Who we are

Our multidisciplinary team comprises pedagogues, linguists, psychologists, a biologist, and a Math teacher. We study the relationships between teaching, learning, reading and writing in different disciplines at the secondary, higher education and postgraduate levels. Read about our understanding of academic literacies

Our main contribution attempts to show in what ways reading and writing can be dealt with and taught in context and meaningfully in all disciplines and levels of education, avoiding exercises that fragment and distort reading and writing practices.

Most of our members work with the CONICET, the University of Buenos Aires and other national universities.

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SEE BELLOW how we work an how our team meetings are

How do we work in the GICEOLEM?

The GICEOLEM is both a research team and a research-training group. Concerning the latter, we know that to become a researcher one needs to acquire disciplinary knowledge (conceptual, methodological, rhetorical and writing knowledge). This involves facing identity ambiguities, subjective changes, tensions and conflicts that are inherent to the transition from knowledge-receiver to knowledge-producer and from being a reader to being an author.

To facilitate this process, we have created a specific way of working based on what we have learned by researching what hinders and what aids the path to becoming a researcher (see our publications on postgraduate studies). Since those who write a thesis or a dissertation in the Social Sciences usually work alone and this brings feelings of disorientation, insecurity, isolation, and academic impoverishment; we sought to transform this experience in order to accompany, share, discuss, revise, and enrich mutually the work of each group member. Thus, most GICEOLEM participants conducted or are conducting a thesis or a dissertation centered on some aspect of a more encompassing research problem. Therefore, our research program grants meaning to each individual thesis or dissertation inquiry and also prompts frequent interactions between group members.

To support these research projects we hold fortnightly 5-hour meetings and devote most of our time to present and critically comment research drafts. During this revision sessions, usually three authors share their texts and the rest of the participants offer feedback, with Paula closing the round of comments. We frequently revise drafts of a research proposal, a dissertation chapter, a conference abstract, and a research or conference paper. We also go over less elaborated materials such as a tentative table of contents for a dissertation chapter (e.g., a data analysis outline), a theoretical framework outline, or an interview or a class transcript analysis.

Although in each meeting a few members can present their drafts, everybody has the chance to comment them. This collective peer revision of every ongoing thesis work allows participants to learn from others since the topics as well as the steps in each research project present similarities. In addition, since in the GICEOLEM some participants are more advanced in their graduate degrees than others and we even have some recent graduates, newcomers and old timers learn from each other’s experiences, enriching the support provided by the supervisor. In our meetings, while revising a text for a conference or discussing which authors include in a theoretical framework, the pieces of writing are always the starting point for the oral exchanges. Therefore, most of the time, writing is what helps objectify what members of the GICEOLEM, including Paula, are thinking. And sharing our writing is what helps us to improve our ideas through the feedback we receive from others. We devote the last hour of the meeting to discussing reading materials as a way to build common theoretical frameworks and relate them with the analysis of our empirical data (Click here to have a look at some photos of our meetings).

Additionally, GICEOLEM members participate in peer groups that meet regularly. They first share and comment longer drafts via email and later gather to discuss them. These small writing groups complement and alleviate the collective revision sessions conducted in the GICEOLEM meetings. Similarly, these autonomous groups confer and prompt members to be proactive and auto-regulate their writing process, qualities that every research trainee should acquire.

In a reciprocal way, the fortnightly meetings held with the whole team offer a “model” of how to revise texts. This sets the basis to organize the work of peer writing groups. (See Paula Carlino (2016). GICEOLEM: research-training community, research team, and writing group. Diversity and inclusion within the University of Buenos Aires. Paper presented at the "International Writing Across the Curriculum (IWAC) Conference: Writing across Difference". University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S., June 2016. Download presentation).

Additional meetings -with all or part of the team- are developed to work specific issues (analysing data, planning and/or assessing joint seminars, preparing research grants, etc.). In addition, Master’s and doctoral students can have Skype meetings with Paula to talk about other research challenges. (Know about GICEOLEM members' dissertation or postdoc projects)

Finally, since different collective research projects are conducted in the GICEOLEM, we also gather to work on them by presenting and discussing preliminary results. For example, we used to meet twice a year for a three-day colloquium with colleagues from distant universities with whom we developed a joint grant (PICT 2010-893: Reading and writing to learn in universities and teacher-training institutions. Conceptions and practices in different disciplinary courses (Escribir y leer para aprender en universidades e institutos de formación docente. Concepciones y prácticas en cátedras de diversas áreas disciplinares). We are now beginning to develop new research grants awarded to our group.

The GICEOLEM interacts with other research groups. It has hosted Latin American students and teachers during their doctoral and postdoctoral internships and it is frequently visited by international scholars.

Grupo para la Inclusión y Calidad Educativas a través de Ocuparnos de la Lectura y la Escritura en todas las Materias

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