This article was downloaded by: [Dalhousie University]

On: 11 December 2012, At: 19:09

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Studies in Higher Education

Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cshe20

Student writing in higher education: An

academic literacies approach
a b
Mary R. Lea & Brian V. Street
a
Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, UK
b
King's College, London, UK
Version of record first published: 05 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Mary R. Lea & Brian V. Street (1998): Student writing in higher education: An
academic literacies approach, Studies in Higher Education, 23:2, 157-172

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079812331380364

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation
that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any
instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary
sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,
demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
 Studies in Higher Education Volume 23, No. 2, 1998 157

Student Writing in Higher

Education: an academic literacies
approach
M A R Y R. LEA
Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, UK
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

BRIAN V. S T R E E T
King's College, London, UK

ABSTRACT This article addresses the issue of student writing in higher education. It draws on the
findings of an Economic and Social Research Council funded project which examined the contrasting
expectations and interpretations of academic staff and students regarding undergraduate students"
written assignments. It is suggested that the implicit models that have generally been used to
understand student writing do not adequately take account of the importance of issues of identity and
the institutional relationships of power and authority that surround, and are embedded within,
diverse student writing practices across the university. A contrasting and therefore complementary
perspective is used to present debates about "good"and "poor' student writing. The article outlines an
'academic literacies' framework which can take account of the conflicting and contested nature of
writing practices, and may therefore be more valuable for understanding student writing in today's
higher education than traditional models and approaches.

Introduction

The opinion is often expressed that standards of student 'literacy' are falling, whether at
school or in higher education: many academic staff claim that students can no longer write.
'Back to basics' ideas are now fast taking hold in today's higher education. Recently, we
received an award from the Economic and Social Research Council to conduct a research
project entitled 'Perspectives on Academic Literacies: an institutional approach' that at-
tempted to look at these issues in more depth. The research looked at perceptions and
practices of student writing in higher education, taking as case studies one new and an old
university in southern England. Set against the background of numerous changes in higher
education in the U K and increasing numbers of non-traditional entrants, this research has
been concemed with a wider institutional approach to student writing, rather than merely
locating 'problems' with individual students. One of the main purposes of the research has
been to move away from a skills-based, deficit model of student writing and to consider the
complexity of writing practices that are taking place at degree level in universities. As a
starting point, the research adopts the concept of academic literacies as a framework for
understanding university writing practices.

0307-5079/98/020157-16 1998 Societyfor Research into Higher Education

 158 M. R. Lea & B. V. Street

A c a d e m i c Literacies

Learning in higher education involves adapting to new ways of knowing: new ways of
understanding, interpreting and organising knowledge. Academic literacy practices--read-
ing and writing within disciplines--constitute central processes through which students
learn new subjects and develop their knowledge about new areas of study. A practices
approach to literacy takes account of the cultural and contextual component of writing and
reading practices, and this in turn has important implications for an understanding of
student learning. Educational research into student learning in higher education has tended
to concentrate on ways in which students can be helped to adapt their practices to those of
the university (Gibbs, 1994): from this perspective, the codes and conventions of academia
can be taken as given. In contrast, our research is founded on the premise that in order
to understand the nature of academic learning, it is important to investigate the under-
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

standings of both academic staff and students about their own literacy practices, without
making prior assumptions as to which practices are either appropriate or effective. This is
particularly important in trying to develop a more complex analysis of what it means to
become academically literate. We believe that it is important to realise that meanings are
contested amongst the different parties involved: institutions, staff and students. Viewing
literacy from a cultural and social practice approach (rather than in terms of educational
judgements about good and bad writing) and approaching meanings as contested can give
us insights into the nature of academic literacy in particular and academic learning in
general: through researching these differing expectations and interpretations of university
writing we hope to throw light on failure or non-completion, as well as success and
progression.
The notion of academic literacies has been developed from the area of 'new literacy"
studies' (Street, 1984; Barton, 1994; Baynham, 1995) and is an attempt to draw out the
implications of this approach for our understanding of issues of student learning. We have
argued elsewhere (Lea & Street, 1997a) that educational research into student writing in
higher education has fallen into three main perspectives or models: 'study skills'; 'academic
socialisation'; and 'academic literacies' (see appendix). The models are not mutually ex-
clusive, and we would not want to view them in a simple linear time dimension, whereby
one model supersedes or replaces the insights provided by the other. Rather, we would like
to think that each model successively encapsulates the other, so that the academic sociali-
sation perspective takes account of study skills but includes them in the broader context of
the acculturation processes we describe later, and likewise the academic literacies approach
encapsulates the academic socialisation model, building on the insights developed there as
well as the study skills view. The academic literacies model, then, incorporates both of the
other models into a more encompassing understanding of the nature of student writing
within institutional practices, power relations and identities, as we explain later. We take a
hierarchical view of the relationship between the three models, privileging the 'academic
literacies' approach. We believe that, in teaching as well as in research, addressing specific
skills issues around student writing (such as how to open or close an essay or whether to
use the first person) takes on entirely different meanings if the context is solely that of
study skills, if the process is seen as part of academic socialisafion, or if it is viewed more
broadly as an aspect of the whole institutional and epistemological context. We explicate
each model in turn as both a summary of our major findings in the research project and as
a set of lenses through which to view the account we give of the research.
The study skills approach has assumed that literacy is a set of atomised skills which
students have to learn and which are then transferable to other contexts. The focus is on
 Student Writing in Higher Education 159

attempts to 'fix' problems with student learning, which are treated as a kind of pathology.
The theory of language on which it is based emphasises surface features, grammar and
spelling. Its sources lie in behavioural psychology and training programmes and it conceptu-
alises student writing as technical and instrumental. In recent years the crudity and insensi-
tivity of this approach have led to refinement of the meaning of the 'skills' involved and
attention to broader issues of learning and social context, and have led us to what we (Lea
& Street, 1997a) have termed the 'academic socialisation' approach.
From the academic socialisation perspective, the task of the tutor/adviser is to induct
students into a new 'culture', that of the academy. The focus is on student orientation to
learning and interpretation of learning tasks, through conceptualisation, for instance, of a
distinction between 'deep', 'surface' and 'strategic' approaches to learning (Marton et al.,
1997). The sources of this perspective lie in social psychology, in anthropology and in
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

