‘Fail better’: Reconsidering the role of struggle and failure in academic writing development in higher education

French, Amanda (2016) ‘Fail better’: Reconsidering the role of struggle and failure in academic writing development in higher education. Journal of Innovations in Education and Teaching International.

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Abstract

‘Fail Better’ is an approach which supports first year students’ successful transition to higher education academic writing practices. ‘Fail Better’ uses a broadly academic literacies model of development to address students’ failure and struggle with writing. Rather than blaming students for ‘poor writing’, ‘Fail Better’ maintains that experiences of struggle and failure with academic writing are part of an inevitable and necessary process as students ‘write themselves’ into new disciplinary-based academic writing communities. The final part of the paper explores how subject lecturers, who are often not confident or willing writing developers, can, through the application of “Fail Better’ principles, offer their students a time-efficient, proactive and supportive model of writing development. It argues, moreover, that universities must reject deficit discourses around students’ struggles with academic writing and radically reconceptualise the issue of academic writing support in order to support students more effectively through their struggles and failures.
Key words: Academic writing development, student identity and transition to higher education

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number:	10.1080/14703297.2016.1251848
Dates:	Date Event 31 October 2016 Published
Subjects:	CAH22 - education and teaching > CAH22-01 - education and teaching > CAH22-01-01 - education
Divisions:	Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences > Centre for Study of Practice and Culture in Education (C-SPACE)
Depositing User:	Amanda French
Date Deposited:	03 May 2017 07:42
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2022 17:01
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4135

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