supporting scholarly exchange about communication across the curriculum
Content Area:
Communication Across the Curriculum
Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum
Writing to Learn vs. Writing in the Disciplines
Discipline:
Welcome to the WAC Clearinghouse Theses and Dissertations Page. The theses are displayed below. If you'd like us to add a new thesis or dissertation to our list, please contact Kevin Eric De Pew.
Communication Across the curriculum programs provide instructional support for teaching oral practices in noncommunication classrooms. These programs frequently design instruction to help students develop oral proficiencies while pursuing their major. There is a tendency in these programs, though, to be rather elitist in communication instruction. The pattern has often been to “export” communication principles with little if any substantive exploration as to the potential relevance of those principles within the target discipline. In short, there is little exploration as to the rhetorical and social functions of orality in other disciplines. This study examines one such discipline, mechanical engineering, and the oral practices in their classroom contexts. Through a qualitative, ethnographic framework, I explore meanings assigned to communication and one oral genre, the design review presentation. I use standard content and discourse analytic tools to describe how this discipline assigns meaning to, teaches, and performs this oral genre. I conclude that this oral genre was a site that highlighted critical disciplinary tensions. Through an examination of the oral practices in these classrooms (including interdisciplinary complexities between me and the mechanical engineering disciplinary members), I explore “context” in a multidimensional way. I ultimately argue for a disciplinary communication pedagogy that teaches communication with a sensitivity to the critical oral contexts of the target discipline.
These qualitative case studies investigated the backgrounds, attitudes, and practices of five college professors, all in disciplines other than English, who used writing in their teaching.
Analysis of transcripts of individual and focus group interviews, of field notes of classroom observations, and of documents collected from the professors and their students discovered themes and concepts embedded in the various types of data. Data was then interpreted by displaying it as a conceptually clustered matrix and as reassembled but unreduced extracts of text.
Results were presented as narratives describing each professors course, writing assignments, classroom, students, literacy experiences, and reactions to the study five years after the first data was collected. Comparison of the five professors showed that all of the professors had positive early reading experiences and were active readers; that the role of their teachers in developing the professors' self-confidence as writers was by no means clear; that there were interesting disjunctures between what the professors said and what they did regarding assigning and evaluating writing assignments; that none of the professors had discovered on their own the “best practices” described in WAC literature; and that two of the professors appeared to be socialized writers while the other three appeared to be postsocialized writers with respect to the conventions of their various discourse communities.
This study indicates the need for further research into the relationships between professors' writing experiences and self-confidence as writers and their commitment to and practices in using writing in their teaching. It also confirms the need for formal WAC programs if writing is to be used most effectively in colleges and universities.
Writing Across the Curriculum at most institutions is a web of local knowledges and techniques “situated” within the historical and immediate contexts of academic departments, disciplines, and disciplinary cultures. Because of political and economic tensions existing within colleges and universities, and within academic disciplines themselves, WAC can become a “contact zone,” where individuals and institutional structures struggle for power, influence, and in some cases, survival.
This dissertation uses the work of Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu to examine such a struggle as it occurred at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in the early 1980s. A WAC program was initiated there, but eventually failed as a result of political and economic influences. In the time since that failure, a growing emphasis on teaching and learning has helped create new potential for WAC at UMSL. Yet, to make it viable, WAC proponents there must recognize existing realities, attitudes, and conventions within each discipline or department, and develop new methods and approaches to writing and teaching that are relevant to that discipline or department.
This examination then focuses on writing in chemistry to discover the realities, attitudes, and conventions used in teaching and learning writing at the undergraduate level. Standards for content acquisition are gathered from ACS accreditation requirements, and from a study of educators and practitioners from a variety of professions. A study of Chemistry students in an NSF-funded educational program suggests that science students may learn as much or more about disciplinary discourse from sources other than the traditional writing course. Interaction with the literature and with graduate students, professors, and professionals may teach students more about disciplinary discourse conventions than a composition-trained specialist might accomplish in a writing course. Still, the writing course can be useful. These findings suggest that writing can be woven into the chemistry curriculum in a number of ways.
Interviews with UMSL faculty and administrators suggest new instantiations of WAC that might better thrive in today's political and economic environment. What takes shape might serve as a model for other institutions to follow.