constructivist education. Although more sensitive both to the student as learner and to the
cultural context, the approach could nevertheless be criticised on a number of grounds. It
appears to assume that the academy is a relatively homogeneous culture, whose norms and
practices have simply to be learnt to provide access to the whole institution. Even though at
some level disciplinary and departmental difference may be acknowledged, institutional
practices, including processes of change and the exercise of power, do not seem to be
sufficiently theorised. Similarly, despite the fact that contextual factors in student writing are
recognised as important (Hounsell, 1988; Taylor et aL, 1988), this approach tends to treat
writing as a transparent medium of representation and so fails to address the deep language,
literacy and discourse issues involved in the institutional production and representation of
meaning.
The third approach, the one most closely allied to the New Literacy Studies, we refer to
as academic literacies. This approach sees literacies as social practices, in the way we have
suggested. It views student writing and learning as issues at the level of epistemology
and identities rather than skill or socialisation. An academic literacies approach views the
institutions in which academic practices take place as constituted in, and as sites of, discourse
and power. It sees the literacy demands of the curriculum as involving a variety of commu-
nicative practices, including genres, fields and disciplines. From the student point of view a
dominant feature of academic literacy practices is the requirement to switch practices
between one setting and another, to deploy a repertoire of linguistic practices appropriate
to each setting, and to handle the social meanings and identities that each evokes. This
emphasis on identities and social meanings draws attention to deep affective and ideological
conflicts in such switching and use of the linguistic repertoire. A student's personal identity--
who am ' I ' - - m a y be challenged by the forms of writing required in different disciplines,
notably prescriptions about the use of impersonal and passive forms as opposed to first
person and active forms, and students may feel threatened and resistant--'this isn't me'
(Lea, 1994; Ivanic, 1998). The recognition of this level of engagement with student writing,
as opposed to the more straightforward study skills and academic socialisation approaches,
comes from the social and ideological orientation of the 'New Literacy Studies'. Allied to
this is work in critical discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics and cultural
anthropology, which has come to see student writing as being concerned with the processes
of meaning-making and contestation around meaning rather than as skills or deficits.
There is a growing body of literature based upon this approach, which suggests that
one explanation for problems in student writing might be the gaps between academic staff
expectations and student interpretations of what is involved in student writing (Cohen,
1993; Lea, 1994; Street, 1995; Lea & Street, 1997b; Stierer, 1997).
 160 lid. R. Lea & B. V. Street

The Research
During 1995-96 we carried out research at two universities, one new and one traditional, in
the south-east of England. Ten interviews were conducted with staff in the older university
and 21 students were interviewed, either individually or in small groups. At the new
university, 13 members of academic staff and 26 students were interviewed in the same way.
The interviews at both institutions included the Directors of Quality Assurance Units and
'learning support' staff.
One of our initial research objectives was to explore the contribution of ethnographic-
based research to educational development in higher education. The short length of the
project limited the in-depth ethnographic approach which such research could warrant.
However, we did adopt an 'ethnographic style' approach (Green & Bloome, 1997) to the
research which included conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with staff and
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

students, participant observation of group sessions and attention to samples of students'

writing, written feedback on students' work and handouts on 'essay' writing. A major part of
the research has included a linguistically-based analysis of this textual material. As the
research progressed we realised that this was an equally important source of data which we
needed to consider in relation to the interview data. As researchers we were able to benefit
from our own situated knowledge of the institutional settings within which we were research-
ing. Adopting an ethnographic style approach to the research, within settings of which we
already had prior knowledge, enabled us to move away from the focus on transcribed
interview material to a more eclectic approach, merging the importance of understanding
both texts and practices in the light of staff and student interpretations of university writing.
Our research, then, was not based on a representative sample fxom which generalisations
could be drawn but rather was conceived as providing case studies that enabled us to explore
theoretical issues and generate questions for further systematic study. Our approach, there-
fore, was in the ethnographic tradition described by Mitchell (1984). Rather than applying
'enumerative induction' (as in much scientific and statistical research) as a means to
generalising, and for establishing the 'representativeness' of social data, Mitchell advocates
what he terms 'analytical induction':

What the anthropologist using a case study to support an argument does is to show
how general principles deriving from some theoretical orientation manifest them-
selves in some given set of particular circumstances. A good case study, therefore,
enables the analyst to establish theoretically valid connections between events and
phenomena which previously were ineluctable. (Mitchell, 1984, p. 239)

In the present context, the tutors and students whom we interviewed and the documents we
collected can be taken as case studies of different perspectives on academic literacies. Whilst
not representing a sample from which generalisations can be drawn regarding the whole of
English higher education, these case studies can point to important theoretical questions and
connections that might not otherwise be raised. The data, for instance, enable us to explore
the hypothesis that, viewed as 'academic literacies', the beliefs and practices of tutors and
students constitute a different kind of evidence than if this same data were viewed in terms
of skills or academic socialisation. These accounts can, for instance, provide evidence for
differences between staff and students' understanding of the writing process at levels of
epistemology, authority and contestation over knowledge rather than at the level of technical
skill, surface linguistic competence or cultural assimilation. We have therefore approached
our research data in order to acquire insights and conceptual elaboration on our three models
 Student Writing in Higher Education 161

of student writing and to generate from it analytic induction rather than 'enumerative
induction'.
The unstructured, in-depth interviews examined how students understand the different
literacy practices which they experience in their studies and in what ways academic staff
understand the literacy requirements of their own subject area and make these explicit to
their students. We gave participants the opportunity to reflect upon the writing practices of
the university, at different levels and in different courses, subject areas and disciplines, and
to consider not only the influences that were being brought to bear upon them from within
the university but also those from other writing contexts. We asked staff to outline, as they
saw them, the writing requirements of their own disciplines and subject areas and to describe
the kinds and quantities of writing that were involved for their students. We also asked them
to talk about their perceptions of problems with student writing and the ways in which these
were addressed at both an individual and departmental level. Students explained the prob-
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

