ABSTRACT

While the literature on doctoral writing groups suggests that these groups can have a substantial positive effect on doctoral dissertation completion, little is known about how group practices contribute to their success or failure. This collaborative autoethnography explores the experiences of five doctoral student participants in a peer writing group to discover how group participation either contributed to or disrupted each participant’s personal writing ecology. While participants felt that the group supported them through personal and job-related stressors and helped them maintain connection to their academic disciplinary community, for some participants the group became an additional source of stress and failed to provide needed guidance. Analysis of individual and group experiences through the ecological perspective challenges the normative meaning of ‘failure’ for doctoral writing and doctoral writing groups, suggesting that the concepts of persistence and attrition may limit our understanding of the doctoral student experience, while the concept of seeking balance may enhance our understanding. We encourage doctoral students who form peer writing groups to consider how the group can be structured to support each member’s writing ecology and to maintain flexibility with group practices as members’ circumstances change.

摘要

虽然有关博士写作小组的文献表明，这些小组可以对博士论文的完成产生实质性的积极影响，但对于小组实践如何对他们的成功或失败有贡献的知之甚少。这项协作性的民族志研究探讨了同伴写作小组中五名博士研究生的经历，以发现小组参与如何促进或破坏了每个参与者的个人写作生态。尽管参与者认为该小组通过个人和与工作相关的压力源来支持他们，并帮助他们保持了与学术纪律团体的联系，但对于某些参与者而言，该小组成为了另一种压力源，未能提供所需的指导。通过生态学角度对个人和团体经历的分析挑战了博士论文和博士论文写作群体的“失败”的规范含义，这表明坚持和减员的概念可能会限制我们对博士生体验的理解，而寻求平衡的概念可能会增进我们的理解。我们鼓励组成同伴写作小组的博士生考虑如何构建小组，以支持每个成员的写作生态，并随着成员情况的变化保持小组实践的灵活性。