Currently, the present model of teacher-scholar preparation in graduate schools in English Studies fails to join theoretical and practical training as effectively as it should. Graduates often have unresolved tensions between theory and practice, seeing them as separate or dichotomous. They experience what Donald Schon calls gaps "between professional knowledge and the demands of real-world practice."
My dissertation addresses this problem by highlighting the significance of what I call the mobius loop of theory and practice,focusing on the importance of the Aristotelian notion of phronesis or
practical wisdom to the successful practitioner. I argue that the future of composition needs to be constructed on the foundations of those who do its work--teach writing--and who build and articulate knowledge based upon that work. Drawing from the history of rhetoric, I argue that the teaching of writing should be refigured as an "art" (techne) that engages the teacher in a reflection of those practices that constitute the theoretical frame of composition studies. Using the writings of Aristotle and the arguments of Joseph Dunne, a philosopher of Education, I illustrate that researching with teachers and collaborating with students enable the prospective teacher (and, in reality, any teacher) to combine techne and experience to achieve masterly practice. My research expands the concepts of teacher-researcher and reflective practitioner.
The heart of my dissertation is three qualitative research studies with teachers and students in settings where writing and the study of language practices are central. These include a classroom devoted to the teaching of the structure of American English, a variety of writing classrooms in which I focus on a group of students with devout religious beliefs, and an upper division business management class in organizational behavior. I discuss what I have learned not only from the researcher's perspective but also from the teacher's perspective. I provide a meta-analysis of the act of research when the lines among teacher, researcher, and students become blurred. In so doing, I also discuss the value of such blurring in terms of the practical advantages conferred upon the collaborators.
As Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) enters its third decade, it is faced with the challenge to advance collaborative models of program development. Older models, characterized by a missionary zeal to spread the Gospel of writing-based pedagogies, have recently been criticized by scholars as imperialistic. Susan McLeod, Catherine Blair, Christine Farris, and Mary Minock all have argued that these models ignore important differences in how writing is taught within the disciplines. Moreover, they charge, the missionary zeal that characterizes much of WAC scholarship also ignores the cultural differences of the disciplines. Needed is a multi-cultural model of WAC that fosters rather than inhibits disciplinary interaction.
In this dissertation, I Theorize a “contact zone” model for WAC program development. In “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Mary Louise Pratt describes the indeterminate space where cultures come in contact. She notes that this space can either be a site of colonialism or a site of dialogic exchange. While Pratt neither addresses WAC nor disciplinary cultures, her model of the “contact zone” provides a useful analogue for conceiving a dialogic exchange among disciplines. In order to apply Pratt's model to WAC, I rely on the work of Julie Thompson Klein who has Theorized the various types of multi-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary exchanges among the disciplinary cultures that can be collaborative and productive. Klein provides the disciplinary antecedent to Pratt's multi-cultural Theory. In addition, I suggest Donald Schon's reflective practices as a methodology for negotiating these exchanges. Schon's Theory focuses on the experiential knowledge of professionals that contributes to their expertise. By linking Pratt, Klein, and Schon, I Theorize WAC as a space where disciplinary cultures come in contact to reflect upon and to discuss writing-based pedagogies. The outcomes of this activity, I argue, are various forms of multi-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary knowledge that help build on WAC's foundation.
Social reform in the 1960's initiated growth in two seemingly separate educational movements in response to dissatisfaction with the traditional positivistic education system. These two movements, writing-Across-the-curriculum (WAC) and homeschooling, share pedagogy and methodology based upon social epistemology, and they share two teaching techniques stemming from this methodology: collaboration and writing. While homeschooling was the successful method of education for centuries, the last two centuries have seen an evolution through the one-room schoolhouse to present day positivistic educational institutions. Language-centered teaching techniques have existed as long, beginning with such educators as Isocrates and continuing with such educators as Aristotle, Quintilian, Augustine, Erasmus, George Campbell, and Fred Newton Scott, and during the past two decades, WAC proponents have incorporated the use of collaboration and writing as instruments of learning in every discipline. Unfortunately, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of these teaching techniques in existing WAC programs because of the number of variables involved. These techniques were measured in a homeschool situation, however, where the variables could be controlled. This ethnographic study, which took place during the Spring 1994 semester with three ninth-grade female students placed in a homeschool situation, used both quantitative and qualitative methods to measure the effectiveness of collaboration and writing in all disciplines. Pre-tests revealed that, at the beginning of this study, these three students performed at very different levels of ability; regardless of ability, however, each experienced dramatic increases in learning. The quantitative measures, Wechsler Individual Achievement Test and Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test, revealed unprecedented gains in math reasoning, reading comprehension, listening comprehension, oral expression, written expression, language composite, and critical thinking skills. These pre/post-tests, triangulated with assessment of reading journals, daily journals, individual essays, collaborative essays, and video-taped sessions, produced a narrative which describes each student's characteristics, learning style and response to these learning/teaching methods. The results imply that homeschool education has been successful due to collaboration and writing. Furthermore, this study strongly suggests that collaboration and writing effect learning in all disciplines and recommends restructuring of traditional education to implement these teaching/learning techniques.