lems that they experienced with writing at the university and their perceptions of the writing
requirements of different courses and subject areas. We also collected copious amounts of
documentation from both staff and students: handouts on essay writing; examples of
students' written work; course handbooks; assignment guidelines.
A further objective of our research was to contribute towards an institutional under-
standing of academic literacy practices in higher education and we therefore began the project
with a focus upon three traditional academic categories: humanities, social sciences, and
natural sciences. In both universities we began by carrying out interviews with academic staff
within each category and then went on to interview students. Early in the research it became
clear from the interview data we were collecting that the traditional boundaries that we had
identified to frame the research were in many senses irrelevant, particularly for students. Our
interviews with students alerted us to the fact that old disciplinary divides were often not
appropriate as research categories.
The diverse nature of the degree programmes at preliminary level resulted in students
undertaking what we term 'course switching' which, we suggest, can be paralleled with
linguistic code switching (Gumperz, 1982). In the case of 'course switching' students are
having to interpret the writing requirements of different levels of academic activity. Such
switching may range from academic disciplines in a traditional sense (such as physics and
anthropology) to what we see as 'fields of study', such as modular programmes that
incorporate elements of different disciplines and of interdisciplinary courses (such as Asian
studies and business studies) and to specific modules or course units within programmes
(such as twentieth-century women's literature and operations management). This switching
may also encompass the different demands of individual subject tutors and their personal
interpretations of writing requirements. As students switch between such disciplines, course
units, modules and tutors, different assumptions about the nature of writing, related to
different epistemological presuppositions about the nature of academic knowledge and
learning, are being brought to bear, often implicitly, on the specific writing requirements of
their assignments. Evidence from interviews with tutors and students and from handouts
prepared for students on aspects of 'good' writing suggests that it is frequently very difficult
for students to 'read off" from any such context what might be the specific academic writing
requirements of that context. Nor, as we shall see below, did the provision of general
statements about the nature of academic writing help students with the specificity of demands
in each context.
We also interviewed learning support staff in both institutions. The data collected from
these interviews reinforced the views expressed by students that many of the difficulties they
experienced with writing arose from the conflicting and contrasting requirements for writing
 162 M. R. Lea & B. V. Street

on different courses and from the fact that these requirements were frequently left implicit.
Learning support staff also questioned whether academic staff were aware that they were
asking for specific ways of writing knowledge from their students.

Requirements of Student Writing: staff interpretations

T h e interviews with staff suggest that academic staff have their own fairly well-defined views
regarding what constitutes the elements of a good piece of student writing in the areas in
which they teach. These tend to refer to form in a more generic sense, including attention to
syntax, punctuation and layout, and to such apparently evident components of rational essay
writing as 'structure', 'argument' and 'clarity'. Their own disciplinary history had a clear
influence on staff conceptualisations and representations of what were the most important
elements to look for in students' writing at both levels, although the epistemological and
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

methodological issues that underlay them were often expressed through the surface features
and components of 'writing' in itself--as we detail below. It was this confusion, we argue,
that led to difficulties for students not yet acquainted with the disciplinary underpinnings of
faculty feedback. This confusion was c o m p o u n d e d by the move towards multidisciplinary
courses at degree level and the modular system that was fully in place at one of the
universities. As a result, although faculty understanding of student writing was often de-
scribed in disciplinary terms (for example, 'In history the use of evidence is particularly
important', or 'In English we are looking for clarity of expression'), in practice staff were
often teaching within programmes which integrated a n u m b e r of disciplinary approaches and
for which the writing requirements consequently varied.
Additionally, some academic staff were teaching in courses where even the traditional
disciplines were looking at new ways of communicating that discipline outside of the
academic community, developing what we term 'empathy' writing: in physics, for instance,
students were asked to write texts for non-specialist audiences, such as Select Committees of
MPs, or commercial groups, to 'empathise' with their reader's lack of disciplinary knowledge
and at the same time take account of their desire or need to know. In management science
mathematical principles were used to address commercial problems, and writing reports for
putative clients was an essential part of student writing for assessment. The writing require-
ments of these exercises differed from those of more standard 'essay text' kinds of writing but
the same students may encounter both in their progress through a degree programme.
Despite this variation in modes of writing across disciplines and fields of study, many
staff we interviewed were still mainly influenced by specific conceptualisations of their own
disciplines or subject areas in their assessments of students' writing. T h e twin concepts of
'structure' and 'argument' came to the fore in most interviews as being key elements in
student writing, terms which we examine more closely below. Even though staff generally had
a clear belief in these concepts as crucial to their understanding of what constituted a
successful piece of writing, there was less certainty when it came to describing what underlay
a well-argued or well-structured piece of student work. More commonly, staff were able to
identify when a student had been successful, but could not describe how a particular piece
of writing 'lacked' structure. We suggest that, in practice, what makes a piece of student
writing 'appropriate' has more to do with issues of epistemology than with the surface
features of form to which staff often have recourse when describing their students' writing.
T h a t is to say, underlying, often disciplinary, assumptions about the nature of knowledge
affected the meaning given to the terms 'structure' and 'argument'. Since these assumptions
varied with context, it is not valid to suggest that such concepts are generic and transferable,
or represent ' c o m m o n sense ways of knowing' (Fairclough, 1992), as the reference to 'writing
 Student Writing in Higher Education 163

problems' frequently implied. We believe that this finding has considerable implications for
current attempts to define generic skills.
The research data, then, suggests that, whilst academic staff can describe what consti-
tutes successful writing, difficulties arose when they attempted to make explicit what a
well-developed argument looks like in a written assignment. At the level of form one tutor is
able to explain what he wants clearly:

I need my students to have an introduction which sets the scene and a main body
which covers a number of issues highlighted in the introduction and introduces
economic theory, application and analysis. Students need to be critical, to evaluate,
to try and reach some sort of synthesis and then to simply summarise and conclude.
You need a good solid introduction leading into your main body and each part of
your main body will be crafted and it will link with the next. It will have a
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

professional feel about it and will not describe but will critically analyse and then it
will lead into a summary and conclusion.

