Introduction

This chapter presents current perspectives and suggest possible future pathways for research and scholarship on source-based writing. Students in this book are learning in secondary and well as tertiary educational contexts and range from novices through relatively inexperienced undergraduate and graduate students to proficient graduate and published writers as users of source-based writing. Most of the empirical studies reported in this book use interpretive or ethnographic approaches (e.g., analysis of journal and source-based texts, process tracing and stimulated recall or data-based interviews) reported qualitatively, although a few employ quantitative methods. The authors emphasise the need for repeated practice and formative assessment by peers as well as teachers, and for the teacher to gradually build abilities in these more demanding elements of source-based writing. The range of topics and perspectives included in these chapters show the current diversity of scholarship and research in the field under the over-arching theme that source-based writing is a set of academic literacy capabilities.