PGR in-sessional impact: the story so far

Background

Early career researchers or postgraduate researchers (PGRs) often struggle to adjust and cope with new modes of learning as they move across cultural milieus. Such struggles are more pronounced when the shift requires scholars to embark on an unclear trajectory towards becoming someone in education (Burgess and Ivanić, 2010) often resulting in struggles to take up new identity positions (Savva and Nygaard, 2021). This has made it imperative for HE institutions to provide support to mostly multilingual and multicultural scholars for whom the medium of instruction is not a first language to help them settle and thrive during their studies. To target the whole person, this support ought to have a dual focus. On one hand, institutions need to provide support to PGRs to help them understand the language, genres, discourses and practices of their discipline so that they can gain the ‘epistemological access’ (Morrow, 2009) needed to meaningfully participate in the semiotic work of their disciplines. Furthermore, apart from targeting socio-cognitive dimensions, HEIs should also offer affective support to these scholars. Offering this support cannot be left to supervisors alone.

Targeting both the cognitive and affective aspects of socialisation is what the PGR in-sessional support at Leeds strives to offer. The current iteration of this provision was inspired by the findings of a University Student Education Fellowship project conducted in 2017 by Katherine Taylor. The project used semi-structured interviews with 15 PGRs from the faculty of Engineering, Institute of Transport Studies, and the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. The project also drew from informal discussions with PGRs across all disciplines who access the Language Centre programmes to develop their language and broader academic literacy skills.

Despite arriving with a range of knowledge, skills and competencies required for studying in an intercultural setting, PGRs reported experiencing a severe drop in confidence often stating that they feel “lost”, “scared” and “ashamed” as they struggle to settle both academically and socially. As one participant noted:

[M]ost people are dying in silence … it’s unnecessary … help is all around but you can’t access that coz maybe you are scared or maybe because you think they will look at you as being weak or maybe there are many problems.

This response sums up how embarking on a doctoral journey ‘deskills’ PGRs often leading to feelings of inadequacy in a new environment. Such feelings of dislocation seem to be common in such liminal spaces (e.g., Kiley and Wisker, 2009). From these responses, it could be said that PGRs struggle with belonging, becoming and being in a new environment as they have concerns regarding how they can develop their capabilities to become more self-directed learners. This problem becomes more pronounced by their lack of understanding of both the expectations and milestones they need to go through during their candidature as well as the practical guidance on offer. Such lack of practical guidance and support during this trajectory is what the PGR in-sessional course, in its various configurations, offers as detailed below.

PGR in-session structure

As such, PGR support at Leeds is offered through:

• Academic writing course 1 which is a six-week course looking at writing through a genre lens (see Tardy, 2009). It aims to explore and unravel what ‘expertise’ comprises in terms of purpose, content, processes and norms. A key component of the course is based on developing a greater understanding of reader expectations and how to manage and meet these more successfully.  Level 1 is also run over a period of 3 days (twice a year) as an Intensive version.
• Academic writing course 2 which is a six-week course developed on the dialogic understanding of authority in academic writing (see Tang, 2009) and aims to raise PGR awareness of academic writing as social semiotic work with identity implications.
• 1-1 consultations (as part of both Writing course 1 and 2) addressing arising needs. These are responsive to PGR emerging needs at different stages of their candidature and provide a platform for a more dialogic and needs-based approach to language and literacy support.
• A suite of 9 2-hour workshops covering topics like ‘Becoming a doctoral researcher’, ‘Speaking about your research’, ‘Reading critically to write critically’, ‘Working with words’, and ‘Writing purposefully’ to mention but a few.

• 1-1 stand-alone consultations, bookable by both British and EAL PGRs, at any stage in their candidature, to discuss issues causing them concern with their research writing progress, which might benefit from input from beyond their discipline. These sessions often focus on unpacking occluded expectations and providing a space for PGRs to discuss the affective demands of doctoral study.

