PhD defence Florentine Sterk: Popularisation writing for interdisciplinary students

On Friday 14 February, Florentine Sterk will defend her PhD dissertation ‘Style and Substance: Popularization Writing Skills for Interdisciplinary Higher Education Students’. In this dissertation, Sterk investigates how students from interdisciplinary programmes can learn to write about their own research for a broad audience.

A gap in educational practice

Imagine this: you are a student and, together with your classmates from other disciplinary fields, you are conducting interdisciplinary and socially relevant research. You would want to spread your interesting findings to as many people as possible, right?

Sterk experienced a gap in the educational practice of universities. She noticed that a lot of focus was placed on academic skills, while popularisation writing skills (a form of science communication) received hardly any attention. Because students are not taught to write texts for a broad audience, they consequently do not engage in this activity. Yet, there is a demand for this skill in the workplace, both inside and outside the academic world.

Examining popularisation writing skills

Sterk therefore examined the popularisation writing skills of interdisciplinary students. She investigated how interdisciplinary students write about science, which skills they can deploy both at the beginning and end of their studies, and how students feel about their own writing skills after receiving writing education.

To support this research, Sterk developed an analytic tool and two rubrics for popularisation texts. The core of effective education, as Sterk's research shows, lies in a combination of developing knowledge about the genre of science communication and creating opportunities for writing practice and evaluation.