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The Uses of Literature in Three Academic Disciplines: Ted Colclough, Jeni Driscoll & Anna Fox

This document summarizes findings from interviews conducted with academics from architecture and engineering disciplines about how literature is used in their fields. Key points include: - Disciplines are becoming more interdisciplinary and focused on Mode 2 knowledge production that addresses real-world issues. - Different types of literature are used including scientific literature, standards, and regulations. Literature serves purposes like establishing context or emerging trends. - Views on criticality in literature reviews differ between fields. Engineering values literature reviews that build upon established facts, while architecture encourages integrating different perspectives. - The role of academics and literature is changing with more emphasis on collaboration, knowledge production, and engaging in societal issues.

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ARIF HUSSAIN AN ENGLISH LECTURER FOR ALL CLASSES
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163 views17 pages

The Uses of Literature in Three Academic Disciplines: Ted Colclough, Jeni Driscoll & Anna Fox

This document summarizes findings from interviews conducted with academics from architecture and engineering disciplines about how literature is used in their fields. Key points include: - Disciplines are becoming more interdisciplinary and focused on Mode 2 knowledge production that addresses real-world issues. - Different types of literature are used including scientific literature, standards, and regulations. Literature serves purposes like establishing context or emerging trends. - Views on criticality in literature reviews differ between fields. Engineering values literature reviews that build upon established facts, while architecture encourages integrating different perspectives. - The role of academics and literature is changing with more emphasis on collaboration, knowledge production, and engaging in societal issues.

Uploaded by

ARIF HUSSAIN AN ENGLISH LECTURER FOR ALL CLASSES
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The uses of literature

in three academic
disciplines
Ted Colclough, Jeni Driscoll & Anna Fox
English Language Centre

19th March 2016


Genre-based approaches to the literature review

• To demonstrate familiarity with the field

• To establish links within the literature and to impose a coherent


organisational structure on the literature

• To evaluate the work of others

• To provide support for your own findings/claims

• To identify a gap in knowledge


Literature on disciplinary differences

• Bazerman (1981)

“… the three statements of knowledge are three different things. In


mediating reality, literature, audience, and self, each text seems to be
making a different kind of move in a different kind of game.”
• Becher & Trowler (2001), adapted from Becher (1994)

Cate- Disciplinary Nature of knowledge


gories groupings

Hard- Pure sciences (e.g. Cumulative; atomistic; concerned with


Pure physics) universals/quantities; impersonal; clear criteria for
knowledge verification/obsolescence; consensus on
key questions; results in discovery
Soft- Humanities (e.g. Reiterative; holistic; concerned with
Pure history) & pure particulars/qualities; personal; dispute over criteria for
social sciences (e.g. knowledge verification / obsolescence; lack of
anthropology) consensus on key questions; results in interpretation

Hard- Technologies (e.g. Purposive; pragmatic; concerned with mastery of


Applied mechanical physical environment; applies heuristic approaches;
engineering) uses qualitative and qualitative approaches; criteria
are purposive; results in products/techniques
Soft- Applied social Functional; utilitarian; concerned with enhancement of
Applied science (e.g. professional practice; uses case studies and case law
education, law) to a large extent; results in protocols/procedures
Literature on disciplinary differences

• Martin (2007), adapted from Bernstein (1999) & Wignell (2007)


Interview questions
The nature of the discipline
1. What are the fundamental issues or questions that your discipline
addresses?
2. What is the nature of the phenomena you study? Are they, for
example, stable/concrete/measurable or are they changing/abstract/
open to interpretation?
3. What methods or approaches do you generally adopt? To what degree
are these standardised/accepted?
4. How is knowledge presented /structured in writing in your field? What
makes knowledge claims credible? What counts as evidence for them?
How are they assessed?
5. How would you describe the relationship between the writer and the
reader? Where do students sit on an expert/non-expert continuum?
6. What was a major new revelation/breakthrough in your area? How did
it contribute to the field?
Interview questions

