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Adults' perceptions of their writing practices and development as writers

Hutchinson, Vera; (2020) Adults' perceptions of their writing practices and development as writers. Doctoral thesis (Ed.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access

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Abstract

This exploratory study seeks to gain an understanding of adults’ contemporary writing practices and their development as writers. Broadly framed within the field of Literacy Studies, it uses a critical qualitative design to investigate how adults on Higher Education programmes position themselves as writers, and how they construct their writer identities across the different overlapping domains of their lives. 'Writing’ is explored as one communicative element in multimodal ensembles. The research investigates writing within a social constructionist and poststructuralist perspective that sees writing, not as a property of individuals but as a form of language that arises in interaction. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, examining the value participants give to their diverse dominant and vernacular writing practices, including their uses of different languages and technologies for writing. The fieldwork took place between March and July 2018 in a Higher Education institution and involved individual interviews with seventeen adults (19 years +), of which ten were doctoral students and seven were undergraduate students. The study illustrates the centrality of writing in adult lives. The findings show the value of ‘communicative repertoire’ as an explanatory construct in disentangling the complexities of writing, both online and offline, and in positioning the individual as a knowledgeable and active subject in communicative encounters. The research uses linguistic ethnography to analyse the ‘finegrain’ in communicative interactions and highlights how it can be used as a helpful tool for researcher reflexivity.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ed.D
Title: Adults' perceptions of their writing practices and development as writers
Event: UCL (University College London)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author [2020]. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10099593
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