However, the descriptive tools he emptoys--'critically analyse, 'evaluate', 'reach a syn-

thesis'--could not be explicated further. As another lecturer put it: 'I know a good essay
when I see it but I cannot describe how to write it'. This lends credence to the idea that
elements of successful student writing are in essence related to particular ways of constructing
the world and not to a set of generic writing skills as the study skills model would suggest.
Successful university lecturers are likely to have spent many years developing acceptable ways
of constructing their own knowledge through their own writing practices in a variety of
disciplinary contexts. Other writers have explicated in some detail how writing practices
construct rather than merely reflect academic knowledge (Bazerman, 1988; Berkenkotter &
Huckin, 1995). These practices, then, are integrally related to the ways in which staff
constitute their own academic world-view and their own academic knowledge. Faced with
writing which does not appear to make sense within their own academic framework, they are
most likely to have recourse to what feel like familiar descriptive categories such as 'structure
and argument', 'clarity' and 'analysis', in order to give feedback on their students' writing. In
reality their own understandings of these categories may be bound by their own individual,
disciplinary perspective, but the categories may be less meaningful outside of this framework
and therefore not readily understood by students unversed in that particular orientation of the
discipline. Our later analysis of a student essay illustrates this in some detail.

Writing Requirements: student interpretations

The research interviews with students revealed a number of different interpretations and
understandings of what students thought that they were meant to be doing in their writing.
Students described taking 'ways of knowing' (Baker et al., 1995) and of writing from one
course into another only to fred that their attempt to do this was unsuccessful and met with
negative feedback. They were consciously aware of switching between diverse writing require-
ments and knew that their task was to unpack what kind of writing any particular assignment
might require. This was at a more complex level than genre, such as the 'essay' or 'report',
but lay more deeply at the level of writing particular knowledge in a specific academic setting.
Students knew that variations of form existed, but admitted that their real writing difficulties
lay in trying to gauge the deeper levels of variation in knowledge and how to set about writing
them. It was much more than using the correct terminology or just learning to do 'academic
writing'--as what we term the academic socialisation model would suggest--and more about
 164 M. R. Lea & B. V. Street

adapting previous knowledge of writing practices, academic and other, to varied university
settings:
T h e thing I ' m finding most difficult in my first term here is moving from subject to
subject and knowing how you're meant to write in each one. I ' m really aware of
writing for a particular tutor as well as for a particular subject. Everybody seems to
want something different. It's very different to A levels where we used dictated notes
for essay writing.
Such c o m m o n descriptions in interviews with students did not appear to support the notion
of generic and transferable writing skills across the university.
Students themselves often internalised the language of feedback. T h e y knew that it was
important to present an argument and they knew that structure played an important part, but
had difficulties in understanding when they had achieved this successfully in a piece of
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

writing. Students would frequently describe how they had completed a piece of work that
they believed was well constructed and appropriate to the subject area, only to discover that
they had received a very low grade and fairly negative feedback. T h e y often felt unsure and
confused about what they had done wrong. What seemed to be an appropriate piece of
writing in one field, or indeed for one individual tutor, was often found to be quite
inappropriate for another. Although students frequently had guidelines, either from individ-
ual tutors or as departmental documents on essay writing, they found that these often did not
help them very m u c h with this level of writing. T h e y felt that such guidelines dealt with
matters that they knew from A level or Access courses. T h e guidelines involved issues broadly
defined as structure, such as those concerned with the formal organisation of a piece of
writing (introduction, main body, conclusion) or as argument, involving advice on the
necessity of developing a position rather than providing 'just' a description or narrative.
Students could assimilate this general advice on writing 'techniques' and 'skills' but found it
difficult to move from the general to using this advice in a particular text in a particular
disciplinary context. In both universities, the majority of the documents offering guidelines of
this nature that we analysed took a rather technical approach to writing, concentrating on
issues of surface form: grammar, punctuation and spelling. T h e y also dealt fitly with
referencing, bibliographies and footnotes, and supplied warnings about plagiarism. T h e y
rarely dealt with the issues that students reported they had most difficulty grasping--for
example, how to write specific, course-based knowledge for a particular tutor or field of
study.
T h e conflicting advice received from academic teaching staff in different courses added
to the confusion. For example, in some areas students were specifically directed to outline
what would follow in the main body of a traditional essay, whilst other tutors would
comment, 'I do not want to know what you are going to say'. M a n y different conventions
were to be found around the use of the first person p r o n o u n in student writing. Even within
the same courses, individual tutors had different opinions about when or if it was appropriate
to use this. Such conventions were often presented as self-evidently the correct way in which
things should be done.
Student perceptions were influenced by their own experiences of writing within and
outside higher education. An example o f this was the A level entrant who came unstuck when
she wrote a history essay drawing on just one textual source as she regularly and successfully
had done in English. Similarly, another entrant to the traditional university who had worked
in industry for 5 years and was used to extensive, succinct report writing, had no idea how
to go about writing a traditional essay text in politics, as part of a course in public
administration and management.
 Student Writing in Higher Education 165

Students took different approaches to the course switching that they experienced. Some
saw it as a kind of game, trying to work out the rules, not only for a field of study, a particular
course or particular assignment, but frequently for an individual tutor. They adopted writing
strategies that masked their own opinions, in a sense mimicking some implicit or even explicit
convention. There were, for instance, the first year history students who had learnt to hide
what they thought behind 'it can be said' rather than using the first person in their writing,
and had also learnt how to balance one recognised author against another as a way to present
their own personal viewpoint in their writing. On the other hand, a mature student writing
social policy fek severely constrained by his inability to bring his years of trade union
expertise into his essay on present-day poverty. He did not feel comfortable with the
pragmatic approach of playing to the rules of the game, which seemed to require him to
simply juxtapose data from different sources and to eschew personal knowledge.
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