The uses of literature


1. In general terms, how is literature used in your field? How would you
describe the purpose of the literature review?
2. (With reference to a printed list of purposes) Are the principles here of
equal importance in your discipline? Is the list exhaustive?
3. How much agreement/discord is there in the literature?
4. It is often said that a literature review should be critical. What does this
mean in practice?
5. Should/can students include their own voice in the literature review and
how can they avoid simply listing the literature?
6. To what extent are PGT students expected to be able to review
literature in the ways we have discussed? Where do your students
tend to fall short in their uses of literature?
Some emerging themes
ARCHITECTURE
“…fundamental changes that are taking place in the
relationship between universities and public affairs.”
“You can’t just work in Architecture and make buildings
in isolation.”
“The dissertations of the past five years have all been
more and more cultural studies.”
“It is how much can you get Architecture to work
together with science.”

ENGINEERING
“It’s where science meets society.”
“We don’t make steam engines anymore!”
Theme 1:
Interdisciplinarity & Mode 2 knowledge
production

Trowler, Saunders and Bamber (2012):


“Have disciplines been replaced by interdisciplinarity?”

Gibbons et al. (1994):


Mode 1 → Mode 2
Theme 2:
Different types of literature

ENGINEERING
• sources which establish the sector, problem or need
• scientific literature
• fundamental underlying science
• emerging developments
• manufacturing literature
• international standards
• regulations/policy
Bizup (2008):

Background – general information, factual evidence


Exhibit – analyses, interprets
Argument – engages with claims
Method – derives a manner of working
Criticality

ENGINEERING
“They’re not going to critically review the findings of
Professor X from Cambridge. They’re going to take
the findings of Professor X from Cambridge as cold,
hard fact on which they’re going to base their work.”

ARCHITECTURE
“Put them on the shoulders of giants and hold their
hands.”
Concluding comments: strengths and
weaknesses

• Scope

• As yet, removed from EAP classroom application

• Some confusion in focus on expert/student writers

• Interviewees – insightful, informed, engaged

• Criticality and interdisciplinarity


Concluding comments: implications & future
directions

• Confirmed the need to move away from vague/general


approach to even more DS contexts
• A means of better contextualising our teaching for different
departments
• Questioning our assumptions about the uses of literature in
academic disciplines
• Investigating source types in different fields – and their uses
• Student expertness, models and realistic student outcomes →
Student text focus
• (Re)Positioning ISE
Concluding comments

The role of the academic and researcher has changed and so too
has the role of the literature review. Writers are no longer
individuals working in isolation; they are part of research groups,
they are fund chasers.
The role of writing has also changed in that academics and
researchers need to be constantly doing it, competing with their
colleagues and engaging in knowledge production.
English is going to become more important, trans-disciplinary
teaching is going to become more important … not just
interdisciplinarity… Teaching English takes place alongside
disciplines in part of new knowledge production. It is not a
peripheral activity or a peripheral university department.
References

Bazerman, C. (1981) What Written Knowledge Does: Three Examples of Academic Discourse. Philosophy of
the Social Sciences. Vol.11, No.3, pp. 361-387.

Becher, T. & Trowler, P.R. (2001) [2nd Ed] Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures
of Disciplines. Buckingham: OUP

Bizup, J. (2008) ‘BEAM: a rhetorical vocabulary for teaching research-based writing’, Rhetoric Review, 27(1), pp.
72-86.

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. (1994) The new production of
knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. Stockholm: Sage.

Martin, J.R. (2007) Bridging Troubled Waters: Interdisciplinarity and What Makes it Stick in Christie, F. & Maton,
K. [Eds.] (2011) Disciplinarity: Functional Linguistic and Sociological Perspectives. London: Continuum
International Publishing Group.

Trowler, P., Saunders, M. and Bamber, V. [Eds.] (2012) Tribes and territories in the 21st century: rethinking the
significance of disciplines in higher education. Abingdon: Routledge.

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