NG5001 Academic Communication for

Graduate Researchers

Unit One

Reading Critically

First Semester

2024-2025
Learning Outcomes
This unit explores the key question of what it means to read critically as a graduate
student, particularly in cross-disciplinary contexts. We will read academic texts critically
to gain an awareness of how writers across disciplines use certain, shared language
conventions to produce critical writing. We will focus on evaluating arguments and
explore what a critical literature review is.

Students will:
• Consider the relevance and challenges of cross-disciplinary communication in
relation to their own research goals
• To understand what it means to read critically in an academic context
• Evaluate arguments in academic texts across disciplines.
• Consider what makes a literature review critical

1.1 READING CRITICALLY I

(Independent E-Learning)

Unlike undergraduate courses, where students might be able to succeed with minimal
reading, graduate studies require that students read large amounts of information.
Reading is the way graduate students glean new ideas, models and theories, that will
inform their own research. More importantly, graduate students must actively engage
with the information they read, in order to produce new knowledge. It is therefore
important that graduate students understand how to approach texts with a critical eye.

Reflect:
How many elements of critical reading in the list below do you already employ when you
read academic literature? The more ‘ticks’ you have, the further you have already
progressed in becoming a critical reader. Look back at any items that you aren’t already
doing. Consider how you might incorporate these elements of critical reading into your
habitual approach to study.

When I read an academic text I:

o try to work out what the authors are aiming to achieve;
o try to work out the structure of the argument;
o try to identify the main claims made;
o adopt a sceptical stance towards the authors’ claims, checking that they are
supported by appropriate evidence;
o assess the backing for any generalizations made;
o check how the authors define their key terms and whether they are consistent in
using them;

2
o consider what underlying values may be guiding the authors and influencing their
claims;
o keep an open mind, willing to be convinced;
o look out for instances of irrelevant or distracting material, and for the absence of
necessary material;
o identify any literature sources to which the authors refer, that I may need to follow
up.

What does it mean to be critical?

A critical approach to research in academic contexts involves employing a friendly
scepticism (Wallace & Wray, 2021) when reading academic material. This means that
we are open-minded, but analytical, asking questions that allow us to deconstruct
arguments and concepts, in order to look beneath the surface of a text. For example, we
may be looking for the author’s real purpose, or a hidden agenda, or we might ‘test’ the
author’s claims against what we know about the world. Authors rarely state everything
explicitly, and often make assumptions about their audience (background knowledge,
values, and attitudes), which affects how they write. Therefore, the critical reader must
be aware of the implicit messages. Critical reading also involves evaluating the accuracy
of an author’s statements and the soundness of an author’s reasoning that leads to
conclusions.

In academia, one of the most common questions asked by critical readers is ‘Have you
given me sufficient grounds for accepting your claim?’ Asking this question need not
imply suspecting the author is untruthful. It is usually not a matter of truth, but of
viewpoints, interpretation and significance. The critical reading of a text is rarely about
questioning the facts. Mostly it is about assessing the quality of the case that has been
made for interpreting and evaluating the facts. Thus, the critical reader is interested in
whether there is sufficient evidence to support a claim, whether there is another possible
interpretation that has not been considered, and perhaps whether the authors have
argued convincingly that their interpretation applies to other cases. We think about the
extent to which the claims and supporting evidence in a text – which satisfied the
authors – also satisfy us.

One can be a critical reader by focusing on several potential objects of scrutiny,

including:
• Any evidence provided in the account, and whether it is adequate to support the
author’s claims;
• Whether the reasoning of the author’s argument follows logically to the conclusion
that has been drawn;
• Explicit or implicit indications of the author’s values and assumptions;

3
• The match between this author’s claims and those of other authors; and
• The match between the author’s claims or predictions and the reader’s own research
evidence or knowledge.