The purpose of this research is to survey, analyze and evaluate the descriptions, Theoretical foundations, pedagogical applications, and research and evaluation techniques of writing-Across-the-curriculum programs. The methodology used is a critical bibliographic survey. The findings suggest that there are three major distinct Theoretical approaches to writing-Across-the-curriculum, as formulated by Elaine Maimon, Toby Fulwiler and Art Young, and Charles Bazerman, each with its own pedagogy. Maimon's Approach concentrates on a draft, edit, rewrite "process" Approach to a discipline specific "product." Faculty Across disciplines participate through discussions to develop writing appropriate assignments. Fulwiler and Young consider "process" as the psychological journey from "expressive" to "transactional" writing, and call for "expressive" journal writing in every discipline. Faculty in other disciplines participate by assigning personal writing exercises. Bazerman, using a social constructionist Approach, sees specific types of writing such as paraphrasing, summarizing, arguing and evaluating, as stages in teaching composition students how to participate in the "conversation" of the discipline. The study also demonstrates how administrators view the lack of funds and dubious status as the primary obstacles to advancement of WAC programs, rather than any internal inconsistencies or lack recognition of a variety of Theories and pedagogies. The study concludes that non-specialist faculty and administrators are confused and unaware of approaches other than that suggested by a particular expert or text. Unsuccessful attempts at implementation are interpreted as the failure of WAC generally, rather than as simply the unsuitability of a particular Approach. Furthermore, research has not focused on the relationship between specific types of learning and specific types of writing, but rather on a search for a "new" rhetoric. These findings suggest that Kinneavy's Theory of discourse offers a framework to explore rhetorical variations Across disciplines since it recognizes different aims of writing within disciplines. The method of organization proposed herein offers a means of explaining the variety of approaches available to administrators. "A" program may consist of a combination of approaches since the study also concludes that different approaches are appropriate to different disciplines, and to different courses within disciplines.
Writing-Across-the-curriculum programs, which have focused chiefly on the differences that characterize writing in the various university disciplines, have encouraged faculty members and students to believe that while academicians function together within an academy and share some common ground, each discipline and its discourse is quite different from the other. This study argues that defining academic discourse communities principally by their disciplinary differences may obscure commonalities Across disciplines that also may be important. It re-examines the primary WAC framework of discipline and proposes a second framework of pedagogy, asserting that the intersections of discipline and pedagogy are more useful than is either alone in explaining the discourse communities in which faculty members ask their students to write. As it reports an ethnographic study of two academic disciplines, accounting/finance and anthropology, the study probes two questions: (1) How do faculty members map and sustain the discourse communities in which their students must write, and (2) how may WAC projects help faculty members and students understand and describe what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they might do it more successfully? It describes data gathered through interviews with faculty members, observations of classes, and reviews of course syllabi and of student writing. The interpretation of these data, which reveals similarities and differences that both observe and cross disciplinary lines, supports the addition of the framework of pedagogy to WAC considerations. It demonstrates that the inquiry into pedagogy can explain how faculty members Theorize their roles, the roles of their students, and the nature of the curriculum. The study concludes by generalizing its work with WAC boundaries to a larger conversation about creating and using categories. It proposes that engaging the dualisms and contradictions found in the margins leads to a more fluid vision of discourse and other communities while it models productive boundary blurring for faculty members and students.
