Writing for the doctorate and beyond

Beginning from a situation in which having written a thesis is most often the primary pedagogical qualification for supervising someone else's, writing has been neglected as a central component of doctoral education. Yet there now appears across the academy to be an increased interest in the writing associated with doctoral work. This chapter discusses this new attention to writing in the new policy climate of doctoral diversity. It argues that this attention is in some cases reactive and often intellectually poorly resourced, whereby, for example those engaged to help research training programs are chosen because of an impressive publication record rather than because of exemplary pedagogical or curriculum expertise. Being a published author or editor is often the main qualification for developing new programs dedicated to writing for dissertation or publication. As a consequence therefore, pedagogies for writing are ad hoc and sporadic; critical questions of textuality and of rhetoric appear to be submerged and marginal. Traditionally, while writing pedagogy in universities has remained the 'housework' of university education, it has accordingly been mostly done by women and afforded limited status and prestige. Yet in the new climate it appears that there is an emerging recognition of the need for institutional capacity building for writing- and publication-focused pedagogical practices in doctoral work.