Writing across Courses: 'structure and argument'

We examine here a 'telling case' (Mitchell, 1984) of the problems that these differences in
understanding the writing requirements of specific courses can lead to. A first year history
student had a strikingly different response from his tutors to an anthropology essay and to a
history essay written during the same period in his first year of study. For the history essay,
in which the emphasis had been on content and factual information, he received positive
feedback, but when he attempted an essay for anthropology using a similar format, he was
subject to strong criticism. He felt, however, that he had written a successful essay in both
cases. The feedback from the anthropology lecturer suggested that his difficulties were with
general essay-writing skills, although feedback and grades in both history and politics at the
same time, as well as his pre-university A level experience, had led him to believe that he
could handle academic writing requirements with no real difficulties. The tutor in anthro-
pology was particularly critical of his 'lack' of 'structure and argument' in the anthropology
essay. The student, however, could not understand how the essay lacked structure and felt
that he had presented a coherent argument in his writing.
We would suggest that the explanation for this divergence of opinion and response lies
at a deeper level than the surface features of '~witing' to which the anthropology tutor refers.
Rather, the cause of the poor assessment of his essay can be traced, we suggest, to the
student's lack of familiarity with the subject matter of anthropology, which was not his major,
and to his greater ease with history, which he had studied successfully at A level and was now
taking as his major: his experience with writing in history led him to attempt to break down
and categorise some factual aspects of his knowledge in his anthropology essay, without
attention to some of the implicit ways of writing knowledge in his anthropology, and in
particular the need to abstract theory rather than attend to factual detail as evidence, as was
required by at least some tutors in that discipline. In our analysis, we attend particularly to
the tutor's comments in the margins of the essay, and on the feedback sheet attached to the
end.
The essay was on the question, 'Must governments, in order to survive, always claim to
be "better" than ordinary people?' In attempting to answer this question, the student had
written in one paragraph about 'Principality'--one of the forms of government listed by
Aristotle, whom he quoted at the outset. 'Principality', he writes, 'represents the pinnacle of
this domination and therefore demands absolute government control'. He gives an example
of how individuals may break away from dominant groups, such as those defined by caste and
lineage, and assert that they are 'better' (as called for in the title) by being a member of
another clan. The paragraph concludes that this 'is evidence of their survival depending on
 166 M. R. Lea & B. V. Street

their repressive claim to power through blood/lineage'. The next paragraph opens: 'As in all
forms of government "authority" must secure as wide a measure of popular support as it can
...' The following paragraph commences, 'Religion is the most powerful tool with which to
obtain "popular support" and therefore survival'. The tutor has written in the margin
between the first two paragraphs 'Linkage' (tutor comments in italics here for clarity, but in
handwriting in the original) and between the second two paragraphs: 'Too many unlinkedfacts
here. I can't see any argument'.
The student, however, might well assume that the linkage is there but given by the
paragraph 'structure' of his essay and by lexical reference back to the title--'better', 'survive'.
In the first section he had listed Aristotle's 'six forms' of government. Each section of the
essay that follows starts with a reference to one of these forms, e.g. 'Principality', 'Tyranny',
'Aristocracy'. The paragraphs cited above refer to 'Principality', and in keeping with this
interpretation of the student's organisation of the essay, the term is the first word in the initial
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

paragraph. The next paragraph, commencing 'Religion is a powerful tool', could be seen as
intended to link with the account of 'Principality'. The student refers to anthropological data
on the role of clans among the Bemba people, which could be taken as empirical evidence
with respect to the question of 'survival' of forms of government: this is summarised in the
phrase 'Religion is the most powerful tool with which to obtain "popular support" and
therefore survival'--a further reference to the title.
As the essay progresses, different forms of government are indicated: one paragraph
begins, 'Principality's downfall is secured by Tyranny'; another, 'Machiavelli saw the con-
stant successional threat of aristocracy in 16th century France in these terms'. The tutor has
put a question mark in the margin beside this sentence, presumably further indicating his
general concern on this page with 'linkage' and 'argument'. However, the markers of
cohesion, such as use of connectives ('these', 'such', 'therefore') and the repetition of key
terms from the title ('survival', better', government') could be seen as intended to indicate the
flow of such an 'argument'--that forms of government attempted to gain support in order to
survive but gave way to other forms, which have their ethnographic and empirical correlates
in accounts of the Bemba and Shilluck, which are classic cases of political formations in the
anthropological literature. The final paragraph states: 'In conclusion irrespective of whether
governments claim to be better than ordinary people, their survival will eventually be
undermined by the next form of government'. Here the student has made direct reference
back to the title, presumably to create an ending to his essay that is coherent with the opening
question.
The tutor's comments in the margins and at the end regarding lack of 'linkage' indicate
that these attempts at 'argument' and cohesion have not been recoguised. The tutor writes
at the end: 'You really have a problem with this essay, mainly for the reason that it is so incoherent.
It has no beginning, middle and end, no structure, no argument'. The student is advised to go the
university study centre 'and make enquires about essay-writing clinics'. The pathologising of his
writing and the references to 'lack' of key components of 'good writing'--'structure',
'argument'--suggest that the student's 'problem' is to do with generic features of essay-
writing. And yet the same student received excellent grades and comments for another
essay--in history--written in the same week in much the same style and manner. Again the
writer uses standard cohesive ties (Hatch, 1995), such as the conjunctions 'therefore' and
'yet' and repetition of key terms from the title, 'economy', 'society', in order to link the
conclusion with the initial question and with the flow of the argument. In this case, the tutor
has implicitly recognised the work of cohesion and writes: 'I like your conclusion to what is
a carefully argued and relevant essay'.
If we interpret the attempts at structure and argument in the way suggested above, then
 Student Wn'ting in Higher Education 167

