Thesis Supervisors as Literacy Brokers in Brazil

In Brazil, as in much of the academic world, there is an increasing acknowledgement among scholars that their chances of having their research noticed by a geographically diverse scientific community increase when that research is communicated in English. At the same time, much like the majority of the world, the first language of Brazil is not English, which raises one question that heretofore has not been addressed in the context of that country: How do Brazilian scholars write their research articles in English? That question drove the initial phase of the exploratory study described in the present paper, and it is one that also led the authors to discover that one key agent in the publishing process in Brazilian academia is the dissertation/thesis supervisor. Questionnaire and interview data collected from students and supervisors at a Brazilian university suggest that student and lecturer alike see the need and value of specialized writing guidance, yet neither party seems to ascribe the role of “literacy broker” (a person who contributes to the development of a text intended for publication) to the thesis supervisor in any specific way. Pedagogical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

[1]  Bruce G. Barnett,et al.  Teaching Doctoral Students to Become Scholarly Writers: The importance of giving and receiving critiques , 2000 .

[2]  A. Packer.  A eclosão dos periódicos do Brasil e cenários para o seu porvir , 2014 .

[3]  Dongin Cho,et al.  Science journal paper writing in an EFL context: The case of Korea , 2009 .

[4]  T. Lillis,et al.  Professional Academic Writing by Multilingual Scholars , 2006 .

[5]  A. Packer,et al.  The emergence of journals of Brazil and scenarios for their futureI , 2014 .

[6]  Sally Burgess.  Centre-Periphery Relations in the Spanish Context: Temporal and Cross-Disciplinary Variation , 2014 .

[7]  Jesús Rey-Rocha,et al.  Publishing research in the international context: An analysis of Spanish scholars' academic writing needs in the social sciences , 2014 .

[8]  David F. Feldon,et al.  Faculty perceptions of common challenges encountered by novice doctoral writers , 2014 .

[9]  Yongyan Li,et al.  “Publish SCI papers or no degree”: practices of Chinese doctoral supervisors in response to the publication pressure on science students , 2016 .

[10]  Charlotte Wegener,et al.  Supervisor and Student Co-Writing: An Apprenticeship Perspective [43 paragraphs] , 2013 .

[11]  John Flowerdew,et al.  Shaping Chinese novice scientists' manuscripts for publication , 2007 .

[12]  M. Cargill,et al.  Introduction to the Special Issue: English for Research Publication Purposes , 2008 .

[13]  Guangwei Hu,et al.  Apprenticeship in Scholarly Publishing: A Student Perspective on Doctoral Supervisors' Roles , 2015, Publ..

[14]  Vincent Larivière,et al.  On the shoulders of students? The contribution of PhD students to the advancement of knowledge , 2011, Scientometrics.

[15]  A. Moreno.  Researching into English for research publication purposes from an applied crosscultural perspective , 2009 .

[16]  Shelley Burgin,et al.  Pedagogical Approaches that Facilitate Writing in Postgraduate Research Candidature in Science and Technology , 2011, Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice.

[17]  Ken Hyland,et al.  Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge , 2015 .

[18]  Joseph A. Horvath,et al.  Tacit knowledge in professional practice : researcher and practitioner perspectives , 2000 .

[19]  三木 昭三.  Helping Japanese medical researchers reduce errors in writing research papers in English by introducing a self-improvement support system , 2009 .

[20]  B. Kamler.  Rethinking doctoral publication practices: writing from and beyond the thesis , 2008 .

[21]  John Flowerdew,et al.  Problems in writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong , 1999 .