The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) literature was surveyed to determine the most widely supported recommended practices. Forty-one Core WAC Recommended Practices were identified as guidance for content area professors' attempts to help students write more proficiently. A questionnaire was constructed and administered to professors at one of Ontario's largest community colleges to determine how closely the professors of specialist subjects were adhering to those recommendations from the professional literature. of 41 recommendations made by experts in WAC, faculty were commonly practicing fewer than half. of the independent variables (length of teaching career, extent of education, gender, and discipline area), only the discipline area substantially influenced the professors' choice of writing supportive practices: English professors teaching content area courses (literature), practice more of the WAC recommended practices.
Scholars in rhetoric and composition have heralded a new way of thinking about writing, referring to the change as a paradigm shift (Hairston, Young) or naming the new direction a 'social turn' in rhetoric and composition (Bizzell, Bruffee). Within the writing classroom, this emphasis on the social has encouraged pervasive use of three practices: use of personal experience in writing; contextualization of student writing; and collaborative learning. Although all three practices fall under the larger 'social' rubric, practitioners draw warrants from numerous Theoretical constructs which often represent very different or even opposing philosophies. This study attempts to gain greater understanding of the social movement in rhetoric and composition by examining the most influential groups within the movement--those who draw warrants from feminism, Marxism, and social constructionism. The study points to inconsistencies and overlap among Theoretical groups and highlights the intricate nature of practices that are often referred to and used in manners that belie their complexity. In using the term 'personal experience writing,' scholars have conflated the autobiographical and intimate with personal experience that represents a broader, more general daily experience, creating unexpected problems in the composition classroom. Teaching writing in context is defined differently by different Theoretical groups; at the same time, early expectations for such 'teaching in context' movements as writing Across the curriculum are largely ignored today. And claims for collaborative learning often do not play out as expected, partly because efforts to relinquish authority to students and to 'force' students to cooperate create other problems. There are consistencies Across Theoretical groups, but different ideas about how best to serve students places a very different emphasis on most social practices. This examination points to the complicated relationship between Theory and practice and to the need for classroom teachers to understand the Theoretical underpinnings of their methodology.
This dissertation argues that major approaches to writing Across the curriculum (WAC) are framed by the general/special binary--that is, that language use is general or transferable Across disciplines versus entirely situated in separate disciplinary-specific discourse communities. Proponents of the discipline-specific Approach to WAC have dismissed the possibility of a general or cross-disciplinary Approach because they say it requires a universal, cognitive, or totalizing generic discourse practice to account for transferability Across disciplines, which is untenable in a postmodern world and university of linguistic and social heterogeneity. This dissertation critically re-sees and refigures the general/special binary in WAC by investigating its cultural politics, including representations of social; constitutions of the subject(s) of advanced literacy; perspectives on democracy; and meanings of the cross-disciplinary. WAC's unique position in the curriculum is represented as a cross-disciplinary forum and strategy for advancing a critical-transformative literacy.
Social constructionist Theories of learning propose that all knowledge is formed through communities' debates over what perceptions and interpretations of the world will be accepted as 'knowledge.' Further, thinking is an internalization of these dialogic debates. Journal writing is a successful pedagogical tool because it allows students to make meaning by 'conversing' with themselves through informal, reflective writing. Journals also draw heavily on schema Theory to promote integration of Theory and practice. Seventy-two instructors at Northeast Missouri State University reported use of journal writing in their teaching. This study examines the use of these journals by discipline. A descriptive analysis reveals fifteen basic functions of journals. The study concludes with practical suggestions for journal use and the application of these functions.
Composition scholars have argued that the process of becoming a better writer in the Academy is actually a process of acculturation, of joining an 'academic discourse community.' This work sets out to determine how such a thing might happen at the level of student and teacher. At the core are two ethnographic case studies of student-teacher relationships. They are contextualized within both a specific institutional setting (the University of Michigan's English Composition Board) and a wider setting (Writing Across the Curriculum programs; the Academy and its relation to women). Conventional expectations of development are fulfilled in the female teacher-male student relationship, where masculine values (e.g., use of irony and 'repartee' in conversation) dominate. Nurturing, a value associated with females, is repudiated, first by the student, then the teacher. This relationship seems 'successful' to the pair: the student performs splendidly on an ECB 'argument/exam.' In contrast, the female teacher-female student relationship is confusing: smoothly social on the surface, it is nonetheless marked by disruptions as both women attempt to find their places relative to (masculine) academic authority--the public world--and feminine experience. This case study is composed with the aid of feminist Theorist Anne Herrmann's 'female dialogic,' a union of Irigaray's Theory of the female subject and Bakhtin's Theory of the (male) political subject in discursive relation to others. Through the female dialogic I engage in internal dialogue (regarding the paradox of the 'academic/woman') and in dialogue with my female student and other women. This work brings together social Theory and speculative Theory as used by phenomenologists, feminists, and composition scholars to make possible a way to investigate the empirical world and its social norms yet retain the capacity to imagine change. Within composition studies, it also brings together expressivism and the teaching of 'academic discourse' by arguing for increased formal and topical experimentation by academic and student writers which could be furthered by progressive Writing Across the Curriculum programs. This, together with an on-going critique of masculinity, seems essential for women students especially.