 

• OD&PL Provision

Developed during a secondment with the staff development service, who are also responsible for generic PGR development, Language Centre staff deliver a suite of Thesis Writer workshops, which explore challenges typically faced in the different stages of a candidature.  The focus is not simply on the development of academic writing, but, importantly, on becoming a writer, and the identity transformation that takes place as part of doctoral study.  A significant feature of these sessions is the integration of EAL and home PGRs, to share and learn from each others’ experiences.

Working with the staff development service has also enabled engagement by Language Centre staff in supervisor development, particularly in relation to raising awareness of the particular challenges faced by EAL PGRs, contributing to making the doctoral experience at Leeds as inclusive as possible.

 

Impact: a PGR perspective

Attempts to understand and highlight the impact of EAP courses in their various configurations across university campuses seem to have caught on in recent times. Such attempts seem to have been partly spurred by the administrative costs of running these courses and the need for accountability regarding their impact (Storch and Tapper, 2009). Even though impact is a slippery concept, it is possible to take an “indirect route” (Terraschke and Wahid, 2011) to understanding the usefulness of these EAP courses. One way of taking this indirect route to understanding impact is through the voices of PGRs who attend these programmes (Pearson, 2020) as detailed below.

The thematic areas presented below to highlight the perceived impact of in-sessional PGR support at Leeds have been generated from informal discussions with PGRs as well as from course/session evaluation, which these PGRs do after attending courses and/or workshops. This approach suggests that there is need for a more systematic (preferably longitudinal) study to trace the impact these programmes have on PGR identity uptake and this is something the PGR in-sessional team is conceptualising. PGR voices regarding the impact in-sessional courses they attend at Leeds have on their becoming can be summed up under the following themes:

Semiotic resource acquisition

As pointed out in the introduction above, most PGRs lack a proper understanding of the milestones involved in the trajectory of becoming a researcher. This, coupled by a lack of understanding of the requisite semiotic resources needed to participate in the literacy practices of their disciplines, often make this an unsatisfying journey. The PGR in-sessional course helps mitigate this as PGRs attest:

Your sessions have made me come away feeling much more confident and prepared to work at the craft of writing; it suddenly seems a lot less daunting 

I feel more confidence (sic) in speaking about my research, how to structure and present my research to different audience, understanding the how, what and why of a research, becoming more conscious about the tone, stress and pace when speaking about my research and using sign posts, simple sentences and examples when speaking about my research

Having had an article rejected then resubmitted, I felt so much more confident and liberated in my writing. … looking at my writing, I was not confident in the way I expressed myself and was definitely not concise enough in my language. It also gave me courage to read other articles from this journal and look at their ‘style’ or culture. This helped me to realise (finally) that the audience is key and how to use the approaches from the session in terms of funnelling information, throughout the article.

 

Unpacking occluded genre practices

The process-genre approach to understanding academic literacy practices like writing which the support adopts helps students to unpack the occluded practices that might be difficult to pick up in a supervisory meeting. PGRs often comment that:

Thank you again for the session today. I found it incredibly useful and informative about the exam process and how I should be structuring my thesis

I now know what is expected for the viva

It was nice to present to us how supervisors might expect from us as before I think I was in a bit of an awkward position where I’m not sure if I need to act ‘perfect’ in front of them. Understanding how they might think about our progress is really helpful

 

Socio-academic networks

PGRs report that the in-sessional courses provide them a space to develop networks through which they can forge meaningful communities of practice. Leki (2007) refers to these as socio-academic networks, which she defines as relationships that students develop with peers and teachers through their interactions in shared classrooms (p.262). PGR in-sessional courses offer students a space to interact and share experiences with others who are on a similar trajectory to theirs. This mitigates the loneliness, which plagues most PGRs as highlighted earlier above. About the support they get, PGRs have said that:

            It is a good way to connect with others after the frenetic focus of transfer

            … also, it’s really great to talk to people within (sic) similar problems

Thanks to the opportunity you gave us to get to know each other, we have now formed an interdisciplinary reading group where we are supporting each other’s development as scholars and personally as well      

