How does completing a dissertation transform undergraduate students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge?

Ashwin, Paul, Abbas, Andrea and McLean, Monica (2016) How does completing a dissertation transform undergraduate students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42 (4). pp. 517-530. ISSN 0260-2938

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Abstract

Dissertations are positioned as the capstone of an undergraduate degree, bringing together what students have previously learned from their programmes through a piece of independent research. However, there is limited research into the ways in which engaging in a dissertation has an impact on students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge. In this article, we explore the relations between students’ accounts of sociological knowledge in their second and third years and how they engage with sociological knowledge in their dissertations. We argue that for the work of the dissertation to have an impact on students’ understanding of sociological knowledge, students need to see their discipline as providing a way of answering their research questions. We explore the implications of this argument for both our understanding of the role of dissertations and research-based learning in universities more generally.

Item Type: Article
RIS ID: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/781138
Additional Information: The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02602938.2016.1154501 c2016 http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02602938.2016.1154501
Keywords: Dissertations, academic knowledge, students, sociology
Schools/Departments: University of Nottingham, UK > Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2016.1154501
Depositing User: Eprints, Support
Date Deposited: 24 Mar 2016 13:20
Last Modified: 04 May 2020 17:42
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/32500

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