Critical reading = critical writing

Your critical reading of others’ work will usually be in preparation for producing your own
written text. In other words, critical reading helps you become a critical writer. This
marriage of reading and writing has many benefits. First, you will develop a sense of
what is and is not a robust piece of research – essential when you come to plan your
own empirical investigation. Second, you will soon begin identifying limitations in existing
research knowledge that your investigation can address. Third, the attention you pay to
different authors’ texts will naturally affect the quality of your own writing. You will soon:
• demand of yourself evidence to back up your claims;
• be alert to the possibility of making an illogical jump in your reasoning;
• become sensitive to your own assumptions and how they might affect your claims;
and
• realize the importance of checking the literature thoroughly to ensure that your
understanding is sufficiently deep.

In short, you will develop a mature academic style of writing that is both fair and
discerning in its accounts of others’ work, and that maximizes the opportunity for others
to take seriously what you have to say.

Task 1: Reading and Viewing

(a) View E-Lecture 2A and E-Lecture 2B (both found in Canvas, Unit 1) to learn how to
define critical reading and what makes a literature review critical.
(b) Read Chapter Four of Wallace and Wray (2021) to learn how to ask critical questions
of a text. Focus your reading on pp. 36-43.

Criticality and cross-disciplinary communication

Critical thinking and critical reading involve analytical skills that transcend specific
disciplines. In fact, developing critical thinking and reading skills necessitates using
these skills in many different contexts (Facione, 1990, pág. 5).1 Cross-disciplinary
communication (sharing your research with those from various other disciplines)
therefore provides multiple different contexts for scholars to develop critical thinking,
critical reading and critical writing skills.

An important goal of the academic is to increase research impact and influence the
wider community and various decision-makers therein, many of whom are non-

1
Facione, P. A. (1990). Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and
Instruction. Millbrae, California, USA: The California
Academic Press.

4
disciplinary specialists. This also includes, increasingly, communicating to the general
public, which has become an important feature for legitimating various disciplinary
activities (in science and engineering, for example). Cross-disciplinary communication is
more important today than ever especially in the context of our increasingly complex
world. Many real-world problems today (climate change, for instance) cut across
traditional categories of knowledge, and bring together specialists from various
disciplines to develop solutions that are broader and more comprehensive than one
specialization. If specialists are unable to effectively communicate across disciplines and
advocate their position, it is likely that old paradigms of knowledge (and destructive
patterns that derive from them) will remain unchallenged.

In this course, through all the units, we will attend to the ways critical thinking and
communication language skills, support effective cross-disciplinary communication.

Reflect:
Writing in your discipline, what are some ways you discount or ignore other perspectives
on issues?
How might communicating to others from other disciplines improve your approach to
various issues in your research?

How to read critically

In the rest of unit 1.1, we will look at how you can identify authors’ arguments and judge
the adequacy of the backing they offer for their claims.

Evaluating arguments
Critical reading often begins with identifying and evaluating the arguments in a text. An
argument consists of a conclusion and its warranting. The conclusion (which
comprises one or more claims that something is, or should be, the case) is only half of
an argument. You can legitimately ask of any set of claims: ‘Why should I believe this?’
Thus, the other half of the argument is the warranting, which is the justification for why
the claim(s) in the conclusion should be accepted. This includes the reason and
evidence for accepting the conclusion. The evidence is likely to be based on the authors’
research or professional experience, or else it will draw on others’ evidence, as reported
in the literature. This conception of ‘argument’ can be applied to single sentences,
paragraphs, chapters, even entire dissertations or books. It can be used to identify and
evaluate what is said in the texts you read, and also to ensure your own scholarly writing
is well constructed.

The next step in critical reading is to evaluate whether the warranting provided for a
claim is adequate to make the claim convincing. The claims in the conclusion need
adequate warranting for an argument to be convincing. Warranting is adequate when
you, as the reader, are satisfied both that there is sufficient evidence and that this

5
evidence is of an appropriate kind. The reader might feel that a single voice does not
carry much weight and so look for other, supporting evidence. However, the reader
might equally decide that the point of the claim is not that it is necessarily a majority
view, but that it exists at all. In such a case, the reader might be satisfied that even if this
view is restricted to one person, it is sufficient for warranting the claim.

