Student writing in higher education: From texts to practices to textual practices

• Published in: Linguistics and education 2024-04, Vol.80, p.101247, Article 101247
• Main Authors: Lymer, Gustav, Lindwall, Oskar, Greiffenhagen, Christian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic literacies; Academic literaciesAcademic writingConversation analysisEthnomethodology; Academic writing; Communication Studies; Conversation analysis; Ethnomethodology; Kommunikationsvetenskap; Learning; Lärande; Pedagogik; Pedagogy
• ISSN: 0898-5898; 1873-1864; 1873-1864
• DOI: 10.1016/j.linged.2023.101247

•Presents video analyses of academic supervision interaction and student post-supervision work.•Extends initiatives in academic literacies to examine talk-based interaction around texts.•Argues for attending to the ‘proximal textual practices’ of academic supervision. In this article, recordings of academic supervision interactions are examined to inform a discussion of how ‘texts’ and ‘practices’ have been conceptualized in Academic Literacies (AL) research. AL perspectives have contributed to a shift in focus, from texts as linguistic objects to the practices in which texts are embedded. With a starting point in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, we demonstrate the relevance of proximal textual practices as an intermediary between texts and the more abstract dimensions of practice targeted by AL, such as ideology, power, and institutional processes. Thereby we extend initiatives in AL to highlight direct interaction between learners and tutors as central to academic literacies pedagogy, and demonstrate the potential of detailed conversation analytic and ethnomethodological analysis for shedding light on the practices within which texts are embedded in the learning and teaching of academic writing.