Enculturating an ESL doctoral student in disciplinary writing: An apprenticeship process
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate how an English as a Second Language (ESL) doctoral candidate becomes enculturated in the discursive practices of his discipline as he writes his dissertation. The notion of disciplinary enculturation refers to the processes whereby students acquire academic literacy and knowledge in the discipline. It involves an apprenticeship process by which graduate students become competent in using the genre, norms and conventions of the field. The present study explored the enculturation process of an ESL doctoral candidate in agricultural economics using qualitative research methods. The investigation was conducted at Purdue University over the course of two years. During this time, data were gathered by observing student-professor meetings, conducting interviews—open-ended, semi-structured, and discourse-based, and collecting copies of all written documents. Following Miles and Huberman (1994), the analysis of the data consisted of an analytic progression that went from describing what happened to locating key themes and patterns to establishing relationships among those elements. It included the use of charts and matrices to sort, cluster, and link the information collected. In addition, an ethnomethodological approach was used to enhance the analysis of written discourse. Major findings revealed the epistemological nature of writing in the production of a dissertation based on simulation modeling and statistical analysis. It also showed that the apprenticeship process was deeply affected by the status of discipline with respect to other disciplines. Furthermore, disciplinary discourse was found to have a dual role in the apprenticeship process since the doctoral candidate was enculturated to use disciplinary discourse and enculturated through disciplinary discourse.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Silva, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Rhetoric|Composition|Linguistics
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