Note that people may differ in their views about what counts as adequate evidence. This
is because the strength of the warranting depends only indirectly on the evidence itself.
The relationship is mediated by our interpretation. The reason why critical readers in one
discipline might question the adequacy of the warranting of claims forming the
conclusion of a research paper in another discipline is usually because they differ from
the author in their judgement about the amount and quality of evidence necessary for
warranting the acceptance of that conclusion. Such views about adequacy cannot be
easily generalized. They will often need to take into account the nature and purpose of
the study and also the reader’s other knowledge, experience, and interests in reading
the text. This is especially important in cross-disciplinary contexts.

In all cases, a claim is as convincing as the adequacy of the warranting that justifies it.
Whether you are writing about your own research or commenting on someone else’s,
you need to warrant your claims. So, when you are commenting on what others have
claimed about their work, you must be careful that your counter-claims are warranted. It
is rather easy to criticize the shortcomings of others’ conclusions, and then to draw
similarly flawed conclusions oneself! You should demand a convincing warranting for
every conclusion that you read about. Also, you should demand of yourself that every
conclusion you draw is adequately warranted.

How to ask critical questions of a text

• What are the writers trying to achieve in writing this? (e.g. how might they trying to
persuade you or influence your point of view?)
• What are the author’s credentials? (e.g. area of expertise; affiliations, etc.)
• What are they claiming?
• How convincing are their claims?
o Are the claims supported by evidence? What kind of evidence?
o How adequate is the warranting?
o How adequately are claims supported by theoretical orientation?
o Can you identify any implicit values, and to what extent does any value
stance affect claims?
o To what extent are claims supported or challenged by others’ work?
o To what extent are claims consistent with my experience?

6
Task 2: Online Discussion
Read the following excerpt from Rashid (2021) and then post a short personal response
of about 150 words to your group’s forum in Canvas Discussions, in relation to the
question: How convincing is the author’s argument?

In the following excerpt, Rashid (2021) argues that there is an urgent need to make
doctoral education more interdisciplinary.

We must prepare our students for the complexities and challenges of the twenty-first
century. To address problems as complex as climate change, environmental pollution,
sustainability, healthcare, and the Covid-19 pandemic, students need relevant skills. As
neither the pressing problems of the real world nor their solutions are conveniently
organized into disciplinary categories (Palmer 2001), there is an urgent need for us in
academia to re-think doctoral education where, traditionally, the term ‘Doctor of
Philosophy (PhD)’ has referred to an independent and highly specialized expert in a
particular discipline. As the PhD is the highest attainable degree in the STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines (National Academies of Sciences
2018), university educators must ensure that PhD holders are adequately prepared to
meet current challenges.

Recognizing the limitations of the current PhD degree, some have called for an overhaul
of doctoral programmes. The primary goal of such reform would be to train students to
be thinkers rather than just specialists (Bosch and Casadevall 2017), aptly summed up
as putting the ‘Philosophy’ back into ‘Doctor of Philosophy’ (Blachowicz 2009). Along
with various other skills that the authors identified as being essential for the twenty-first-
century PhD holder (e.g. creativity and self-directedness, competence in epistemology
and sound research conduct, commitment to high ethical standards and teamwork, and
effective communication and leadership), the ability to transcend disciplinary boundaries
has been affirmed as a crucially relevant skill by those calling for such reforms (Bosch
and Casadevall 2017). Further, it has been suggested that to create powerful learning
experiences, the above elements need to be combined with passionate student
engagement and genuine meaning-making in an active learning context. According to
Freeman et al. (2014), active learning ‘engages students in the process of learning
through activities and/or discussion in class, as opposed to passively listening to an
expert. It emphasizes higher-order thinking and often involves group work’.

