Helping Doctoral Students to Finish Their Theses

Abstract

The context of this chapter is a competitive and high-achieving environment, namely, a medical school in Finland. A concrete process-writing course is described with Ph.D. candidates in medicine, psychology, and dentistry as participants.

The approach is a combination of courses in cognitive strategies with generative writing and shared revision, whereas practical advice on stylistic rules and grammar are not emphasised. The aim of the intervention is to reveal and then revise practices and ideas of writing that usually remain tacit. The theories and methods are applied by Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987), Olson (1994), Björk & Räisänen (1996), Boice (1993), Tynjälä, Mason, & Lonka (2001), and Lonka & Ahola (1995). The idea is to put these theories in action in a very demanding real life situation.

The means included doing focused free-writing exercises, using multiple drafts, training peer-feedback strategies, revealing the myths and revising mental models of writing (for instance, by sharing research evidence on writing), analysing different text types and therefore increasing metalinguistic awareness, making tacit knowledge overt to discussion, and reflecting on the participants’ own writing practices.