Proposal: Towards a socio-cultural, non-deficit perspective on academic writing by Canadian university students with autism

Detailed Description of Proposed Research Project

Objectives

The proposed project draws on cultural-historical psychology (e.g., Vygotsky, 2012/1934) and writing studies (e.g., Bakhtin, 1986; Miller, 1984) to inform the investigation of academic writing as experienced and produced by Canadian undergraduate university students with autism. The research project poses the following overarching research question: What are the academic writing experiences as reported by undergraduate university students with autism and how does our understanding of these experiences feed into the development of a socio-cultural, non-deficit perspective on such students’ academic writing? The ultimate objective of the project is to provide theoretically grounded recommendations that would allow for further development of academic supports for such students, and, thus, for the increased accessibility of higher education for students with autism. The proposed pioneering project moves away from the traditional deficit view of autism (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1999; Happé & Frith’s, 2006) by drawing on socio-cultural theories (e.g., Bakhtin, 1986; Miller, 1984; Vygotsky, 2012/1934) to tap into university students’ own accounts of their academic writing experiences and investigate features of their academic writing. The purpose of the project is: a) to develop a rich theoretically-informed understanding of such students’ academic writing experiences, supported by the identified features of their academic writing, and b) to draw on this understanding to initiate the development of a new socio-cultural non-deficit perspective on academic writing by university students with autism. The project intends to provide a novel contribution to the currently limited body of knowledge on academic writing by university students with autism. As well, the project promises to have important pedagogical implications by informing the design of targeted academic writing supports for students with autism, which will be developed in collaboration with university centres for students with disabilities.

Context

Autism is a complex, neurodevelopmental disorder, currently characterized by “persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 50). In the past two decades, increasing numbers of students diagnosed with autism have been entering post-secondary institutions (e.g., Gelbar, Smith, & Reichow, 2014). Developing proficiency in academic writing is key to these students’ academic and, later, professional successes (Delano, 2007; Brown & Klein, 2011; Brown, Johnson, Smyth & Cardy, 2014), and the investigation of their academic writing experiences is necessary for both the development of a new theoretically-informed perspective on writing by university students diagnosed with autism and for building tailored academic writing supports for such students. So far, several cognitive theories have dominated the study of individuals diagnosed with autism: a) Theory of Mind (ToM) (Baron-Cohen, 1999); b) Executive Dysfunction Syndrome (Hill, 2004); c) Weak Central Coherence (WCC) model (Happé & Frith, 2006), and d) a more recent Enhanced Perceptual Functioning Model (Mottron, et al., 2006, 2013). Overall, these theories posit that some of the challenges experienced by persons with autism when communicating with other people relate to their difficulties with understanding the mental states of others and with appropriate focus, planning, working memory, and organizational skills, as well as their focus on details rather than overarching ideas or concepts. To date, the studies of writing by individuals with autism have drawn on the cognitive perspectives reviewed above. The main emphasis of these studies has been on the deficits in the writing produced by children with autism (e.g., Brown, et al., 2014; Maxwell, Weill & Damico, 2017; Myles & Hagiwara, 2003). Several features of these children’s writing have been identified, such as a relative lack of awareness of the readers’ needs and an overabundance of detail at the expense of overarching concepts (cf. Baron-Cohen, 1999; Happé & Frith, 2006). However, very few studies to-date have examined academic writing by university students with autism (e.g., Brown & Klein, 2011); addressed the role of the social context in forming such students’ academic writing; focused on academic writing experiences as reported by the students themselves, or explored positive qualities which may be attributed to their writing. With the growing number of higher-functioning individuals with autism entering universities (e.g., White et al., 2016), there is an opportunity to explore such students’ own perspectives on their experiences with written academic communications. This exploration requires that researchers move away from the deficit view of academic writing by such students towards a new, non-deficit perspective that allows for the conceptualization of the effects of the social contexts on the academic writing by and writing experiences of these students as articulated by the students themselves (cf. Artemeva, 2005, 2008; Artemeva & Fox, 2010). Such socio-cultural theories (Vygotsky, 2012/1934) of learning and writing as Situated Learning (SL) (e.g., Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Rogoff, 1990) and Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) (e.g., Artemeva & Freedman, 2006, 2015; Bakhtin, 1986; Miller, 1984), which highlight the role of the social context in human learning in general and in learning to write for specific purposes in particular, provide a solid theoretical foundation for the proposed project. SL is defined as a perspective on learning that views learning as context-bound and occurring when people participate in ongoing activities (e.g., Artemeva et al., 2017; Freedman & Adam, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991), and RGS is defined as an approach to the study of recurrent and recognizable types of writing and speaking, or genres, wherein the concept of genre has been expanded from a classification category of stable forms of literary texts according to their formal features, to a more dynamic view of genres as typified responses to rhetorical needs of the audiences as determined by recurrent social situations (e.g., Bawarshi, 2000; Miller, 1984, 1995; Paré & Smart, 1994). The novelty and strength of the proposed framework lies in that it incorporates considerations of the social context into the examination of how writers experience writing, perform writing tasks, and what they actually write (e.g., Artemeva, 2005, 2008).

