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LEAD - Learning Enhancement and Academic Development

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14083

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Author: search.filters.author.Donaghue, HelenHas files: No

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    Becoming doctoral researchers: the role of dialogic activities in fostering community belonging
    (Taylor & Francis Group, 2025-07-23) Adams, Gill; Donaghue, Helen; Turrell, Molly
    The university research environment is seen as key to supporting the development of autonomous, creative and collaborative researchers, with supervisors often positioned as significant brokers, yet successful integration into research communities is challenging, particularly for early career researchers. In this paper we look beyond supervision to map the practices that support doctoral researchers to develop a sense of belonging to and participation in research communities. To elicit insights into the complexities of doctoral experiences, we deploy a somewhat novel approach comprising analysis of talk in tutorials, supplementing this with individual interviews. The findings reveal the centrality of relationships in doctoral students’ sense of belonging. Although supervisors are important in this work, this study demonstrates the complexity of doctoral experiences and the value of interactions and relationships with other human and more-than-human (e.g. texts, objects, physical and digital spaces, technologies) actors. These relationships were fostered through structured dialogic spaces and activities and various informal encounters. This study shows how these planned activities are experienced and how they interact with serendipitous events. We argue for increasing opportunities for dialogue and the use of tasks that encourage critical engagement within supportive small-group environments, to facilitate candidates’ integration into research communities.
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    An embedded genre-based writing pedagogy for early-stage doctoral students
    (Emerald, 2025-03-10) Donaghue, Helen; Adams, Gill
    Purpose Writing is crucial to doctoral students. Increasing recognition of the importance and difficulty of doctoral writing has prompted a call for doctoral students to be better supported in developing writing skills and confidence, and for writing to be taught within disciplines. This paper adds to this call by presenting and evaluating an embedded genre-based writing pedagogy for doctoral students. It focuses on early-stage doctoral researchers. Despite literature highlighting the importance of integrating doctoral students into scholarly practices from early stages of studies, there is a lack of writing research with these early-stage students. Design/methodology/approach This paper audio-recorded small group tutorials in the early stages of a professional doctorate and supplemented this data set with individual interviews with doctoral students. Data were analysed thematically. Findings In this paper, the authors report on four main findings: how genre pedagogy (1) prompted students to revise their understandings of doctoral writing, (2) inspired students to express voice and stance, (3) helped students develop a conscious awareness of writing and (4) influenced (positively) students’ identity formation and emotions. Originality/value While interest in doctoral writing has increased, there is little research about doctoral writing pedagogies for early-stage doctoral researchers. This paper also extends the literature on doctoral writing pedagogies by showing how a genre-based pedagogy helps early-stage doctoral researchers understand doctoral writing and develop their own writing via analysis of genres within their disciplinary community.
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    Talking About Teaching: The Value of Conversations
    (Bloomsbury, 2025-02-20) Donaghue, Helen
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    Age and Nationality: Identity Tensions in Kuwait
    (2024-03-26) Almnaies, Shahd; Donaghue, Helen; Tajeddin, Zia; Yazan, Bedrettin
    This chapter examines identity tensions experienced by in-service female Kuwaiti English language teachers. Using a multimodal narrative approach, this chapter analyzes stories in the forms of written narratives and multimodal texts and images produced by Kuwaiti teachers to find out which identities and identity tensions are relevant to them in their working lives. In reading and responding to each other’s stories and sharing similar experiences, the participants came to an understanding that their identity struggles were due to the underlying tensions between younger and older teachers and Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti teachers. A significant contextual influencer was a political agenda (Kuwaitization) dividing local and non-local teachers. This chapter provides a language teacher identity perspective from Kuwait and the Middle East which is rarely heard. This study contributes a further understanding of two identity tensions: age (specifically, being young in the profession) and nationality. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Zia Tajeddin and Bedrettin Yazan; individual chapters, the contributors.
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    Using post-test think aloud interviews to investigate student reading skills and reading test validity [Oral Presentation]
