Skriva och referera : en studie av designingenjörsstudenters och sjuksköterskestudenters informationsanvändning i samband med uppsatsskrivande.

Sammanfattning: The object under investigation in this Master’s thesis is students’ information use in connection to Bachelor thesis writing. The purpose of the study is to increase understanding of why nursing students and product engineering design students are using information in such different ways despite their comparable starting point. The empirical material consists of 18 student theses and a document comprising directives for thesis writing that are analysed from three different theoretical perspectives. A citation analysis of all 18 theses is carried out. A textual analysis inspired by Norman Faircloughs’ critical discourse analysis is performed on one thesis from each domain together with the directives. The theses are also analysed from a sociocultural perspective, with the theory of community of practice and the concept of cognitive authority as complementary tools. Using Faircloughs’ notion of order of discourse it appears that three competing discourses coexist. The academic discourse dominates the order of discourse and is the most prevalent in the nursing student thesis whereas the most prevalent discourse in the corresponding group is a market and a technical discourse thus revealing a discursive conflict. The design engineering students write in another discourse than the expected academic discourse which poses problems for them. The analysis based upon a sociocultural perspective indicates that information use and thesis writing are used as mediating tools as students strive to form an identity fitting for the community of practice they gradually become members of. The tools are also used to prove that they master the appropriate discourse.