Akademisk vejledning og skrivning – for vejledere og studerende. Mere kollektiv og dialogisk vejledning giver mere læring og flere gode opgaver.

Útdráttur

In this article I present a holistic model of academic guidance. This guidance is founded upon sociocultural theory of learning (learning as social practice) and principles for good guidance. It is dialogical and combines different types of collective guidance, such as writing groups and guidance groups. Its guidance focus is academic writing in a very broad sense. Collective, dialogical, and good guidance increases learning and meets students’ different learning styles and guidance needs. Therefore, practising such guidance is a way to achieve better learning, better academic essays and theses, as well as other advantages. I discuss examples of collective guidance, the advantages of this kind of guidance and principles of good guidance. I also present results from an empirical study of guidance in a compulsory first term course, “Academic Writing” at the University of Bergen. This course is an example of best guidance practice because of the use of different types of collective guidance and because it works with feedback on two drafts. The electronic feedback represents a special type of collective guidance as all students have access to teachers’ comments on their own draft and on other students’ drafts, where some comments might address several drafts at the same time. I investigate a selection of such comments and evaluate them, using three categories: 1) Good comments, 2) General and unclear comments and 3) Inappropriate comments. Finally, I unite collective, dialogical, and good guidance in a conclusive holistic guidance vision.