While the need for reform has been strongly expressed, the system of knowledge
specialties known as ‘disciplinarity’ still dominates higher education. ‘The term
“discipline” was coined as “disciplina” by the Romans. By medieval times, “disciplines”
referred to a handful of professions (e.g. law, medicine, engineering) that required
specialized knowledge’ (Klein 1990). However, the modern concept of disciplinarity
emerged from developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One

7
way of defining ‘discipline’ today is as an ‘identifiable but evolving domain of knowledge
that its members study using certain tools that serve as a way of knowing that is
powerful but constraining’ (Repko, Szostak, and Buchberger 2020). Each discipline is
characterized by an epistemology, i.e. beliefs about how (much) we can understand
about the world. Disciplines are social communities whose members share beliefs,
norms, and values and favour particular theories, methods, and subject matter.
Disciplines are also organizational units within a university, commonly likened to silos or
ivory towers (Repko, Szostak, and Buchberger 2020). The disciplinary approach to
addressing a complex problem is a reductionist one that focuses on an aspect of the
problem that the discipline is concerned with, whereas the interdisciplinary approach is a
holistic one that integrates insights from different disciplines concerned with different
aspects of the problem.

References
Blachowicz, J. 2009. “How Science Textbooks Treat Scientific Method: A Philosopher’s
Perspective.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2): 303–344.
doi:10.1093/bjps/axp011.
Bosch, G., and A. Casadevall. 2017. “Graduate Biomedical Science Education Needs a
New Philosophy.” MBio 8 (6): e01539–e01517. doi:10.1128/mBio.01539-17.
Freeman, S., S. Eddy, M. McDonough, M. Smith, N. Okoroafor, H. Jordt, and M.
Wenderoth. 2014. “Active Learning Increases Student Performance in Science,
Engineering, and Mathematics.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America 111 (23): 8410–8415. doi:10.1073/pnas.1319030111.
Klein, J. 1990. Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice. Detroit, MI: Wayne State
University Press.
Palmer, C. 2001. Work at the Boundaries of Science: Information and the
Interdisciplinary Research Process. Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Rashid, R. 2021. “Updating the PhD: Making the Case for Interdisciplinarity in Twenty-
First Century Doctoral Education.” Teaching in Higher Education, 26 (3), 508-517.
doi:10.1080/13562517.2021.1892624.
Repko, A., R. Szostak, and M. Buchberger. 2020. Introduction to Interdisciplinary
Studies. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

---------

8
 1.2 READING CRITICALLY II
(Synchronous Tutorial)

In this unit, we will apply what we have learnt about critical reading by evaluating
arguments in texts across disciplines. We will also examine more closely how critical
attitudes are textualized in different academic texts.

Task 3: Comparing Warranting in Academic Texts

Text A and Text B below are extracts from journal articles in the social sciences and
natural science respectively.
• Compare the warranting in their arguments.
• What differences do you observe? Why do you think there are differences?

Text A
Traditional methods of teaching in most school classrooms involve the
spoken word as the primary mode of communication. On average, up to 60%
of classroom learning activities involve either listening or participating in
verbal communication with the teacher or other learners (Sutherland &
Lubman, 2001:2) which means the better the learner can hear, the more s/he
is able to learn (Smith, 2002:2).

Text B
The use of maggot debridement therapy (MDT) in South Africa has gained
interest in the past decade (Williams et al. 2008, Du Plessis and Pretorius
2011). The identification of the maggots used for this therapy remains an
issue, as most medical doctors are not adequately trained in entomology to
correctly identify the flies (Williams et al. 2008, Tantawi et al. 2010). Lucilia
Sericata is the most commonly used species (Sherman et al. 2000) but it is
often misidentified as L. cuprina. These two species are also used in forensic
entomology (Louw and van der Linde 1993, Smith and Wall 1997, Anderson
2000, Oliva 2001, Clark et al. 2006, Day and Wallman 2006).

What makes a literature review critical?

The literature review is an overview of existing scholarship which help you establish,
firstly, what the current theoretical or policy debates related to your topic are, and,
secondly, what the current state of knowledge related to these issues and problems is.

