RAPPORT
Issue 5 (August 2020)
identity are a normal part of both
transitions and [developing academic]
writing’ (2009: 181). Similarly, French
claims a need to ‘reposition the role of
struggle and productive failure as
necessary components for student
engagement in meaningful academic
writing development’ (French 2018: 409).
It would seem that we need to find the
language to normalise the experience of
academic struggle:
‘students need to understand that
developing into confident academic
writers is not a straightforward, linear
or automatic process; rather it
inevitably involves struggle, conflict
and feelings of uncertainty,
inauthenticity, marginalisation,
exclusion and occasionally, failure’
(French 2018: 409).
For a tutor, normalising the experience of
academic struggle and accepting the
associated emotions of anxiety and doubt
raises questions not only about how to
manage this in a tutorial but also when to
refer students on to additional central
services.
Signposting on and ‘scaffolding’
Another common feature of academic
support tutorials was the move from
discussion to the account of tasks either
completed in the tutorial or referring on to
tasks for the student to complete at
another time. For example:
Students benchmark themselves
against a set of statements and then
looking at their feedback and identify
three common themes to discuss
within the session and to start to
create an action plan with SMART
targets to take forward into the
following year. (Portfolio 8, CS 4)
The main discussions at the second
meeting were around understanding and
interpreting feedback received:
We went through each piece of
coursework and feedback, looking at
this in conjunction with the marking
grid. (Portfolio 23, CS 2)
One tutor talks of ‘introducing a language
for talking about academic tasks’
(Portfolio 5, CS 2) and then applying
these terms in practice in a task
completed during the tutorial, while in
another tutorial the focus was on
establishing a shared metalanguage to
better manage the procedural aspect of
learning:
In practical terms the time was spent
negotiating a plan for future
sessions…. based on some very
simple suggestions to tackle different
aspects of writing, describing the
process in a way that would help
them gain ownership of it and could
also feed into their next assignment.
(Portfolio 5, CS 1)
Other examples of tasks involved
referring on to other external services.
Common topics included making sense of
feedback and developing academic
writing with some cross-over with central
services as students were referred on to
librarians and central writing support
services. These tutorials where learning is
addressed by referring on have a different
feel to them of organising and managing
learning rather than engaging in learning
in real time:
Some signposting was required to
additional library support on
referencing and also encouraging a
broader selection of literature to be
used in future submissions. (Portfolio
23, CS 2)
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