Writing in a Community: Collaborative and Reflective Practices in Academic Writing Groups

Academic writing groups constitute communities of practice that promote situated learning, collaboration, and critical reflection, fostering research skills and academic identity development in contexts where institutional support for scholarly writing is limited. The aim of this study is to analyze the interactions that take place in a virtual academic writing group composed of teacher-researchers, in order to understand whether and how collaborative dynamics contribute to learning, critical reflection, and group cohesion. The study follows a qualitative, interpretive approach based on participant observation, field notes, and transcripts from six virtual meetings analyzed through thematic coding and episode classification following Rodas et al. (2021). Findings show that, beyond textual feedback, interactions concerning group organization, academic activities, and personal life were essential for distributing roles, enhancing autonomy and trust, and generating collective learning through collaboration and mutual recognition. The study concludes that writing groups operate as pedagogical, social, and political spaces that integrate cognitive, relational, and emotional dimensions, thus fostering well-being, equity, and sustainability in academic work.

Keywords:
academic writing; writing groups; communities of practice; writing pedagogies