Institute of Education London

Mary Scott

• Qualifications and position:
  • BA, BA Hons (Postgrad), BEd (Postgrad), Sec.Teachers'.Dip. Adv.Dip.Ed (Language in Ed.)
  • Founding Director of CAPLITS, now known as Academic Writing Centre
  • Founder and leader of interuniversity Academic literacies Research group
• Faculty:
  • Faculty of Children and Learning
• Department:
  • Culture, Communication and Media
• Summary:
  • I hold a B.A. degree in English and Latin and a one-year postgraduate B.A. (Hons) degree in English (specialising in modern poetry). I also have a post-Hons-degree B.Ed from the University of Cape Town. This two-year course included a thesis (approx 40,000 words) on the Shakespeare play in the secondary school - theory and practice. In South Africa I taught both English and Latin to secondary school students, Latin to undergraduates and English literature to undergraduates and postgraduates.
    
    I came to the UK on scholarships in 1974 to follow a course on language in education. Since then I have worked in primary and secondary schools, and have taught English in the workplace and in universities. At IOE I have taught on the PGCE (Education), B.Ed (Hons) for serving teachers in UK, Hong Kong & Cyprus, and MA and Ph.D. programmes. I also supervise Ph.D. students. My main areas of interest in teaching and research are literacy (especially academic literacies), writing for publication, student writing including how teachers read student writing, and the teaching of literature in schools and higher education internationally.
• Teaching:
  • Supervising doctoral theses
    Mentoring staff and research students engaged in writing for publication
    Contributing to sessions for university teachers.
    Teaching thesis writing to Ed.D students
    
• Research Projects:
  • Participant in a Carnegie-funded project at the University of Cape Town, 2009.
    Member of the Antwerp Research Group: Cross-national and cross-phase studies of student writing
    Member of the Fiesole group at European University Institute:: Enhancing the international mobility of university teachers
    Co-Investigator , 2008-2009, British Academy funded project : Perceptions on 'proofreading'
    Personal Research: Voicing the text: Reading student writing differently
• Postgraduate Research:
  • My areas of interest:
    ▪Literacy (especially academic literacies);
    ▪Writing for publication;
    ▪Student writing and teachers' readings
    ▪Cross-national and cross-phase studies of student writing;
    ▪The teaching of English (especially literature) in higher education internationally.
    Research students' topics:
    ▪A genealogy of relfective practice with reference to work-based learning
    ▪Genre, subjectivity and the making of academic knowledge : A study of student writing about 'literature' in different educational cultures.
• Professional Activities:
  • ▪Founder (in 1992) and leader of the Interuniversity Academic Literacies Research Group;
    ▪Honorary Member of BALEAP (British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes)
    ▪Reviewer of research proposals (e.g ESRC) and of papers submitted to journals (e.g. Text & Talk; Studies in Higher Education;London review of Education; English Studies in Africa)
    ▪Member of the editorial board of Journal of Writing Research
    ▪Member of management committee of COST IS0703(European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively)
    ▪Honorary consultant to ANFR-funded project:Didactique d'ecrire
    ▪ Member of scientific committee for bilingual conference on Litteracies universitaires:savoirs, ecrits' disciplines , Lille, 2010
    ▪External examiner of M.Phil & Ph.D theses:
    Recent Ph.d. examining: Sheffield Hallam University, January 2008; Open University 2008; Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, 2008; University of Southampton, 2011
• Conferences/presentations:
  • Keynotes:
    ▪Voicing the text: reading student writing differently. International Writing across the Curriculum Conference in Austin, Texas (May 2008).
    ▪Researching language classrooms: discourses in the very walls. Conference on new language teaching, new language learning, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius (5-7 June 2008)
    ▪A textual ethnography: reading student writing differently. At seminar on border identities: negotiating second language writing. CREOLE, Bristol (16 June 2008)
    Other conference presentations:
    ▪From error to ethnopoetics and back stories WDHE, London July 2010
    ▪Academics as writers and teachers of writing: an ethnopoetic reframing of a dual role' , Mobile, Language, & Literacy (AILA) Conference, Cape Town, January, 2011.<> ▪Rethinking a research project: From "proofreading" to "reading" with help from Bourdieu'. Writing Research across Borders Conference . Washington, US, February, 2011.
    ▪Making new knowledge in writing: Challenging a centre-periphery framing', CCCC Atlanta, April, 2011
• Personal Country Knowledge:
  • South Africa: academic literacies; writing for publication; language ideologies
    Mexico: Student writing in English in the upper secondary school; academic literacy in the university.
    Hong Kong: teaching of English in schools and in the university
    United States: Student writing; composition and rhetoric
    Australia: Writing in HE
• Languages Spoken:
  • Afrikaans(Advanced)
    Dutch (intermediate)
    French (Intermediate)
    Spanish (basic)
• Languages Written:
  • Afrikaans (Advanced)
    Dutch (intermediate)
    French (Intermediate
    Spanish (basic)
    I can read academic texts in all four languages