Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education on 07/03/2016, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02602938.2016.1154501
Accepted author manuscript, 242 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - How does completing a dissertation transform undergraduate students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge?
AU - Ashwin, Paul William Hamilton
AU - Abbas, Andrea
AU - McLean, Monica
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education on 07/03/2016, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02602938.2016.1154501
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - dissertations
KW - academic knowledge
KW - students
KW - sociology
U2 - 10.1080/02602938.2016.1154501
DO - 10.1080/02602938.2016.1154501
M3 - Journal article
VL - 42
SP - 517
EP - 530
JO - Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education
JF - Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education
SN - 0260-2938
IS - 4
ER -