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.
Assessment of writing for technical purposes is oriented in the main toward standards developed in accordance with general literacy goals and composing practices developed in English Language Studies for Writing-Across the Curriculum programs. Increasingly, interpretation of technical writing practices cast it as being defined by direct participation in the work of disciplinary communities. This dissertation shows, first, how criteria for assessing technical writing changes dramatically when developed from this “situated” perspective. Second, it suggests that such development provides improved support for overall technical writing pedagogy—practically, by articulating the goals and expectations of the competent members who form the disciplinary community teaching any novice; and ethically, by providing ways to insure the presence of resources for thinking critically about the work and developing in it toward informed interaction with a wider community, in or out of the discipline.
Data on situated technical writing practices and their assessment by competent members of a technical and scientific community were gathered during a participant-observer year in the School of Engineering at the University of Guelph. The character and operation of the work of engineering are highlighted by comparing them to the specifications for writing outlined in technical writing textbooks currently in use. As the inquiry proceeds, it focuses on three key issues: (1) how members of a discipline orient to work through writing; (2) what resources of document, text, and language are used for writing situated in the engineering disciplines; and (3) why engineering writing pointedly includes graphical as well as lexical ways of articulating substantive material. These topics effectively form questions that arise and are answered in the course of making the comparisons that form the focal points of the central chapters.
As its outcome, this study produces a local and particular inspection of what a group of expert engineers takes to be techniques adequate to writing for technical purposes. Featuring three separate considerations of physical documents and their design, the creation and uses of text formats, and the specialized deployment of graphical and lexical language resources, the central chapters detail how expectations for writing practices are seen from the point of view of the actors who are the expert members of the disciplinary community. By establishing this situated vantage point, the study seeks to initiate inquiry into the relationship between the assumptions made in competent members writing assessment practices and those invoked by the practices in writing pedagogy as it is viewed from the situation of the humanities-trained instructor. The claim made here is that writing approached from the actor's point-of-view has a significantly increased chance of being accepted as rational action, or practices meeting the expectations placed on it by a disciplinary community. This study suggests, finally, that we can draw on the coincidence of what is achieved with what is expected to develop criteria for response and evaluation that will reinforce both our practical and ethical reasons for teaching technical writing.
This case study explores the role of language, particularly texts, in the engineering design process. The results support a new “mediated” model of engineering design as an inventional activity in which designers use talk, written language and other symbolic representations as tools to mediate design work: to think about and think through their design process. Although graphic representations have long been recognized as important tools for design thinking, written language has not been considered central to design. Instead, traditional models of design include written texts as merely means for communicating technical content. This study, however, describes how both oral and written language served crucial functions in facilitating design invention in the design activity of a four-student team, in an innovative mechanical engineering design course at a U.S. technological university. To trace the function of symbolic representations (written, oral, and visual) in design activity, design ideas were coded for both the stage of design process addressed and type of representation used to mediate design talk (Text-mediated, Sketch-mediated, Both-mediated, Unmediated). Analysis focused on contrasts between talk about the most- and least-successful features of the team's design. {Paragraph Break} Results suggest that: (1) texts are embedded in design activity; (2) although extended talk did coincide with more frequent invention, inventing more proposals did not guarantee design success; (3) successful design was associated with using written and graphic representations together, and less successful design with using either text or sketch separately; and (4) different types of mediation were used at different times and at different stages of the design process. Qualitative analysis confirms six mediating functions previously recognized for written and graphic representations in design (Conveying ideas, Recording proposals, Pacing activity, Affording invention, Contextualizing design, Sharing visions) and identifies two new functions (Arguing for proposals and Structuring invention). {Paragraph Break} These results suggest that engineering design educators and researchers should recognize mediation as a potential marker of design success. In addition, educators in both writing and engineering need to consider that combining talk, texts, and graphic representations may help designers produce effective texts and artifacts.