what appears to be at stake can be analysed at two levels. Firstly, the linguistic features of
structure and argument are clearly open to interpretation, and what may indicate argument
for one person (e.g. cohesive ties, juxtaposition, reference, connectives) may not appear so to
another. In this case the anthropology tutor is looking for analysis of each area of content and
does not notice the linguistic and structural devices this student has used for indicating
'argument'. Secondly, and following from this last point, what may be at stake is determi-
nation of what is involved in a particular discipline--the tutor in this case may see anthro-
pology as requiring different conceptions of knowledge and more to be done with linkage and
analysis of concepts, than did the history tutor for whom clear summary of the facts in
appropriate sequence was sufficient evidence'of a 'carefully argued and relevant essay'. The
anthropology tutor's comments, however, are couched in terms of writing problems, so such
epistemological presupposition regarding academic disciplines is hidden beneath more tech-
nical attention to supposedly generic features of 'academic writing': 'May I suggest very
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

strongly that you go to the Study Centre and make more enquiries about essay-writing
clinics'.
We suggest that the contrast we are making between such writing-focused comments on
the one hand, and the deeper epistemological issues associated with knowledge in different
disciplines, on the other, might be applied to other examples of staff-student relations in
connection with the writing process. Such an approach might open up areas of inquiry and
reinterpretation that would revalue much student writing, shift attention from surface
features of 'literacy' to deeper features of epistemology and of authority, of the kind indicated
above, and perhaps explain much of the miscommunication between tutors and students that
is coming to be documented as researchers focus on academic literacies.

Understandings of Plagiarism
A similar area of conflict between different perspectives on the writing process amongst tutors
and students concerns the concept of 'plagiarism'. We found reference to 'plagiarism' was
identified surprisingly often in the interview comments of both tutors and students, and
frequently in the documentation available for students as advice on assignment writing and
other course documentation. In both universities there appeared to be an unquestioned
assumption that both tutor and student would share the same interpretation and understand-
ing of'plagiarism'. Our evidence, in common with Ashworth et al. (1997), would suggest that
we cannot assume this to be the case. Students often expressed anxieties about plagiarism in
terms of their own authority as writers. They were unclear about what actually constituted
plagiarism and yet at the same time were concerned about how to acknowledge the authority
of academic texts. Their overriding concerns were that the texts they read were authoritative
and that they as students had little useful to say. They were confused, not only about the
conventions for referencing, but more importantly they found it difficult to understand the
implicit relationship between acknowledging the source of the text and acknowledging the
authority of the text. Their concerns lay more with the latter and how they as novice students
could write anything that they had not read in an authoritative source:

I don't know anything about the subject other than what I've read in books so how
on earth could I write anything which was not someone else's idea?

For this student, as with others, the relationship between plagiarism and correct referencing
was not transparent and he was worried that he would plagiarise unknowingly. For aca-
demics, the issue of referencing sources seems clear; for students the boundary between their
 168 M. R. Lea & B. V. S~reet

sources and their own account is less certain as they feel, like the student quoted here, that
all of their knowledge is implicated in others' texts. Indeed, some tutors did express concern
during the interviews about student interpretations of plagiarism that recognised this uncer-
tainty.
However, at an institutional level plagiarism was treated as clearly definitive and
unquestionable. In one particular instance, a standard feedback sheet for tutors to comment
on student essays gave considerable attention to plagiarism in a document that was necess-
arily constrained for space and where the choice of topic in relation to student writing is
therefore highly significant. Even if the emphasis on plagiarism evident here could be
construed as a valid aspect of a document offering advice and feedback to students learning
to write, the discourse here is that of the law and authority rather than of tutor and student
engaged in the learning practices of educational discourse:
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

PLAGIARISM is an assessment offence (see section 3.7-3.9 of University Assess-

ment Regulations pp. 26-27 in Student regulations). A student who knowingly
allows his/her work to be copied, either verbatim or by paraphrasing, will be guilty
of an assessment offence.
In this same university, whilst interviewing tutors, we observed notices warning against
plagiarism on the walls of tutors' offices and on the notice boards in corridors. Whatever the
formal and legal issues involved, as a social practice this focus upon the term plagiarism itself
and the legalistic discourse in which it is embedded affirms the disciplinary and surveillance
aspects of the writing process. This discourse reinforces the relations of tutor to student as
those of authority, backed by the heavy weight of an institution with boards, regulations and
ultimately, legal resources.

Student Writing: interpreting feedback

So far, we have attempted to outline some of the indications in the research data for
conceptualising variety in the different interpretations and understandings of student writing
we encountered. These variations exist within and across courses, subjects and disciplines--
and between students and academic tutors in many different contexts. They are constituted
both in the linguistic form of the texts--the written assignments and the accompanying
feedback--and in the social relations that exist around them--the relationships of power and
authority between tutor and student--and they are manifest in the divergent literacy practices
surrounding written texts. Central to our understanding of both the varieties of academic
literacy practices which students engage in across the university and the relations which
surround text production is an examination of the ways in which written feedback is
interpreted by staff and students.
As we have illustrated, the research has been concerned with a textual examination of
tutor-written feedback on student work--both on standard feedback sheets and in the
margins of assignments--and with students' interpretations of the meanings that they attach
to this feedback, both in general and in relation to a specific piece of written work. This
analysis has raised questions about the relationship between feedback and epistemological
issues of knowledge construction. How is feedback being used to direct students to develop
and write their academic knowledge in very specific ways within particular courses which are
implicitly presented as 'common-sense ways of knowing'? We have already illustrated a
feedback genre within which the use of descriptive categories--such as 'structure' and
'argument'--may embed contrasting conceptual understandings. As we have suggested, such
terms tend to be rather elusive, particularly for students, and may be more usefully under-
 Student Writing in Higher Education 169

stood in their gatekeeping role or at a m o r e complex ideological level within an institutional