In the broader academic context, a critical literature review helps you to justify the
purpose and significance of your research project to committees and funding sources.

9
By strategically reviewing the published literature on the topic you can show how your
proposed research will contribute to the scholarly conversation or impact wider society.

Critical literature reviews are personal. They reflect the intellect of the reviewer, who has
decided the focus, selected texts for review, engaged critically with and interpreted the
evidence they offer, ordered and synthesized what was found, and written the final
account.

Wallace and Wray (2021) define a critical literature review as “a reviewer’s constructively
critical account, developing an argument designed to convince a particular audience
about what the published – and possibly also unpublished – literature (theory, research,
practice or policy) indicates is and is not known about one or more questions that the
reviewer has framed” (p.179).

Note that the above definition emphasizes that critical literature reviews are designed to
persuade. Literature reviews across disciplines should not merely summarize texts or
previous studies. Such reviews simply restate what is in the texts rather than evaluating
them, building an argument, targeting an identifiable audience, or addressing a specific
question.

This does not mean that the literature review should be too dismissive or destructively
critical. A critical literature review should not indulge in negative evaluation for the sake
of demonstrating the authors’ foolishness and the reviewer’s intellectual superiority.

Critical literature reviews have several features. A critical literature review is likely to be:
• Focused on an explicit substantive (i.e. some aspect of the social world), theoretical
or methodological review concern;
• Structured so as to address each review focus in a logical sequence;
• Discerning, so that some texts are given a more in-depth consideration than others,
according to the reviewer’s judgement of their centrality to the review foci and
interpretation of the evidence they offer;
• Constructively critical, evaluating the extent to which knowledge claims and the
arguments they support are convincing, or whether a theoretical orientation is
coherent;
• Accurately referenced, so that each source can be followed up by readers of the
review;
• Clearly expressed and reader-friendly, with interim conclusions and signposting, to
help readers get the reviewer’s message easily and follow the development of the
argument;
• Informative, providing synthesis through a strong conclusion which summarizes the
reviewer’s judgement about how the cited literature answers the review focus,

10
 indicating the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence, and arbitrating between
any opposing positions reviewed;
• Convincingly argued, expressing the reviewer’s ‘voice’ authoritatively because the
conclusion is adequately warranted by evidence, as interpreted by the reviewer,
drawn from the literature or the reviewer’s experience; and
• Balanced, indicating that the various viewpoints expressed in the literature have
been carefully weighed and that the reviewer’s judgements are demonstrably based
on a careful assessment of the relevant strengths and limitations of the evidence
presented in that literature.

Task 4: Evaluating a Literature Review

Study the excerpt below, which is taken from a section of the literature review draft
written by a doctoral student for his research proposal. How critical do you find his
literature review?

[1] There are many studies dealing with the effect of KM (knowledge management) on
operating performance in modern organizations. Liu, Chen, and Tsai (2004) claimed that
knowledge has become a main part of manufacturing resources and a prerequisite for
success in the production environment. Their study looked at the relationship between
KM capability and competitiveness in Taiwan’s industries. They set the functions of
knowledge obtaining, knowledge refining, knowledge storing, and knowledge sharing as
the measurement factors (independent variables). On the other hand, they looked at the
enterprise characteristics, technology advantages, and scale of the enterprise as the
dependent variables. Finally, they claimed that KM capability has a tremendous effect on
competitiveness.

[2] Liu and Tsai (2007) utilized the balanced scorecard approach to investigate the
effects of the introduction of a KM system on the operating performance in Taiwanese
high technology (hi-tech) companies. The operating performance includes financial
performance, business performance, organization performance, and the long-term
resource advantage. They claimed there was a 5% to 10% improvement in performance
in the areas of customer, finance, and internal business process, after introducing KM.
They concluded that KM had a positive effect on operating performance among the hi-
tech firms in their study.

