Supervisor and Student Co-Writing: An Apprenticeship Perspective

Abstract

This is a story about the creation of a co-authored research article. The purpose is to emphasize co-writing as a significant pedagogic practice within doctoral supervision. Regarding apprenticeship as a pedagogical methodology as well as a theoretical framework makes co-writing more than an output-driven technique for increasing productivity. Becoming a researcher requires intense involvement in real research, and it is difficult to teach somebody how to do it. It entails practice. This practice is presented by means of an e-mail correspondence between a doctoral student and her supervisor during the article production. These real-time reflections show that effective apprenticeship in this context is a matter of giving access to the practice of doing research, opening up the field and thereby providing direction. However, it is also a theoretical perspective concerned with adding materiality and real tasks to the relational space between supervisor and the novice researcher. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1303149

Keywords

• co-writing
• doctoral supervision
• getting published
• apprenticeship
• situated learning