Exploring the relationship between practice and writing in Master’s final projects

This talk reports on a recent qualitative study on the written components from a range of practice-based Master’s projects. What form does this writing take? What language practices are involved in the construction of this kind of writing? What is meant by academic writing in this context? To address these questions, an ethnographic approach was adopted in order to allow for more ‘exploration [of] cultures, processes, and experiences of academic writing’ (Paltridge & Starfield, 2012), which in turn allows for more visibility around the language, structure and discourse of these types of dissertations (Lillis & Curry, 2010). Data was drawn from a series of semi-structured interviews with both staff and students from a range of Master’s courses that all use variations of the practice-based dissertation. The findings from this kind of study can help to build not only a better understanding of the relationship between practice and writing within these disciplines but can also inform those who teach and study on them. Furthermore, understanding more about the writing practices in these dissertations can also help to offer alternative, more innovative, versions of dissertations to other disciplines (Vaughan, 2021).