I explained to X that I often felt like my supervisors have a ‘just get on with it’ attitude and it can be unhelpful at times, especially around mental health and well-being. So, it was refreshing to share my views without being dismissed/not taken seriously

Affective dimension

Emotional wellbeing cannot be separated from a fruitful PGR experience (Chihota, 2007; Chihota and Thesen, 2014; Thesen, 2014). The PGR in-sessional courses endeavour to support researcher well-being as most have pointed out:

            Makes me feel more confident and how I can continue to improve

Thank you for taking time to sit down with me and have a proper sift through my PhD concerns and queries. It was lovely to chat to someone like a colleague rather than feeling like a student only

Some PGR feedback sharing their successful achievement of key milestones also attests to the affective support tutors on the course provide.

I have passed my upgrade. Thank you for your advice and encouragement. Your words helped me especially when I was at a ‘fragile’ point of my doctoral struggle.

I would like to share the good news with you. I passed my viva in March and was awarded my PhD in April. Thank you again for your kind support at the start of my doctoral journey. The chat with you then was very helpful.

From the foregoing, it could be surmised that the PGR in-sessional support at Leeds currently contributes to the university wide vision of creating a vibrant research culture in which every PGR belongs to a community and is well supported to progress and succeed in their work. As earlier pointed out however, there is need for a more systematic tracer study to document the impact the provision has on PGR trajectories. Furthermore, there is also a need to re-examine and possibly expand certain aspects of this provision to cater for PGRs for whom English is a first language. This requires a more comprehensive needs analysis into the support PGRs need especially considering the proliferation of “non-traditional” doctorates like performance-based doctorates that should likely pose unique challenges.

References

Burgess, A. and Ivanič, R. 2010. Writing and being written: issues of identity across time scales. Written communication. 27(2), pp.228-255.

Chihota, C. 2007. The games people play: taking on postgraduate identities in the context of writer circles. Journal of Applied linguistics. 4(1), pp131-136.

Chihota, C. M. and Thesen, L. 2014. Rehearsing ‘the Postgraduate Condition’ in writers’ circles. In: L. Thesen and L. Cooper. Eds. Risk in academic writing: Postgraduate students, their teachers and the making of knowledge. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp.131-147.

Kiley, M. and Wisker, G. 2009. Threshold concepts in research education and evidence of threshold crossing. Higher education research and development. 28(4), pp.431-441.

Leki, I. 2007. Undergraduates in a second language: challenges and complexities of academic literacy development. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum

Morrow, W. E. 2009. Bounds of democracy: epistemological access in higher education. Cape Town: HSRC Press.

Pearson, W. S. 2020. The effectiveness of pre-sessional EAP programmes in UK higher education: A review of the evidence. Review of Education. 8(2), pp.420-447.

Savva, M. and Nygaard, L. P. 2021. Belonging and becoming in academia: a conceptual framework. In: M. Savva and L. P. Nygaard. Eds. Becoming a scholar: Cross-cultural reflections on identity and agency in an education doctorate.London: UCL Press, pp.10-26.

Storch, N. and Tapper, J. 2009. The impact of an EAP course on postgraduate writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. 8, pp.207-223.

Tang, R. 2009. A dialogic account of authority in academic writing. In: Charles, M., Pecorari, D. and Hunston, S. eds. Academic writing: at the interface of corpus and discourse. London: Continuum, pp.170-188.

Tardy, C. 2009. Building genre knowledge. West Lafayette, Indiana: Parlor Press.

Terraschke, A. and Wahid, R. 2011. The impact of EAP study on the academic experiences of international postgraduate students in Australia. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. 10, pp.173-182.

Thesen, L. 2014. ‘If they are not laughing, watch out!’: emotion and risk in postgraduate writers’ circles. In: C. Aitchison and C. Guerin. Eds. Writing groups for doctoral education and beyond: innovations in practice and theory. London: Routledge, pp.162-176.