Reconceptualization Of Academic Literacy Socialization In An Intercultural Space: A Micro-Ethnographic Inquiry Of First Year Multilingual Doctoral Students In The U.S

This dissertation reports findings from a microethnographic analysis of the academic literacy socialization of six multilingual PhD students in the field of education as they progressed through their first year of doctoral education. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the academic socialization processes that these multilingual students underwent while building academic knowledge and social relationships, and gaining an understanding of disciplinary knowledge and academic writing in a second language.

Drawing from the scholarship on sociolinguistic ethnography, language socialization, New Literacies and educational studies on intertextuality , this study was a one-year long ethnographic investigation of the doctoral students' academic socialization both inside and outside of the classroom setting. The researcher followed six students in their theoretical and methodological courses, facilitated support group discussions they attended, and provided mentoring on various issues regarding life in academia. The sources of data include students’ written work, audio and video recordings of classroom discussions and student support group meetings, classroom observations, extensive field notes, and ethnographic interviews.

This study's results suggest that that socializing into the values of academic writing is a complex and multilayered process in which students collaboratively construct meaning and engage in interactive dialogs both inside and outside of their classrooms in order to learn how to become legitimate participants in their academic disciplines. I argue that by acting and reacting (Erickson and Shultz, 1977) to each other as speakers and writers in an intercultural space, some adult multilingual students resist, challenge, and create hybrid forms of literacy practices, thus expanding the notion of textual world construction at doctoral level. The study demonstrates that the spaces created outside of academic classrooms can enhance students' understanding of academic literacy practices, and empower the students to be engaging practitioners and members of their imagined academic communities.