An embedded genre-based writing pedagogy for early-stage doctoral students

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.