LINGUIST List 19.1716
Thu May 29 2008
Diss: Disc Analysis: Chandrasoma: 'Coping with Interdisciplinarity...'
Editor for this issue: Evelyn Richter
<evelynlinguistlist.org>
1. Ranamukalage
Chandrasoma,
Coping with Interdisciplinarity: Postgraduate writing in business studies
Message 1: Coping with Interdisciplinarity: Postgraduate writing in business studies
Date: 29-May-2008
From: Ranamukalage Chandrasoma <ranamukalage.chandrasomadet.nsw.edu.au>
Subject: Coping with Interdisciplinarity: Postgraduate writing in business studies
E-mail this message to a friend
Institution: University of Technology Sydney
Program: PhD
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2007
Author: Ranamukalage Chandrasoma
Dissertation Title: Coping with Interdisciplinarity: Postgraduate writing in business studies
Linguistic Field(s):
Discourse Analysis
Dissertation Director:
Alastair Pennycook
Charles Bazerman
Vijay Bhatia
Mike Baynham
Dissertation Abstract:
This thesis critically investigates how student writers cope withinterdisciplinarity in business studies at postgraduate level. The corpusof knowledge student writers have to grapple with today seems to distanceitself from the traditional mono-disciplinary contexts. Texts as well asthe students who construct them are being continuously informed andconditioned by new values and imperatives of relatively new discursivepractices. Hence student writing especially at postgraduate level can beregarded as a complex academic endeavour where students have to take upmultiple writing positions. Analyzing student texts against the backdrop ofthe enormous intertextual and interdiscursive resources pertaining tointerdisciplinarity is a major component of this thesis.
Electivizatiion of the curricula, on the other hand, while providingstudent writers with a wide range of choices, has created yawning gapsbetween what is commonly known as prior knowledge and what is yet to belearnt in the form of new knowledges. These epistemological orientations,i.e., how disciplinary knowledge is acquired, evaluated, contested, andstrategically used also constitute an integral part of this research.
Also of importance in the above contexts are the often lengthy andgenerically diverse assessment tasks students are required to accomplishwithin specific deadlines. The nature and structure of assignment topicsand assessment tasks have in the past two decades or so undergonetremendous changes owing in large measure to disciplinary as well associo-economic imperatives. Student writing has several dimensions in termsof the mode of assessment: e.g. examination-based, presentation-based,research-based, observation-based. This thesis, however, will focus onresearch-based writing tasks.
Based on the findings of this thesis, a paradigm called criticalinterdisciplinarity has been proposed in the concluding chapter.Pedagogical and curricular considerations play a vital role in criticalinterdisciplinarity.
By virtue of their encyclopaedic dimensions, knowledge domains relating toacademic interdisciplinarity in student writing lend themselves to a widerange of future research projects. An attempt has been made here tocritically explore only a tiny proportion of this inexhaustible repertoireof knowledge.
|