Abstract
M.Ed.
This research report focuses on exploring how civil engineering students construct their
writer identities through their academic writing. To explore this research, my study is framed
by two broad theories of writing: student academic writing and writer identity. In this study I
collected two sets of data: the primary data were student written artefacts (in-class tasks),
while interviews (individual and focus groups) made up the secondary component of my data.
I then used a hybrid set of techniques to analyse this data: content analysis, discourse analysis
and narrative analysis. This helped me code the data into four manageable categories, which
produced an array of results regarding students’ relationships with written texts. Writing and
identity, particularly ‘writer identity’ constructs are dynamic, being continuously reshaped by
interpersonal and/or literary encounters. There cannot be absolute pure writing forms that will
account for one’s writing practices. This is most visible in the established categories of this
research that seamlessly blend with each other: design and developmental perspectives,
environmental awareness, civil engineering as ‘making things’ and ‘solving societal
problems’ and academic engineering discourse. The results of this research study were
thought-provoking and showed that new ways of understanding student writing practices and
their corresponding writer identity constructs is possible and necessary. My findings further
suggest that writer identity positions need to be considered by student and teacher alike, not
merely as an option to be considered if there is time but rather as an intrinsic element of the
academic writing classroom.