Doctoral students and supervisors in the sciences commonly co-author and publish research articles which then form the bulk of the students’ thesis. Drawing on a multiple-case study (environmental sciences, neurosciences and computational chemistry), this presentation describes the shifting roles of novice and expert that participants assume in their writing-focused meetings.
Doctoral writing practices in the sciences are notably different from practices in the arts and humanities (Belcher, 1994), in that doctoral students and their supervisors in the sciences commonly co-author research articles (RAs) for publication, which later form a major part of the students’ PhD thesis (Kamler, 2008). Drawing on a multiple-case study involving 15 meeting observations, 17 collected drafts, and 12 interviews from three cases (environmental sciences, neurosciences and computational chemistry), this presentation describes the shifting roles of novice and expert (Jacoby and Gonzalez, 1991) that students and the supervisor assume in their writing-focused meetings. Notably, supervisors draw on various sources of authority: personal prediction (‘I think this terms grows over time’); the scientific method (‘it is a valid hypothesis’); their hierarchical relationship (‘you cannot say to your supervisor that…’); and finally, audience expectations (‘a lot of people will think this’). By modelling such expected reader responses, the supervisor reframe their own expert role as mediator with journal gatekeepers and other disciplinary peers, in representation and preparation of the social control that the discourse community will inevitably exercise over the student’s new contribution to knowledge. Further, it is suggested that the observed recursive re-editing of RA drafts by the supervisor is not simply a by-product of working with a novice co-author, such as the student. Rather, supervisors in the sciences view the modelling of probable reviewer and reader responses as a skill and a habit that is integral to the writing practices in science disciplines and that students need to develop. In summary, based on a thick description of the yet under-researched interactions in RA-writing-focused meetings in sciences doctoral supervision, this study supports and further develops the notion that the research writing and publication practices in the sciences are both performed and acquired by social means.