[3] On the other hand, Choi and Lee (2002) did an empirical investigation of KM styles
and their effect on corporate performance. They categorized KM methods into four
styles. These are the dynamic, system-oriented, human-oriented, and passive styles.
They claimed that the dynamic KM style resulted in a higher corporate performance than
other styles.

11
[4] Meanwhile, there are articles written on the impact of KM on Customer Relationship
Management (CRM). Bueren et al. (2005) illustrated the use of modern information
technology to provide knowledge support to CRM processes and claimed that
knowledge support could be used for performance enhancement in customer-oriented
business processes. It helps to improve the customer relationship, and hence improve
the sales performance of a firm.

[5] There are articles written on the KM application in New Product Development (NPD).
Chen et al. (2008) claimed that appropriate KM methods can aid the selection of the
right set of New Product Development (NPD) which is critical to a company’s long-term
success. In fact, resources are not immense, and therefore we cannot develop all new
products and have to select the NPD mix strategically. They claimed that a firm could
operate innovatively, effectively and efficiently on the NPD project processes if a suitable
KM method is included in analyzing the characteristics of a strategic NPD mix.
Moreover, KM has always been significant for organizations whose economic success
derived from the technological advantage achieved through NPD (Pitt & MacVaugh,
2008). Organizations will rely more on KM in a dynamic technological environment and
KM can help to improve product design and eventually the new product development
capability.

[6] By the way, there are articles exploring the impact of KM on the delivery of quality.
Stewart and Waddell (2008) examined the link between KM and quality management
with a focus on the role of a quality culture. They claimed that in order to survive in such
a dynamic environment, organizations have to embrace KM as a fundamental
component of the delivery of a quality culture. In other words, organizations that are
aware and responsive to the link between KM and quality management will be in a better
position to deliver quality to their customers.

[7] Consequently, I have described different literatures on KM application and its effect
on the performance of firms.

[8] However, there is not much research that deals with KM directly in the manufacturing
firms in China where the institutional arrangements and market conditions are distinct
from the developed countries.

[9] In order to fill the gap, my research focuses on how the capabilities of KM can be
used in the manufacturing firms operating in China. I will explore how KM affects the
areas of sales, quality control, training, inventory control, financial control, customer
service, and so on.

12
Task 5: Reading an Abstract Critically
Examine the following abstract from a journal article in Management:
(a) What claims are being made in this abstract?
(b) How are the claims supported?
(c) How would you judge if the claims are valid or trustworthy?
(d) How do the authors maintain their central argument throughout the text?
(e) How do the authors attempt to create common ground between their own beliefs
and interpretations, and those of readers?

While recessions have many adverse consequences for individuals and

organizations, we propose that they have positive implications for job
satisfaction. We argue that during bad economic times, people will be less
attuned to other possible jobs, and more likely to see their own jobs
favorably. We find support for these predictions across three studies. Study 1
(n = 23,335) utilizes a large cross-sectional survey of American adults
collected over four decades and finds that job satisfaction increases during
recessions and declines during booms. Study 2 (n = 12,859) replicates this
result using a large longitudinal survey of British adults and finds that job
satisfaction rises and falls with the unemployment rate even within the same
people. Finally, Study 3 (n = 512) uses an experimental design and finds that
the relationship between economic conditions and job satisfaction is
mediated by the reduced salience of alternative jobs. While scholars have
long recognized that job satisfaction is affected by situational features inside
organizations, our findings suggest that conditions outside the workplace can
also influence how people think about and evaluate their jobs.

Task 6: Comparing Critical Attitudes in Academic Texts

Compare the following texts, which are taken from the abstracts of journal articles in
oncology and cultural studies respectively. What differences do you observe about the
way critical attitudes are expressed in different disciplines?