In the past twenty years, a renaissance of scholarship in composition has fostered a wealth of research findings, Theoretical underpinnings, and diverse practices in undergraduate composition studies. Yet, no consensus on what undergraduate writing should be has emerged. Contemporary research and practice focus on either novice freshman writers or on students writing in upper-division courses. Virtually no research or programmatic attention has been given to identifying possible transitional writing experiences that might bridge the gap for students between freshman composition and Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing Intensive programs. The omission of this transitional phase from current writing program models is problematic--Theoretically, because it renders current program models incomplete, and practically, because it engenders writing programs that fail to complement and/or enhance optimally general undergraduate intellectual development. In this dissertation, I pursued two related purposes. First, modifying Lauer's and Asher's (1988) rhetorical inquiry Approach by integrating Warnock's (1984) definition of a model, I develop a set of seven criteria for a comprehensive undergraduate writing program model. These seven criteria are established by examining the relationships among research findings in three areas: (1) undergraduate composing processes, (2) undergraduate writing and learning, and (3) undergraduate intellectual development. My second purpose in this dissertation is to develop one possible course sequence compatible with my proposed writing program model. In this three-cycle sequence, Cycle One includes two courses designed for freshman writers and Cycle Three includes numerous writing intensive courses within the student's chosen academic major. The transitional Cycle Two includes two courses and introduces a common writing sequence--a sequence of writing occasions grounded in five generic discourse forms (field notes, stipulative definition, proposal, causal argument and metaphorical/analogic argument) designed to act as intellectual bridges for the undergraduate writer/learner. I conclude this dissertation by offering recommendations for both future research and institutional practices drawn from my proposed program model and course sequence.
In the 1980's, the concept of 'Writing Across the Curriculum' began to grow in academia. As with any new educational idea or method of instruction, I feel we must test its worth before charging ahead. Logically, it makes sense that if writing, in all subject areas, develops reasoning skills, and improves thinking and problem solving, then teachers would want to use that method. If that method can not be supported, in tangible ways, as a superior method, then what reason is there to replace existing methods? The goal of this project was to develop tangible support for the concept of 'Writing Across the Curriculum.' The following paper is a discussion of an empirical study that tested whether the use of writing methods, developed in the English classroom, could be used to teach mathematics in such a way that higher scores on tests would be evident. This study involved sixth graders in a middle school setting, studying double-digit division and story problems. In addition to the author's study, other empirical studies that tested writing's use in teaching mathematics are discussed.
Potentially, the most important response to widespread criticism about the quality of writing and writing instruction is Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC). WAC can mean a total immersion in writing, horizontally in all departments and vertically at all grade levels. It can encompass current writing Theory, but only if teachers understand such Theory and can apply it. WAC Theory must be incorporated into the entire process of professional preparation. WAC philosophy believes that (a) writing can be learned and should be taught, (b) writing is a way to clarify thought, (c) writing is a way to learn, and (d) writing is a complex, individualized process. This understanding is required to teach in a successful WAC program. The literature offers little evidence that schools of education feel a responsibility to emphasize writing and writing instruction at the preservice level. Therefore, a study was initiated to survey the eight Florida schools of education that are members of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) for the purpose of determining practices and perceptions regarding WAC. This descriptive research called for two survey questionnaires, which invited responses from 8 administrators and 250 secondary education students and tested 11 hypotheses. These hypotheses related to required courses for writing and writing instruction, student understanding of WAC Theory, student perception of WAC status, level of student confidence to write and use writing, student willingness to become writing teachers, and student perception of the importance of writing. The conclusions indicate that WAC is not a well-known, well-used, or well-respected term: a majority (59%) had never heard the phrase before; a majority (63%) do not know writing-to-learn strategies; a majority (60%) do not support WAC programs. Only 6% feel WAC is an important focus in their schools of education. The remainder of the study recommends a required preservice course in WAC for all future teachers and suggests some components that course should contain.