The current study examined women engineering co-op students learning about engineering discourse practices in the workplace. The study included a survey of recent engineering graduates (92 men, 84 women) of Midtown University (a pseudonym), and case studies of five women Midtown engineering students enrolled in co-op during spring and summer 1997. Survey results aided in designing the case studies, which examined more closely the experiences of women co-op students in a variety of workplace environments, and who were majoring in engineering fields that have been identified as particularly attractive to women: civil, chemical, and industrial engineering. The case studies relied heavily on interviews, site visits, and writing samples. Although the survey provided useful information about the amount of time respondents believed they spent writing during co-op, the kinds of documents they wrote, and aids for learning to write, the case studies revealed the complexity of the learning process, involving the quality of the mentoring relationship between and student, the availability of sample documents to model, the presence of supportive co-workers, students' prior writing experience and disciplinary knowledge gained in school, the kinds of tasks students' are assigned during co-op, and students' engineering specialty and gender. Perhaps the most important finding was that the women studied here all believed that engineers use writing to persuade, which seems to contradict previous research suggesting that engineers do not view their writing as persuasive, but as simply presenting facts that speak for themselves. It is unclear whether or to what extent gender may have influenced the women's perceptions about engineers' use of persuasion; it is perhaps more likely that they were attracted to engineering fields and co-oped in workplaces in which persuasion was integral to the work of engineers. Future research needs to compare the perceptions of men and women engineers Across engineering specialties and workplace contexts. The study findings have implications for researchers and teachers of business and technical communication, writing in non-academic settings, experiential learning, gender studies, writing Across the curriculum, and writing in the disciplines.
The single largest divide in academia is centered between humanistic and scientific disciplines. The separation of these two disciplinary ideologies stems from centuries of stereotypical assumptions about both modes of interpreting reality. for example Albert Levi confidently states In The Humanities Today that " (I) f those in the science and those in the humanities ... misunderstand one another, ... this is hardly surprising ... they think differently ... (and) speak two separate languages"(56). Thomas Kuhn argues that when universities teach science as a "linear," left-brain only process, they misrepresent how the practice of science actually works. One group of students particularly vulnerable to the effects of polarizing humanistic and scientific ways of knowing are medical students, since until the early 1980s, the majority of medical schools exclusively relied on the sciences to teach medical students how to be effective practitioners. In the last ten years, however, a group of scholars known as medical humanists have begun to work against medical students' narrowly focused schooling by exposing them to literature and writing, two rarely required activities in medical school. In targeting their efforts toward humanizing the field of medicine, medical humanists are filling a gap in academia since few current interdisciplinary programs link the science and the humanities. This dissertation is a qualitative ethnographic study of one medical humanities program located at the University of Missouri- Kansas City Medical School (UMKC). It centers on two questions: (1) In this medical humanities interdisciplinary environment, what instances are there when medical students exhibit thoughts/behavior/ideas not considered during other stages of their medical training? and (2) What instances are there when medical students exhibit traditional, academic or science-based behaviors in this non-traditional, humanities-based educational environment? In its concluding chapters, this study demonstrates that although medical students primarily utilized traditional science-based learning tools during this particular medical humanities experience (e.g., they recorded 'facts,' resisted abstract descriptions, and tuned-out 'irrelevant' (e.g., personal) stories), they did begin to conceptualize themselves as active participators in the world of medicine by recognizing that there is an interpretive level to doctor/patient interactions. In summary, because these medical students had "to read in the fullest sense," and learn how to " (tolerate) ambiguity" during this medical humanities experience, they had to begin realistically preparing for actual "doctor/patient encounters" (Trautmann 32).
This dissertation investigates the effects a creative writing class, designed especially for nursing students, has on their critical writing and explores how this course fits into the curricular goals of nursing schools and other disciplines interested in writing Across the curriculum. To assess the effects of creative writing on critical writing, I examined the writing abilities of nursing students in nursing classes they took before the creative writing class; then I taught the creative writing course; finally, I evaluated the work of three nursing students from nursing classes they took after the creative writing class. The case studies revealed that creative writing improved the critical writing of the nursing students, and also served as a powerful awakening of empathy.
