous book for anyone working on a dissertation. As an added bonus, it includes a chapter on reworking dissertations for publication after one successfully defends. Don't be misled by the title: it doesn't address basic writing skills, but rather the overall approach doctoral students need to take when constructing a dissertation. This was the single most helpful book I encountered when trying to, forgive the pun, phinish.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were parts of this book that I thought were fabulous - namely, the chapter on the lit review and the last chapter. I lost interest through the middle. It was rich with examples and descriptions, so perhaps the problem was its irrelevance to my current interests and positions. It definitely seemed like a good book to have read and then to keep on the shelf for future thumbing through.

[Audra · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best thing about reading writing ABOUT writing is that it makes me eager again to write. And here I am, only a few chapters in to this fine book, and feeling ready to get off the starting block finally to that dissertation proposal... Thank you, Kamler! Thank you, Thomson!

A.

[Cheryl Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, great book for students and supervisors. They dispel some myths and misinformation and provide a range of workable strategies. I love the chapter on writing literatures: persuading the octopus into a glass ... How apt!

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can certainly see why this book comes so highly recommended, but the problems it seems to be addressing so deftly don't happen to be problems that I'm particularly grappling with at the moment. It's good to know that I can return to this if I need to, though.

[Johnny Go · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book not only for supervisors, but for students/writers like myself!

[Nebiyu Wolde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grammer use and how to write a dissertation