Durban University of Technology established its writing centre in 2013, as an independent unit outside of academic faculties. There are six writing centres located across the Durban and Pietermaritzburg campuses of the university. The writing centre offers a student-centred collaborative learning space that focuses on developing students’ academic literacies. It offers writing companionship for all students and staff, through one-on-one and group consultations, responsive workshops and writing tutorials. The writing centre recruits’ postgraduate students from multiple disciplines as writing tutors. This enables tutors to share disciplinary knowledge and effectively engage with all students.¹⁸ The writing centre is fully funded by the University Capacity Development Grant (UCDG) and is one of the university’s special projects.

In addition to generic support, the writing centre offers embedded academic literacy support to students in the foundational programmes of the different departments. In 2018, the writing centre in the Pietermaritzburg campus entered into a collaborative arrangement with the Department of Nursing’s Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP). The arrangement was to give academic writing support to the ECP students as part of the Essentials for Professional Practice (EPP) module, which is aimed at equipping students with essential skills to succeed in their academic and professional activities. As academic literacy is seen as one of those essential skills in both aspects, the writing centre had to engage with all first-year ECP students, through in-class writing tutorials, workshops and one-on-one and group consultations. With regard to the academic literacies theory in teaching practice underpin the centre’s integrated writing intervention programmes through interdisciplinary collaboration. The activities include support on basic academic writing practices, an offering of context-embedded tutorials and integrated examples of content knowledge.

The content of writing tutorials is specific to nursing and designed collaboratively with the lecturers from the Department of Nursing. This is in line with the view of Clarence who asserted that the strength of writing centre practice is in constantly finding new innovative ways of collaborate with departments of various disciplines to ensure that writing development is embedded in specific academic practice.³ The writing tutorials focus on the low order concerns (LOCs) that generally concentrate on sentence structure, punctuations, spelling, word choice, grammar and mechanics. The workshops and writing consultations focus on higher order concerns (HOCs), which are crucial elements of assignment writing. These include thesis or focus, audience and purpose, organisation, development and referencing. The HOCs writing support adopts the process approach to academic writing, in which students are encouraged to develop their writing through a series of iterative stages.

Tertiary institutions are a new environment for first-year students and present them with learning and writing experiences, different from their previous education level. This demands another socialisation for learners who are coming from secondary schools and other pre-university activities. Predictably, this proves to be a challenge for learners.^20,21,22 Harvey prescribed a deliberately crafted socialising initiative for new students in higher institutions of learning, intending to induct them into the tertiary education system.²² This, according to the author, would make students consciously aware of the particular lifestyle of learning in a new academic environment and would affect their overall knowledge because tertiary institutions change the identity of students through student support initiatives. The socialising initiative would therefore, enable students to cope academically and imbue them with demands of the new identity.

This study adopts the ALM as the theoretical framework. Academic Literacies theory situates writing within a socio-cultural context.¹⁹ The ALM conceptualises literacies as social practices and focuses on students’ identities and learning experiences.¹⁹ According to a panel of researchers working for the Centre for Applied Linguistics, academic literacy includes:

According to McKenna, academic literacy is not one, but many things; it is the language of academic disciplines.²⁴ She observed that as far as many disciplines in higher education are concerned, academic literacy is ‘no-one’s mother tongue’, as such to be accepted, ideologically to one or the other disciplinary ‘tribe’, a student has to acquire this language. Academic access as a code language of epistemological access in many disciplines has to do not only with ‘ways of using language but also the beliefs, attitudes and values of the group’.²⁴ Whilst many students come with no knowledge of generic and specific disciplinary literacies, some come with literacy practices that closely approximate them to cracking the code of the literacy of the discipline they want to join. Others on the other hand will keep on using wrong literacy practices until they are kicked out by the disciplinary tribe.²⁴ It is therefore the responsibility of institutions to ensure that every student that gains access to ‘university gates’ achieves the acquisition of values, beliefs and attitudes for the discipline they want to join if they are to become successful beyond the university gates.

As such, developing appropriate literacy goes beyond mere mastering of specific technical writing conventions; it’s socialisation to certain value systems, ways of thinking and communication. This is why much of the literature on academic literacies advocates an embedded approach for academic literacy curricula.^2,25,26,27 These authors argue that the embedded curriculum approach would enhance student experiences of learning academic writing and constructing knowledge in that discipline. Boughey and McKenna² had suggested different models of interaction between writing practitioners and students. Street¹³ suggested that effective collaborative learning between different stakeholders is crucial in supporting students to develop such appropriate academic literacy practices. Salamonson et al.²⁸ also contended that embedded academic support is one of the key strategies for supporting academic writing development for nursing students. Kift and Field²⁹ advocated a holistic approach that integrates fundamental academic support to discipline-specific activities.

These scholarly positions depart from the erstwhile academic literacy practices in which the development of writing and language competencies were separate from discipline-specific activities. They argue that effective academic literacy development of first-year students involves not only coaching in academic writing technicalities but also being immersed in disciplinary writing idiosyncrasies.³⁰

According to Dison and Clarence,³¹ disciplinary requirements of academic writing play a critical role in socialising students to academic literacies discourse. As such, the activities of the writing centre ought not to be viewed as an end to themselves, but as an integral part of a broader and integrated academic literacy socialisation, which includes discipline-specific and professional activities.