Methodology

Ethics:

An earlier, very limited classroom-based study was conducted by my current first-year PhD student as part of her course work for the 2017-2018 ALDS 6101/6102 Doctoral Core Seminar in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies, Parts I and II, for which I was a co-instructor. The study was approved by Carleton University Research Ethics Board (CUREB)-A in early January 2018. The proposed project expands on that study design, and, therefore, we expect to receive an ethics approval for it without major obstacles.

Study Design and Methods:

The proposed project uses mixed methods methodology (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998) and adopts the exploratory sequential design (Creswell, 2015). The proposed project consists of three phases: the first, dominant phase, is a qualitative study (methods used: semi-structured interviews, academic writing sample collection and analyses), which informs the design of a quantitative instrument (a survey), which is then used in the third, quantitative phase. This design can be diagrammed as QUAL (data collection & analysis) -> Instrument Design (survey) -> quan (data collection and analysis) -> Inferences Drawn (cf. Creswell, 2015, p. 41). Qualitative data collected in Phase One will be analysed by applying thematic coding (e.g., Charmaz, 2014) and rhetorical genre analysis (e.g., Devitt, Reiff, Bawarshi, 2004) and by using the qualitative software package NVivo version 12 (QSR International, 2018); quantitative survey data will be analysed with the use of the quantitative statistical software SPSS version 25 (IBM SPSS Statistics, 2017).

Research Site:

Three mid-size Ontario Universities that use English as the medium of instruction (to control for language).

Participants:

A purposive sample (e.g., Tongco, 2007) of 9-12 university students with autism will be recruited for Phase One by recruiting volunteers from the three universities (3-4 students per university). Another purposive sample of 60-90 student volunteers (20-30 per university) will be recruited for Phase Two of the project. Volunteers will be recruited by contacting support centres for students with disabilities at the three universities and asking the centre staff to distribute recruiting posters to students who have previously self-identified as having been diagnosed with autism and provided the centres with supporting documentation.

The proposed timeline:

Submission of ethics application–as soon as project funding is approved; start of participant recruitment–September 15, 2018; start of qualitative data collection and concurrent analysis–October 15, 2018; instrument (survey) development and piloting on the Phase One participant sample–December 1-January 31, 2019; survey pilot analysis and revisions–January 31-March 1, 2019; survey administration to the Phase Two sample–March 1-April 1, 2019; survey response analysis–April 1-May 15, 2019; overall analysis and discussion of findings, development of the new theoretical perspective, development of recommendations for tailored writing supports, and concurrent preparation for conference presentation and journal paper writing, as well as design of SSHRC Insight Grant application–April 15-September 15, 2019; conference presentation preparation, writing the first article & SSHRC application–July 15-October 1, 2019.

Students/Talent

One PhD student, an MA student, and an undergraduate student from Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies (ALDS) will be hired as Research Assistants (RA). My current PhD student who has completed a course-based study of 12 students with autism will be hired as the lead RA because she brings a strong background as a retired speech-language pathologist closely familiar with the diagnosis of autism and as a sessional university instructor in the area of speech and language problems. The training of this student in socio-cultural theories, writing studies, rhetorical genre analysis, and mixed-methods methodology has begun in my courses while she was an ALDS MA and later PhD student and will continue thought the proposed project. The student will have a rare opportunity to participate in a project from the beginning to end, be further trained in the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, and develop leadership qualities necessary in her own research and future academic work. A Master’s student will be recruited from among second-year ALDS MA students and will be trained in qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. An ALDS undergraduate student will be recruited to participate in data entry and analysis in both Phases of the project. All RAs will receive training in both qualitative and quantitative software packages, conference presentation preparation, and journal paper writing. It is my intention to use this project to encourage all the RAs to submit applications for external funding in 2019-2020 and assist them in designing these applications.

Communication of Results/Knowledge Mobilization

Findings of the proposed project will be communicated through student presentations at the annual 2019ALDS Graduate Students Symposium and presentations at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing (Vancouver, May 2019). A journal article will be prepared for the journal of College Composition and Communication. A SSHRC Insight Grant application will be developed. Recommendations for new writing supports will be developed and communicated to university support centres for students with disabilities.