    (English UK North, 2018-10-06) Donaghue, Helen; Taylor, Lyndon
    This presentation will report on a classroom-based research project carried out in a tertiary institution in the UK with international students on a pre- sessional EAP course. Using a think aloud protocol, students described (retrospectively) how they did tasks in a reading test. Interviews yielded information about students' reading skills and strategies and the cognitive validity of test items, which enabled informed improvements to teaching and test design. The presentation will give brief background information and outline the research methodology. We will then detail interesting findings from the interviews, including information about how students approached texts and tasks, the skills and strategies they used (or did not use), and information about the validity of test questions. We will discuss how this process informed teaching and syllabus changes, ensured better teaching/test alignment, and helped improve test design
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    Help or hindrance: A critical examination of trainer talk [Oral Presentation]
    (IATEFL, 2018-04-13) Donaghue, Helen; Oxholm, Alice
    This talk will critically examine trainer talk during discussions with student teachers about teaching practice. Using data extracts, we will show instances of trainer talk that hindered or helped student teachers to reflect. We will recommend a data-led approach to examining trainer talk and will show the strategies that helped us improve our own practice.
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    Negotiating identities: Relational work in critical post observation feedback [Oral Presentation]
    (BAAL, 2018-09-09) Donaghue, Helen
    Discourse is considered an important locus for the study of identity (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005). Benwell and Stokoe (2006) note the ‘enthusiastic use’ (p.34) of the term ‘discourse’ in identity theory, but maintain that empirical studies are rare, with few researchers engaging with actual situated examples of language use or looking at how identities are discursively performed. This presentation will examine how identities are negotiated during work-based talk between an inservice English language teacher and two supervisors during post observation feedback meetings. Using a linguistic ethnographic framework, micro analysis of feedback talk will be supplemented with data from interviews in which participants were invited to comment on selected meeting extracts. Linguistic analysis will draw on the concept of relational work: ‘the “work” individuals invest in negotiating relationships with others' (Locher and Watts, 2005: 10). Relational work allows examination of the full spectrum of interpersonal linguistic behaviour: polite, appropriate, inappropriate and impolite. A detailed microanalysis of data extracts from the two meetings will show interactants' use of relational work to negotiate identities. I will show how one supervisor uses politeness strategies while the other uses aggressive behaviour to claim similar identities for themselves while ascribing a negative identity for the observed teacher as they both highlight a weakness in his practice (poor instructions). I will examine the teacher's reaction and participants' ensuing identity negotiations. Analysis will show that identities are emergent, relational and co-constructed. Ethnographic data will reveal the influence of institutional goals on local identity construction and relational work.
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    Fostering subject lecturers’ commitment and capacity to engage with students’ academic literacies development [Oral Presentation]
    (HEIR Network, 2021-09-21) McGrath, Lisa; Donaghue, Helen
    The academic literacies students require for success are specific to their disciplinary contexts. This means that subject specialists are best placed to induct students into the specific genres and discourses of their communities. Yet students’ literacy development is often ‘outsourced’ to generic skills centre or English for Academic Purposes (EAP) provision, with subject lecturers remaining chiefly preoccupied with content knowledge development. Academic literacies specialists have long argued for a collaborative approach, yet university structures impede such collaboration; some subject lecturers are unaware of their value in this process; for some, academic literacies knowledge is tacit, meaning they struggle to articulate their expectations; and others lack the pedagogical tools. To address these issues, we draw on an adaptive process advocated by Benzie et al. (2017), instigating a collaboration between an EAP specialist, an academic developer and subject lecturers with the aim of supporting the subject lecturers to reach an understanding of the academic literacies required by their discipline and to plan how these can be taught and developed in a contextualised way that suits them and their students. Through analysis of interviews and planning meetings with the subject lecturers, teaching materials they developed, and their reflections on the process, we provide insights into subject lecturers' conceptualisations of academic literacies, their teaching practices in relation to academic literacies and their experiences of the collaboration. The project thereby illuminates subject lecturers' relationship to students' academic literacies development and makes recommendations for future collaborations.
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