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.
This study evaluated the impact of clustering freshman seminars with English composition courses on new students' first semester grade point averages and retention rates. The study occurred at a small, independent college in the northeast. To evaluate the impact of the cluster program (5 clustered sections, n = 90; 13 nonclustered sections, n = 237), both quantitative and qualitative research methods were utilized.
This study produced mixed results. Quantitatively, using multivariate regression models, no statistical difference was found between the clustered and nonclustered students in their first semester grade point average or in their retention rates. Qualitatively, differences did exist. Students interviewed in a focus group settings offered varying opinions about their clustered experience. Overall, clustered students reported being more active learners, gaining more academic skills, developing closer friendships with peers, establishing more meaningful relationships with faculty members, and participating more in campus life than the nonclustered students.
College students are expected to exhibit the surface correctness of standard edited English. Instructors and employers judge harshly errors in standard English. Debate continues on how to achieve surface correctness. College composition instructors often rely on teaching formal grammar in assisting students in mastering standard English. They do so despite the conclusion reached by two major reviews of research on composition: that teaching formal grammar is not effective in improving writing. Many instructors disagree and contend that teaching formal grammar improves writing--at least in adherence to requirements of standard English. This project evolved as a result of my dissatisfaction with using a textbook and exercises in teaching formal grammar. Few students enjoyed using them, and many performed poorly on a written objective grammar examination. In this project, I use student writing and model writing to teach grammar at Southside Virginia Community College. The experimental group is compared with a control group, who studied grammar using a textbook and exercises. A t-test comparison of means of scores of the two groups on an objective grammar examination suggests the possibility that the treatment was effective in improving performance on the examination. The limitations of this research are those common to action research. This project also uses a survey to collect data from the treatment group and composition instructors at four Virginia community colleges. Analysis of the data indicates that faculty and students consider the study of grammar important and consider student writing, model writing, textbooks, and exercises important tools in the study of grammar, with student writing judged the most important tool. Students consider the study of grammar more important than instructors do. Students and instructors most enjoy using student writing to study grammar. It is recommended that composition instructors continue to teach formal grammar and experiment in using a model similar to that used for the treatment group in this project and that research--both action and experimental--continue in an effort to provide data necessary for concluding the debate on the efficacy of the study of formal grammar in improving writing.
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.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of integrated instruction in reading and writing in the developmental classroom and to explore other ways in which the reciprocal processes of reading and writing may also affect the underprepared college student. These students often feel alienated in the academic environment and it is imperative that educators provide a curriculum that will not only increase the chance of student success by improving reading and writing skills but also increase motivation and improve retention within the course.
Data were gathered pre- and post-semester from three sources (standardized reading test, writing sample, motivation survey) and post-semester from four sources (attendance records, course evaluations, oral interviews, classroom observations) from a group of 46 participants who received integrated instruction in reading and writing and a group of 42 participants who received non-integrated instruction in reading and writing. During a fifteen-week semester, participants in the integrated group received instruction in reading and writing that emphasized purposeful uses of reading/writing in college, stressed strategic approaches to literacy development rather than isolated skills, and encouraged students to move toward independence and control of their own reading and writing processes. Participants in the non-integrated group received traditional separate instruction in reading and writing during the same semester.
An ANCOVA revealed a statistically significant difference, with the integrated group scoring higher than the non-integrated group on the standardized measure of reading (DRP). In writing, an ANCOVA did not reveal a statistically significant difference on the writing sample; however, further analysis revealed that there was a statistically significant association between performance (passing essays) and the integrated group. Analysis of the motivation survey (MSLQ) revealed statistically significant differences for two of the subscales (extrinsic goal orientation, task value) among participants in the integrated and non-integrated groups. for two of the subscales (self-efficacy for learning, test anxiety) these changes were statistically significant for the integrated group. Analysis revealed that retention of students in the integrated group was statistically significant when compared to that of students in the non-integrated group, and students in the integrated group reported having higher satisfaction with the class.