Text C
Brief exposure (10 min) to low amplitude (1 mT) pulsing magnetic fields
(PEMFs) has been shown capable of stimulating mitochondrial respiration
and ROS production (5), thereby promoting both in vitro (5) and in vivo (6)
myogeneses via a process of Magnetic Mitohormesis. Obeying a
mitohormetic mechanism of operation (7), brief and low amplitude PEMF
exposure would produce sufficiently low levels of ROS to instill mitochondrial
survival adaptations, whereas exaggerated PEMF exposure might be
expected to produce detrimental oxidative stress that would instead stymie
cell survival. Importantly, the threshold for achieving an irreversibly
damaging level of oxidative stress would depend on the basal metabolic rate

13
 and the existing inflammatory status of the recipient cells. Cancers
characterized by elevated metabolic rates might hence be preferentially
susceptible to PEMF-induced metabolic catastrophe (8, 9). Accordingly,
exposure to 3 mT PEMFs for one hour was previously shown to be cytotoxic
to MCF-7 breast cancer cells, whereas the same exposure paradigm was
tolerated by MCF10A nonmalignant breast cells (10)... Given the reported
capacity of PEMFs to target breast cancer cells as well as TRPC1 (5, 10),
we hypothesized that the effects of DOX and PEMF treatments might
synergize to undermine breast cancer growth.

Text D
While we disavow or renounce the virus that is ourselves in viral cultures
such as a pandemic or systemic racism, we envy the viral force of others
who are trending on social media. In viral cultures, we tend to think that virus
is other people, forgetting our own viral potential or threat. In any case, all
viral cultures make us sick; if not, we make one another sick. And when a
vaccine is not available, rest is all we have at our disposal. We also tend to
forget or belittle this rest. To break from viral cultures, then, this intervention
calls for a general pause in human activity, which must include thinking, and
which, if ever possible, would take place in common among all humans.

In summary, reading critically means being discerning about the warranting of

conclusions and making informed judgments about the quality of arguments by
synthesising information gleaned from asking critical questions of academic texts.
Critical reading is an essential skill for graduate researchers as it ultimately helps them
read the field or discipline critically, asking critical questions such as:
• On what basis was the field established?
• Who got to speak? who gets to speak?
• What was written about what, when and for whom? How has this changed over time
and in what ways?
• In whose interests did this research and writing work? Does it still work this way?
How is it changing?
• What kind of knowledges, interpretations and authors are missing or marginalised?
• Are there any patterns to these omissions and sidelining?

Such a critical reading would create new possibilities for their project, and at the same
time contribute towards producing a more equitable field or discipline.

14
Bibliography
Bianchi, E. C., Martin, C. C., & Li, R. (2023). Does job satisfaction rise and fall with the
economy? Cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental evidence that job
satisfaction increases during recessions. Academy of Management Journal,
66(2), 688-709. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2019.0405.
Goh, I. (2021). Virus is other People. Cultural Politics 17(1), 145-149.
https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/786399.
Kwan, B. S. C. (2021). Instructional strategies to help novice writers develop authorial
control of source use in literature reviews. Paper presented at The CEAPA -
BALEAP 2021 International Conference, Suzhou, China.
Rashid, R. (2021). Updating the PhD: Making the case for interdisciplinarity in twenty-
first century doctoral education. Teaching in Higher Education, 26(3), 508-517.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1892624.
Sage Publishing. (n.d.). [Online Resources of Critical Reading and Writing for
Postgraduates]. Retrieved May 29, 2022, from
https://study.sagepub.com/wallaceandwray3e2/student-resources/chapter-1.
Tai, Y. K., Chan, K. K. W., Fong, C. H. H., Ramanan, S., Yap, J. L. Y., Yin, J. N., ... &
Franco-Obregón, A. (2022). Modulated TRPC1 expression predicts sensitivity of
breast cancer to doxorubicin and magnetic field therapy: Segue towards a
precision medicine approach. Frontiers in oncology, 11, 783803.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2021.783803.
Thomson, P. (2020, June 15). Reading against the literatures. [Blog post]. Retrieved
from https://patthomson.net/2020/06/15/reading-against-the-literatures-litreview/.
Wallace, M., & Wray, A. (2021). Critical reading and writing for postgraduates. Sage
Publications Limited.

15