The purpose of this project is to explore the apparent absence of an application of classical rhetorical Theory in the teaching of writing to public high school students in the United States. The need for the project, the nature of the project, and the methodology employed are described. The history of classical rhetoric from its Aristotelian inception to the present day is briefly reviewed. Included in the study is a review of widely-used writing textbooks of the modern day. Two current approaches to the teaching of writing are explored. One Approach argues for process while the other argues for content. Current methods and movements are explored, including freewriting, writing Across the curriculum, computer-aided instruction, journal writing, the five-paragraph essay, and draft writing and peer review. Following the review of literature the project discusses the present need for a Theory of rhetoric that is more useful to high school students and teachers, and one that accounts in an organized way for more elements of the students' writing process. The second portion of this project is a handbook designed for high school students and teachers as a useful manual for writing in the classical tradition. The handbook includes the traditional five parts of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, memory, style, and written presentation. Additional chapters include a discussion of thesis, definition, credibility, and appeal. The purpose of this project is to provide students with a better means to help them learn to write for college and their careers. Writing is a complex enterprise, but it need not be so for beginning writers. Rhetoric, as taught in the classical tradition, is presented as a more complete Approach to writing than any one of the other singular approaches mentioned in this study.
Articles and textbooks devoted to writing Across the curriculum evidence general agreement among composition Theorists concerning the value of this educational concept. At the same time, Theorists express disagreement about the uses of writing and the purpose of instruction. This literacy debate is presently dominated by two arguments. Formalists contend that writing should serve as a means of disciplinary socialization, and their pedagogical prescriptions emphasize systematic instruction in learning generic rules and the conventions of discourse. By contrast, epistemic Theorists underscore the heuristic potential of language use, and they frequently recommend informal writing activities that allow students to learn the concepts and forms of inquiry that pertain to a discipline. Despite these contrastive concerns, formalist and epistemic arguments fail to promote literacy as an activity through which students develop critical consciousness of social reality and work toward affecting the conditions of their lives. This work expands the debate over writing in disciplinary courses. It advocates a sociological argument for literacy instruction which contends that students learn and become empowered by scrutinizing the social reality that surrounds them. Through the investigation of self, society and academic discourse, students develop dialectical reasoning and critical thinking. From this sociological perspective, reading and writing help students become critically conscious of their relationship to the social reality that conditions them, so they can participate more self-consciously, and perhaps more freely, in the educational process and larger social order. The controversy over the use of writing in disciplinary courses is a dispute over the purpose of schooling. The issues being debated are the methods by which students should learn, the degree to which they should participate in the educational process, and the values and the attitudes they should encounter in the classroom. This work examines approaches to literacy in relationship to the educational Theory and the rhetorical traditions that inform these contemporary practices, illuminating the educational and social value of the sociological position as well as the ideological and purposive limitations of other arguments.
Both cognitive and social constructionist models of composing must guide pedagogy and research in the composition discipline. A sociocognitive synthesis of these complementary (not competing as Kenneth Bruffee would assert) models derived from the original cognitive Theories of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Jerome Bruner serves as a useful foundation for a collaborative problem-solving Approach to teaching writing Across the curriculum. The sociocognitive model, based on Piaget's model of the equilibration of cognitive structures and several Theories of concept formation, explains the importance of idiosyncratic mixes of knowledge constructs (conceptual hierarchies or networks) held by each individual. While knowledge is socially constructed in communities, each individual belongs to many overlapping communities in a pluralistic modern world. Piaget's model of assimilation and accommodation acknowledges the interaction of individual abstraction processes with the knowledge-making processes of discourse communities. Models of memory and internalization from cognitive Theory expand Piaget's model to help define the relationships between writing and thinking. In addition, research based on social constructionist assumptions and methods helps map the role of community conversations in the construction of specific texts. Looking at student texts in an experimental sociocognitive class from these perspectives combined with methods of literary criticism and text linguistics can provide a more complete Approach to study of the interactions of individuals and communities as they are represented in texts. A combination of three research orientations--ethnographic, cognitive, and textual--offers new insights into the ways communities evolve and elaborate abstract concepts, into the role of cognitive dissonance in knowledge-making processes, and into the relationship between community problem-solving as a collaborative composition pedagogy and the shaping of individual student texts. The linguists' concept of global coherence provides a focus for analyzing this research which seeks to determine how textual elements signal community conversations and shared knowledge. Global coherence, an interaction of texts and contexts, is a suitable object for sociocognitive research agendas, one which illustrates the explanatory power of the sociocognitive model of composing and confirms the value of a pedagogy centered on classroom communities which treat writing as part of the students' ongoing conversation with each other, shared texts, and their instructors.
