Reclaim and Resist

A Critical Framework for Engaging Students’ Research Writing through Slow, Deliberative, Collaborative Pedagogies

Abstract

Neoliberal discourses about students’ perceived skills deficit persist in higher education worldwide. In South Africa, these are particularly marked, as market discourses overwhelm democratic citizenship discourses in many universities. This can lead to the domination of deficit approaches to teaching, especially of academic writing. This interdisciplinary article conceptualises a law teacher’s and an academic literacies teacher’s experience of developing a programme for law students navigating the shift from undergraduate to postgraduate research writing in these contexts. The authors identify a blend of critical pedagogies emerging from scholarship in their respective fields and honed through iterative cycles of reflection with colleagues and students. They show how these Slow, deliberative, collaborative pedagogies have been used to develop a critical framework for resisting the deficit positioning of students and for reclaiming ways of engaging democratically and care-fully with students, and with research as a scholarly, thoughtful, transformative practice. They argue that this framework can facilitate the expansion of student agency, scholarly identity, and the development of research writing capacities in the disciplines.