The purpose of this study was to find out whether writing skills were a handicap to job success for former basic writers who had graduated from college. A population of 197 former basic writers (FBW's) and 68 former strong writers (FSW's, used as a comparison) were surveyed and interviewed. Research questions included (1) What types of jobs do FBW's have, compared to FSW's, and how much do their feelings about writing affect their choices of major or job? (2) How much and how often do FBW's write at work compared to FSW's? (3) What forms of writing do FBW's do most frequently compared to FSW's? (4) How do FBW's feel about the writing they do for their jobs, compared to FSW's? (5) How satisfied are FBW's with their writing ability at work, compared to FSW's? (6) How nervous are FBW's about writing at work, compared to FSW's? (7) If FBW's are writing adequately enough to keep their jobs, how are they able to do this? According to the data from the survey, which yielded a response rate of 68%, FBW's did about the same amount and types of writing as the FSW's, they reported feeling almost as positive about and satisfied with their writing as FSW's, experienced almost as much enjoyment and were not paralyzed with anxiety. Follow-up interviews indicated that FBW's were writing adequately at work and feeling more positive about writing than they had in college because writing requirements were usually short and routine, they had sufficient time to write, they had knowledge of the subject matter, which was focused and predictable, they were familiar with the audiences or their audience needs, sense of purpose was stronger, and the rewards and consequences of writing were more obvious. In addition, FBW's were more mature than in college and had better attitudes and higher motivation. Finally, through work, FBW's had become members of select social and discourse communities. Implications for the teaching profession include writing Across the curriculum, composition courses in the senior year, real life writing assignments, and sequenced writing in class and on final examinations.
The data obtained from this investigation which focused on the writing produced in a non-traditional, undergraduate U.S. Labor History class indicate that most of the writing in this class centered on informational and mechanical uses of writing, i.e., copying from the blackboard and note-taking. Although the instructor recognized the value of writing within a course curriculum, reading assignments and studying for exams dominated homework exercises. The ethnographic paradigm, however, produced a much more comprehensive picture of the class which suggests that various activities including note-taking, reorganizing notes, reading related and assigned class materials, class discussion, listening to lectures and reading and writing on the job can positively influence the learning of course material and the form writing takes in a class. This method also allowed a clearer image of the non-traditional student population, i.e., blue collar workers, to emerge. First, as older working class students, life experience became the mediating channel between the course content and the development of writing skills. Second, each student was at a different level of development and experience in their academic career which had an effect upon the writing they produced, i.e., the more schooling an individual had, the more sophisticated a student he became. Third, those students who were involved in academic pursuits for the first time or after a long hiatus actively drew upon relevant past experiences in order to construct a viable model which was used to process new information. Thus, several students used their 'workaday' reading and writing activities as a structure for their own class writing. Finally, adult learners do not carve up their lives into separate spheres: A definite overlap exists between the domains of school, work and home. Sometimes success in writing is dependent upon the types of reading and writing students are exposed to at their places of employment; if the writing models presented to them at work were unsuitable templates for school work, students had difficulty with their class writing.
This study investigated writing and its functions in an important but neglected academic context: undergraduate study in business. The focus of the study was a small business management course at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Adding to our knowledge of writing to learn in the overlapping communities of school and discipline was a major goal of the study. This study is situated within two communities which focus on academic settings: Writing Across the Curriculum (concerned with native English speakers) and English for Academic Purposes (focusing on non-native speakers of English). Bringing together related scholarship and research methodology from these areas to produce insight for teaching was another aim of the study. The two applied fields share a social-rhetorical view of language, leading to research which frames questions in terms of writers, readers, and their texts, in the contexts in which they are written and read: suggesting an ethnographic Approach. This study made use of participant observation, interviewing, text analysis and administration of a questionnaire to address two questions: (1) How do the contextual features comprising this academic situation (the course, the university setting, the discipline, the national setting) interact with writing? (2) How can such knowledge be applied to the teaching of composition in academic settings? Findings indicate that the important contextual features are the course, the nationality and culture of the participants, the discipline, and that the writing occurs in a university setting. of less importance was that students were non-native speakers of English. The Writing in Small Business Management was neither good academic nor good professional writing; it was 'school' writing, assigned for evaluation purposes and rated highly when it demonstrated learning, regardless of the quality of the writing. Students viewed this transactional writing both as a vehicle for demonstrating their knowledge (to the teacher) and for exploring and shaping their own ideas (for themselves). Through writing students learned to reason as business professionals, to work in groups, and to apply business knowledge. Nevertheless, students could have learned a great deal more were their writing expected not only to demonstrate learning in business (writing to do school) but also to demonstrate good business in writing.
This study proposes a model to compare cohesion and information management in samples of professional writing in three disciplines (counseling psychology, biology, and history). When tested with the chi-square procedure, the comparisons revealed significant differences in the cohesion and information management systems of the three sample passages (criterion: p $
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