Current writing Across the curriculum Theory is animated by a range of utopian images that articulate the promise of enlightened curricular reform. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine WAC and its promise of regenerated community both in light of the author's own experience teaching Afro-American Studies in the WAC program at SUNY-Albany (Chapter 1), and in light of the radical political Theories of Paolo Freire, Fredric Jameson, and Michel Foucault. By considering the visions of community projected by WAC Theorists as, in Jameson's terms, symbolic acts, we find that WAC Theorists have sought to keep WAC viable by projecting utopian images that affirm both the boundaries of the discourse communities that secure the status of academics, and the intentions of power that inform the current configurations of disciplinary knowledge. Against this tendency, the author argues that an authentically utopian impulse for reform must foster socially conscious disciplinary critique. Among the writing Theorists whose visions are interrogated by this analysis are Maimon, Kinneavy, Fulwiler, North, and Knoblauch and Brannon (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, this inquiry leads back to a consideration of the utopian dimensions of Marxism (Freire) and the anti-utopian dimensions of Post-Structuralism (Foucault) in an effort to determine the uses and limits of these strands of radical thinking in modern 'first-world' institutions like the university. In the final chapter, two detailed visions of classroom practice, the dialogic writing communities of Shor, and Knoblauch and Brannon, are examined. In opposition to these visions, the author returns to the Afro-American Studies class examined in Chapter 1, articulating a vision of radical pedagogy that acknowledges the tension between the goals of fostering authentic dialogue between teacher and student, and of revealing disciplinary knowledge as a historically constituted structure of power.
In the 1970's and 1980's new ways of thinking about the task of teaching writing on the college level emerged in the shape of what have become known as writing Across the curriculum programs. Many of these programs represent a successful struggle against a pedagogy and a language philosophy derived from the classical era. The first three chapters of the dissertation examine the nature of that struggle. The evolution of the classical 'product-centered' bias of composition teaching is outlined in Chapter One. Chapter Two considers the contribution of two thinkers who resisted in their work the philosophical and epistomological premises of the classical language curriculum. Chapter Three considers the evolution of three research traditions which helped forge a new Approach to composition teaching by rejecting many of the key assumptions of 'scientific' writing research. The current state of writing Across the curriculum programs in the United States is the subject of Chapter Four. Some programs have fully integrated the new writing research into their curriculum organization, others have remained remarkably immune to the new approaches. A final chapter looks to the future and to the specific ways research and evaluative strategies can be used to improve our teaching of writing Across the curriculum.
This study explicates the attitudes and practices toward student writing of a group of eight faculty members, each representing a different liberal arts discipline and each using writing extensively in undergraduate courses. Their attitudes and practices are related to eight major assumptions of the writing Across the curriculum movement as derived from a review of the literature. These eight faculty informants were interviewed an average of three times over the course of an entire semester. In addition, their classroom activities related to student writing were periodically observed and course documents (syllabi, handouts, examinations, and graded student papers) were analyzed. Several common themes emerged from analysis of the interview transcripts, observation notes, and documents. These teachers felt that writing is the responsibility of faculty in all disciplines and that writing is a tool for thinking and learning as well as a necessary communication skill. There was a wide diversity in the types of writing they assigned, in the real or assumed audiences, and in the pedagogical purposes their assignments served. Virtually all assigned writing was in the transactional mode. Half were unwilling to devote significant class time to writing-related activities, despite the importance their comments gave to student writing. None felt their efforts to encourage student writing were recognized by their colleagues or rewarded or supported by the University. Nor did they feel that other faculty shared their commitment to good teaching and student writing. Most felt that freshman writing classes need to be more concerned with preparing students to write within the specific conventions of different disciplines, and called for greater cooperation between writing teachers and content-area teachers. They also felt that the administration must make a strong commitment to student writing and to rewarding good teaching if the current situation is to change. Finally, most felt that participating in the study itself was beneficial to them, and several reported making substantive changes in their practices as a result of their dialogues with the researcher.