Therefore, in addition to disciplinary socialisation, students need to develop various socio-professional literacy identities relevant to their professional aspirations.³² It is noncontroversial to contend that different social and professional contexts require different and specific identities. For example, nursing students chosen to participate in this study are required to develop generic academic literacies because of them being students in a higher education institute. In addition, they need to develop and be competent to the nursing-specific jargon and mindset, both in their nursing education and clinical practice settings. As such, if writing is part of socialisation, it could be argued, therefore, that nursing students are required to be socialised in the different contexts they find themselves if they are to practice the correct form of literacy. Effective academic literacy support would need embedment in all the three contexts.³³

Figure 1 reflects that writing as an academic practice needs to be more visible between and within disciplines.³ As such, it is more critical for all stakeholders not only to develop the collaboration but also to be able to sustain it long term.

The empirical dimension of this study is based on phenomenography, a qualitative research approach that assesses how participants make sense of their experiences of a phenomenon.³⁴ The study methodology and design is presented further.

This study employs an interpretivist paradigm to capture the subjective experiences of first-year ECP nursing students on their learning of academic writing. It explains the dynamics of individuals who are engaged in the social world they are interpreting.³⁵ Locating this study within an interpretivist paradigm is important because the writing centre, which provides the context for the study, adopts policies of teaching and learning of academic writing that should be informed by the contextual realities of the students. Phenomenography was employed as a research methodology because it is a research approach that effectively represents the qualitatively different ways people experience, conceptualise and understand various aspects of a phenomenon. The focus is thus on the variation of participants’ experiences of phenomena.³⁶ In this study, phenomenography was useful in understanding how nursing students experienced and conceptualised academic writing in relation to the discipline of nursing.

The target group for this study was the first-year students admitted into the ECP stream of the Department of Nursing. The ECP students, usually 20% of the annual intake, undergo 5 years of nursing training, instead of the 4 years undergone by the rest of the students. In order to improve their academic literacy, the department of nursing offers them the EPP module that includes academic writing presentations, tutorials from the writing centre, computer literacy from the information and Communication Systems (ICS) department and information literacy from the library department. The researcher, as a participant, wanted to understand the contribution of the intervention programme of the writing centre on the academic writing skills of these students. Thus, the study used purposive sampling for the selection of the participants (see Table 1).

As shown in Table 1, participants comprised equally distributed males and female, who come from predominantly rural backgrounds. All participants are isiZulu speaking black people, albeit a sheer coincidence.

The data production strategy in phenomenography assists participants to reflect on their experiences of a phenomenon.³⁴ As such, data production comprised a complex battery of activities by participants. These included individual interviews and two focus group discussions. This triangulation of data-collection methods was intended to produce a comprehensive reflection of the phenomenon. Through these activities, the participant was encouraged to reflect on their development of effective academic writing development.³⁷ As such, participants were able to reflect on the impact of the activities of the writing centre, discipline lecturers and clinical mentors, in their academic writing development.

The variety and diversity of approaches in qualitative research design mean that there are different ways of analysing social life, and therefore multiple perspectives and practices in the analysis of qualitative data exist.³⁸ There is no single technique for analysing data in a phenomenographic study because research questions often guide the type of analysis.³⁹ Thus, the researcher focused on examining the differences and similarities in the experiences of the participants. The phenomenographic data analysis method prescribed by Sjostrom and Dahlgren⁴⁰ was used to analyse data in this study. It consists of six stages, namely familiarisation, compilation, condensation, preliminary grouping, a preliminary comparison of categories and outcome space.³⁹ Therefore, data from different sources were transcribed and translated and hand coding was applied to generate specific themes relating to student experiences. After transcribing all the interviews, I read and compared them repeatedly, thinking about similarities and differences both within a single transcript and across all transcripts. Because the ‘how’ aspect of language learning has been thoroughly studied, my analysis focused on the ‘what’ aspect of second language experience, which has not been extensively studied. However, the ultimate aim of analysis in this approach was to discern and identify participants’ qualitatively different experiences or understanding, in a limited number of categories³⁹ as reflected in the results discussed further.

The given category of the outcome space (Table 2) presents results of student reflection on their pre-university background, self-acknowledged writing challenges, the experiences of learning new writing conventions. Most of these were gathered during in-class writing interventions. These in-class tutorials were part of the compulsory writing centre that mainly focused on LOCs such as grammar and basic academic writing conventions.