hierarchy than as the u n p r o b l e m a t i c generic requirements of student writing.
One useful way of examining the relationships surrounding texts m a y be to start by
examining the feedback that staff give to students as a genre. By examining some of the
genres of students' written work and the genre of staff feedback on it we m a y be able to make
m o r e sense o f the complex ways in which staff and students construct appropriate ways of
knowing and reproduce appropriate forms o f disciplinary and subject knowledge. T h e r e is a
dynamic within the feedback genre, for instance, which works b o t h to construct academic
knowledge and to maintain relationships of power and authority between novice student and
experienced academic. Assumptions about what constitutes valid knowledge m a y be inferred
by analysing feedback b u t frequently such assumptions remain implicit, as in the feedback on
the essay analysed above.
T h e ways in which a speaker or writer indicate their implicit c o m m i t m e n t to the truth
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

of what is being s a i d - - w h a t linguists refer to as ' m o d a l i t y ' - - v a r i e s with types of text and
social relations. T u t o r c o m m e n t s frequently take the form of what we term categorical
modality, using imperatives and assertions, with little mitigation or qualification. T h e first
page o f the essay analysed above has the following comments: 'Explain', ' A bit confused',
'Linkage?', ' T o o m a n y unlinked facts here. C a n ' t see argument'. This categorical modality is
also expressed here and frequently in the essays we have seen, by means of orthographic
marks such as '?', '!' or '(', that indicate disagreement, doubt, criticism. T h e question m a r k
frequently indicates n o t a genuine question which tutor and student are engaged in explicat-
ing, b u t rather is used as a kind of expletive, or as a categorical assertion that the point is not
'correct'. In the essay in question there are seven u n a t t a c h e d question marks, m a n y with this
function, and six bracket signs indicating links that should have been made, in the space of
3 pages. O n e has only to imagine other kinds of modality that could be expressed in this
context to recognise the conventional and categorical nature of this usage: mitigated com-
ments such as 'you might like to consider', 'have you thought about', 'in m y opinion ...',
' p e r h a p s ' , and o p e n - e n d e d questions such as 'could this be interpreted differently?', 'is there
a link with other c o m m e n t s here?', would evoke a different modality (more provisional or
mitigated), create a different genre and evoke a different interpersonal relationship between
student as writer and tutor as m a r k e r than that indicated by the c o m m e n t s we have described
above. In making these c o m m e n t s the tutor clearly and firmly takes authority, assumes the
right to criticise directly and categorically on the basis of an assumed 'correct' view of what
should have been written and how. Students, however, m a y have a different interpretation of
feedback comments. F o r the anthropology student in question he could not u n d e r s t a n d how
to make sense of the feedback c o m m e n t 'Meaning?' on his text. F o r him b o t h the meaning
of what he was saying and the d e v e l o p m e n t of the argument in his own text was clear. Even
where students indicate in interviews that they did not u n d e r s t a n d the c o m m e n t , thought it
unfair or even disagreed with it, few if any challenge the tutor's right to make such comments.
It appears, then, that written feedback on student work, is n o t merely an a t t e m p t at
communication, or at l e a m i n g a 'discipline', or at socialisation into a c o m m u n i t y - - a l t h o u g h
it clearly has elements of all o f t h e s e - - b u t is also e m b e d d e d in relationships of authority as
a m a r k e r o f difference and a sustainer of boundaries.
Additionally, institutional procedures were implicated in the ways in which students
were able to read, u n d e r s t a n d and make use o f feedback on their work. In the new university,
where a fully m o d u l a r system was in operation, it was reported to us by b o t h staff and
students alike that in m a n y instances students did not receive feedback on assessed written
work until they h a d c o m p l e t e d their studies for this module. Inevitably, students found that
they were unable to benefit from receiving feedback in this manner. Since they generally
 170 M. R. Lea & B. V. Street

found feedback comments to be specific to a particular piece of work, or at the least to the
module being studied, they reported that such feedback frequently bore no relationship to
their studies in the subsequent module. Academic staff reported that they were unable to
make best use of standard feedback sheets because these were received by students after
module completion:
T h e problem with the modular system is that every piece of work they [the students]
do is for assessment purposes. It is not until they are well into the second module
that they get the results from the first. Effectively there is no feedback.
Evidence such as this has led us to suggest that we consider the analysis of writing in the
university as an 'institutional' issue and not just a matter for particular participants. T h e
institution within which tutors and students write defines the conventions and boundaries of
their writing practices, through its procedures and regulations (definitions of plagiarism,
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

requirements of modularity and assessment procedures etc.), whatever individual tutors and
students may believe themselves to be as writers, and whatever autonomy and distinctiveness
their disciplines may assert.

Future Directions
Our research indicates the variety in both the writing practices that students engage with as
part of their university courses and the complex nature of the feedback they receive from
tutors. These writing practices and genres are not simply concerned with technical matters in
which 'appropriate' skills are acquired and novices become members of an expert com-
munity, as in the first two models described in the appendix. T h e third model, that of
academic literacies (from which we are viewing these data), suggests a more complex and
contested interpretation in which the processes of student writing and tutor feedback are
defined through implicit assumptions about what constitutes valid knowledge within a
particular context, and the relationships of authority that exist around the communication of
these assumptions. T h e nature of this authority and the claims associated with it can be
identified through both formal, linguistic features of the writing involved and in the social and
institutional relationships associated with it.
During the course of the research we have identified three thematic categories originating
from both students and staff as ways of looking at students' writing. T h e first is focused on
the student and suggests that students lack a set of basic skills that can be dealt with primarily
in a remedial study skills or learning support unit. This takes no account of the interaction
of the student with institutional practices and is based on the underlying principle that
knowledge is transferred rather than mediated or constructed through writing practices. T h e
second, identified most clearly by students, is derived from the interaction of student and
tutor and is concerned with issues such as student and tutor assumptions and understandings
of assignment titles, tutor feedback on students' written work and, for the students them-
selves, the importance of their own 'identity' as writers rather than simply the acquisition of
skills in becoming an academic writer. T h e third theme is at a broadly institutional level and
concerns the implications of modularity, assessment and university procedures on student
writing.
We suggest that these three themes, focused broadly on students, student-tutor inter-
actions, and the institution, need to be examined more fully against the changing 'fields of
study' and student 'course switching' to which we have referred. All three, we argue, are
located in relations of power and authority and are not simply reducible to the skills and
competences required for entry to, and success within, the academic community. T h e current
 Student Writing in Higher Education 171