The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement is rapidly spreading in American colleges and universities. However, writing Across the curriculum is not a quick fix for a literacy crisis, nor is it a back-to-basics movement. The basic assumption of the movement is that writing is a central way of learning in all subject areas. The teaching of writing is a responsibility shared by all faculty. The WAC movement implies significant criticism of the pedagogy, the goals, and the educational outcomes of many of our contemporary educational institutions. There are, therefore, many obstacles in implementing a successful writing Across the curriculum program. This dissertation examines the concept Maxine Hairston calls the paradigm shift, the importance of considering writing as process rather than product, writing as a way of learning and various modes of writing. It traces the roots of WAC from England, looks at existing WAC programs, examines philosophical and pedagogical implications inherent in WAC and attempts to draw some conclusions about the use of WAC programs at colleges and universities. After reading this analysis, an administrator, department head, or individual instructor should understand what WAC requires of a faculty, student body, and curriculum and be able to determine if WAC will work within a given setting or situation.
This descriptive study, Personalizing Science Teaching Through Student Journal-Keeping, aims to illustrate how the process of journal-keeping can be effectively used in the science classroom to give concrete expression to an existential philosophy of education. The study begins with an examination of the basis tenets of existentialism as they apply specifically to the field of education. The tenets of three existential thinkers are examined: the notion of dialogue in the writings of Martin Buber, the concept of a problem-posing pedagogy articulated by Paulo Friere, and the person-centered Approach to education advanced by Carl Rogers. There follows a study of the role of language in education with emphasis on the use of personal, expressive language as a means of learning. The Writing Across the Curriculum Movement, a concrete embodiment of the Theory and practice of contemporary studies in Language and Learning, is discussed at length. The attitudes identified in this paper as characteristic of existentialism are likewise identified as characteristic of the philosophical underpinnings of the Writing Across the Curriculum Movement. Within this Theoretical framework the study then proceeds to examine the process of journal-keeping with reference to its historical background, development and application to the field of education. A particular use of the journal-keeping process in a college course in Human Biology is then described. Following an explanation of the purposes and guidelines for the use of the journal in this course excerpts are quoted from the journals of nine students as illustrative of the way students used their writings to personalize the material under consideration and to relate it to their lived experience. Evaluative statements of the students and of the teacher are included to give evidence of the effectiveness of journal-keeping as a means to realize existential goals in a science classroom. The paper concludes with a re-emphasis on the teacher as the single most significant factor in effecting humanistic educational reform in the classroom.
Writing Across the Curriculum and Discipline-Based Writing programs represent attempts to involve students in more writing in all their classes and to link that writing to what students are learning in subject areas other than English. These programs rest on certain Theories about the nature of the writing process and the relationship between writing and learning which suggest that writing can be an important vehicle for discovering and formulating ideas for the self, as well as providing the means through which ideas are communicated to an audience. Writing can be central to learning. Therefore, all teachers should use writing to promote effective learning of their disciplines. Since 1965, many Writing Across the Curriculum and Discipline-Based Writing programs have been implemented, based on the following assumptions: writing is not the concern solely of the English department; linking writing with other learning improves motivation; in order to learn to write, students must have something to write about; writing growth is fostered when writing is done to understand a subject; writing should be seen as a process; writing is learned above all by writing, so reinforcement and practice are essential. A Discipline-Based Writing course has been developed and taught at Saginaw Valley State College between 1977 and 1980. Called LINK, the program joins freshmen courses in Humanities and composition, leading to student improvement both in writing skills and in mastery of course content. Specifically, the LINK program has helped students to develop motivation and confidence for writing; to use writing to discover ideas and to forge bonds between the self and the material studied; to develop reading skills; to develop abstractive abilities and the ability to summarize; to transform ideas effectively for an audience; to write for a variety of audiences; and to gain an understanding of, and control over, writing processes.
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