Despite acknowledging poor schooling and writing background, most participants were confident of their writing abilities. Hutchison⁴⁴ and Archer,¹ have described this apparent contradictory phenomenon, in which students often overestimate their abilities. This is often attributed to the euphoria of successful completion of high school and admission to higher education, which leaves students with a feeling of temporarily heightened capabilities, especially during the initial days of their university life. Nonetheless, most students encountered challenges in mastering basic grammar and academic writing norms. This challenge was reflected on their interviews, as the word ‘difficult’ recurred in 14 out of 18 responses. This initial ‘shock’, enabled students to reflect and come to terms with their specific writing challenges. One participant shared their experience:

Another participant explained:

According to their reflections, even whilst acknowledging their shortcomings and the need to develop university-specific writing practices, some students were reluctant to learn new writing conventions. This was also influenced by the still self-perceived competencies that had enabled them to succeed in high school, as seen in the following reflection:

On the other hand, the inertia may have been influenced by the fact that over 70% of the participants had studied in poorly resourced rural schools, which had crippled their ability to develop basic writing and literacy skills. As such, the feeling of ‘starting-over’ might have been debilitating:

This reluctance was reflected in erratic attendance and poor in-class participation. However, in time, this inertia was replaced by the necessity for developing literacy practices for effective academic and professional participation:

The other participant also added:

The participants acknowledged the values of writing tutorials to their academic development. According to Participant 17, the collaborative learning initiative aimed at supporting them, as nursing students, to enhance their writing skills. The study affirms that effective learning of academic writing is grounded on an academic literacies approach that allows students to recognise the gaps in their learning experiences. As such, these student experiences show a shift in student perception of their writing competencies and their need for academic literacy support.

In Category 2, student reflections were directed towards HOCs writing centre support. These are organised in the form of workshops and are offered once a quarter – coinciding with first assignments. In these workshops, students are supported in essay writing – which follows a process approach – and conventions of academic integrity (paraphrasing, referencing and avoidances of plagiarism). In this category, participants reflected on the effectiveness of the writing centre in their development of academic literacy, receiving actionable feedback and the conflict between writing centre and disciplinary writing prerogatives.

The residual reluctance to support was still reflected in student responses, even with regard to HOCs, as stated here:

This point was reflected by some participants, where they felt undermined for being taught what they deem ‘easy stuff’. The experience of being treated as incompetent compared with other first years was a cause for concern. Whilst some felt that writing an assignment was a skill they had already mastered in their previous education and needed no support, others felt the need to adopt university-specific conventions:

Other participants shared their positive learning experience and valued the one-on-one writing consultations:

One of the participants appraised the writing centre as a place that has helped her hone her writing skills by demanding that students plan what they write before bringing their work to the writing centre. However, despite the positive experiences with the interactive mode of delivering writing support at the writing centre, some participants encountered challenges with how feedback was handled:

This sometimes hampers the positive experience regarding the use of the writing centre in general and the confusion surrounding the use of the feedback. As Archer⁴⁵ has pointed out, tutors often undervalue the critical role of constructive feedback. A lack of uniformity in feedback has both advantages and disadvantages for the learners and the tutors.

In addition to the frustration about feedback provided by the writing centre tutors, there was general confusion on the role of the writing centre. One of the participants considered the writing centre as a place where students go for ‘ eradication of errors’ (Participant 08, Student, Female).

Another student conceded to having felt irritated because of tutors at the writing centre:

The frustration was mainly based on the expectation that, instead of a space for collaborative learning, the writing centre is a corrective or a remedial setting wherein tutors point out the mistakes and fix them for students.

In this category, participants reflect on the transference of academic writing competence from the writing centre (through task-specific consultations) to the nursing discipline, to the clinical setting. Whilst academic literacy socialisation is meant to be interdisciplinary and integrated, it was unclear whether that intention was understood by participants. Most understood literacy practices of different contexts (writing centre, discipline classrooms, clinical setting) as unrelated and tended to devalue the ‘generic’ writing practices from the writing centre in favour of mastering discipline-specific jargon and clinical terminologies:

The assumption is that students in professions such as nursing do not need to master basic academic writing but their disciplinary jargon is endemic and has been observed in the literature. Salamonson et al.²⁸ asserted that institutions of learning usually make assumptions about nursing students that are detrimental to their writing. One assumption is that nursing students would naturally learn academic writing through their interaction with disciplinary texts. However, Whitehead⁴⁶ observed that ‘nurses often have a contractual obligation to participate in scholarly activity, where good writing practices are essential for job survival and security’. Writing is also arguably the most important exhibition of one’s demonstration of scholarship. According to Miller et al.⁴⁷ and Mitchell et al.,⁴⁸ the development of generic academic writing conventions is a prerequisite to discipline-specific epistemological access.

Whilst this has been established, this integrated nature of academic literacy socialisation was not clear to some participants:

However, others felt that they were able to make the transference between contexts:

Whilst participants views differed on the need for the integrated approach to academic writing, some argued that the discipline lecturers were also not invested in the approach:

On the other hand, nursing practitioners in the clinical setting were reported as more critical to student writing:

Whilst the need for maintaining the integrated approach to learning academic literacy may not be immediately apparent to some participants, their reflections and experiences further consolidate this need. However, the deliberate commitment of different stakeholders (writing centre, discipline lecturers and nursing practitioners) may need to be mobilised and coordinated if this approach can lead to perceptive and effective academic literacy development.