m o v e m e n t away from traditional academic disciplines a n d subject areas, within which

academic staff have conceptualised their own and their students' v ~ t i n g practices, makes a
broader perspective critical in u n d e r s t a n d i n g the 'problems' being identified in student
writing. W i t h o u t such a perspective, such problems tend to be explained mainly with respect
to the students themselves or seen as a consequence of the mass introduction of ' n o n -
traditional' students. F r o m an academic literacies perspective such explanations are limited
and will n o t provide the basis for reflection on learning and teaching in higher education that
the Dearing Report and others are calling for. Exploration of these themes within an
academic literacies perspective may provide, we suggest, a fruitful area for research and for
teacher education in higher education in the coming years.

Correspondence: Mary R. Lea, Research Fellow in S t u d e n t Learning, Institute of Educational

Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

Technology, T h e O p e n University, W a l t o n Hall, M i l t o n Keynes M K 7 6AA, U K .

REFERENCES
ASHWORTH,P., BANNISTER,P. & THORNE,P. (1997) Guilty in whose eyes? University students' perceptions
of cheating and plagiarism in academic work and assessment, Studies in Higher Education, 22,
pp. 187-203.
BAKER,D., FOX, C. & CLAY,J. (1995) Challenging Ways of Knowing in Maths, Science and English (Lewes,
Falmer Press).
BARTON,D. (1994) Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language (Oxford, Blackwell).
BAYNHAM,M. (1995) Literacy Practices (London, Longman).
BAZER-r~tAN,C. (1988) Shaping Written Knowledge: the genre and activity of the experimental article in science
(Madison, University of Wisconsin Press).
BERKENKOTTER, C. & HUCKrN, T. (1995) Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication (New York,
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).
COHEN, M. (1993) Listening to students' voices: what university students tell us about how they can learn,
paper presented to Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association Atlanta, GA.
FAIRCLOUGH,N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge, Polity Press).
GIBBS, G. (1994) Improving Student Learning: theory and practice (Oxford, Oxford Centre for Staff Develop-
ment).
GREEN,J. & BLOOME,D. (1997) Ethnography and Ethnographers of and in education: a situated perspective,
in: J. FLOOD, S. BRICEHEATH & D. LApp (Eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the
Communicative and Visual Arts, pp. 181-203 (New York, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan).
GUMPERZ,J. (1982) Discourse Strategies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
HATCH, E. (1995) l~'scourse and Language Education (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
HOUNSELL,D. (1988) Towards an anatomy of academic discourse: meaning and context in the undergraduate
essay, in: R. SALJO (Ed.) The Written World. Studies in literate thought and action, pp. 161-177 (Berlin,
Springer-Verlag).
IVANIC,R. (1998) Writing and Identity: the discoursal construction of identity in academic writing (Amsterdam,
John Benjamins).
LEA, M (1994) 'I thought I could write till I came here': student writing in higher education, in: G. GIBBS
(Ed.) Improving Student Learning: theory and practice, pp. 216-226 (Oxford, Oxford Centre for Staff
Development).
LEA, M. & STREET,B. (1997a) Models of student writing in higher education, paper presented to Higher
Education Funding Council for England, Social Anthropology Teaching and Learning Network workshop, 'New
forms of student writing', June 1997, University of Sussex.
LEA, M. & STREET, B. (1997b) Perspectives on Academic Literacies: an institutional approach (Swindon,
Economic and Social Research Council).
MARTON,F., HObNSELL,D. & ENTWISTLE,N. (Eds) (1997) The Experience of Learning, (Edinburgh, Scottish
Academic Press).
MATCHELL,C. (1984) 'Case Studies', in: R. ELLENEthnographic Research: a guide to general conduct, pp. 237-
241 (London, Academic Press).
STIERER,B. (1997) Mastering Education: a preliminary analysis of academic literacy practices within master~levd
courses in education (Milton Keynes, Centre for Language & Communications, Open University).
 172 M . R. Lea & t3. V. Street

STREE% B. (1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
STREETs B. (1995) 'Academic literacies', in: D. BAER, C. F o x & ]~. CLAY Challenging Ways of Knowing in Maths,
Science and English, pp. 101-134 (Lewes, Falmer Press).
TAYLOR, G., BALLARD,B., BEASLEY,V., HANNE, B., CLANCHY,J. & NIGHTINGALE,P. (1988) Literacy by Degrees
(Milton Keynes, Society for Research in Higher Education/Open University).

Appendix. Models of student writing in higher education

Study skills:
Student deficit
'Fix it'; atomised skills; surface language, grammar, spelling.
Sources: behaviouraI and experimental psychology; programmed learning.
Downloaded by [Dalhousie University] at 19:09 11 December 2012

Student writing as technical and instrumental skill.

Academic socialisation:
Acczdturation of students into academic discourse
Inducting students into new 'culture'; focus on orientation to learning and interpretation of learning task,
e.g. 'deep', 'surface', 'strategic' learning; homogeneous 'culture', lack of focus on institutional practices,
change and power.
Sources: social psychology; anthropology; constructivism.
Student writing as transparent medium of representation.

Academic l#eracies
Student's negotiation of conflicting literacy practices
Literacies as social practices; at level of epistemology and identities; institutions as sites of/constituted in
discourses and power; variety of communicative repertoire, e.g. genres, fields, disciplines; switching with
regard to linguistic practices, social meanings and identities.
Sources: 'new literacy studies'; critical discourse analysis; systemic functional linguistics; cultural anthro-
pology.
Student writing as meaning-making and contested.