This study was designed to provide a description of Speaking Across the Curriculum programs (SAC) in four year public higher education institutions in the United States. Each institution was sent a cover letter describing the investigation and a survey inviting them to participate by responding. A total of 583 institutions were sent the Phase I survey instrument; 562 (96.4 percent) responded. A total of 52 institutions responded that they currently have a SAC Program and were sent a Phase II survey that requested information in the following areas: Background and Historical; Assessment; Administration; and Funding. The findings indicated the following trends: (1) The majority were implemented during the 1990s; none were reported in place before 1984. (2) Overall program goals were "student" oriented. (3) Junior and Senior levels offered a greater number of speech-intensive courses than Freshman and Sophomore. (4) Workshops, seminars or discussion groups supplied instructional development to help faculty deliver speaking-intensive courses. (5) Most institutions responded that they currently had an individual considered the SAC Director/Coordinator. (6) The most prevalent Director/Coordinator duty was developing SAC assessment/evaluation methods. The second and third duty was determining internal and external departmental involvement. (7) The training process involved the Director/Coordinator and communication faculty, outside sources, the Director of the Writing Center, or Graduate Assistant. (8) Over 50 percent responded there was no requirement for specialized faculty outside Communication Departments. (9) Student and faculty evaluations were the most prevalent mode of assessment. (10) Over 50 percent indicated the final authority was the SAC Program Director. (11) Program funding method answers were varied, with budgeting as the only commonalty. This investigation also indicated that SAC programs: (1) Increased in number during the 1990s; (2) Are more prevalent in institutions with less than 10,000 student enrollment; and (3) Are more prevalent in institutions with Carnegie Classifications of Master's I.
This study describes a cross-disciplinary study in Writing Across the Disciplines (WAC) at the University of South Carolina Aiken (USCA). As a composition specialist within the larger academic community, I reflect on assumptions made about writing both within and beyond the composition sequence by exploring practices, processes, and personalities within USCA's academic disciplines and schools. After reviewing WAC scholarship, I use surveys, assignment reviews, and interviews to analyze disciplinary assumptions about "writing-to- learn." I explore disciplinary categories and characteristics that have been previously established by WAC scholars. With participants, I examine explicit and implicit purposes and processes that are unique to disciplines. I also explore commonalties we share as teachers or past students of writing, as well as contradictions with our actual practices. I also explore the relationships between writing backgrounds of my participants. Definite patterns--purposes and uses of language to describe writing--can be associated with the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, particularly evident with upper-level classes. Creativity and discovery of new knowledge are most valued when students are being acculturated to a discipline. Our disciplinary expectations are more variable for freshmen. Generally, instructors' frustrations with freshmen's lack of critical abilities lead instructors to rely on structural approaches while presenting foundational knowledge which instructors perceive as fixed and transmittable. Pedagogical patterns are also less predictable even within disciplines. My study suggests that teaching patterns are more associated with personal backgrounds than disciplinary purposes and concludes that exploring personal backgrounds may be just as significant as determining disciplinary practices and processes. Exploring instructors' expectations for students, and their willingness or resistance to changing instructional methods, also leads me to question whether WAC is better represented as a tool for faculty development or as a reformatory initiative for student learning. As tool or initiative, WAC's impact remains questionable until fully assessed through future research studies. Assessment must be confronted as a major issue for WAC.
This study investigated the reactions of American professors to the written prose of non-native speaking international students in their classes. The need for a clear understanding of the specific nature of the writing required in particular content areas has been recently stressed (Leki & Carson, 1994). These data are important for ESL curriculum designers to plan courses that will help these students to write coherent papers for their professors. The areas of the assignments that are especially significant are those the professors have difficulty following. The first case study in this research assessed the reactions of an ESL and freshman chemistry professor to the assignments of a Japanese native speaker. In the second case study, the same ESL professor and a professor teaching a course in urban development reacted to the written prose of a graduate student from Indonesia who was a native speaker of Malay. All the informants were interviewed throughout the data collection periods about the way these assignments were written and graded. In addition, the professors were asked to assess the students' papers and indicate the areas where, in their opinion, they had not expressed the concepts clearly. A model of discourse analysis that focused on the interactive, coherent, semantic, and syntactic aspects of text was developed and used to assess the way the professors had reacted to the assignments. The results indicate that while all the professors were primarily concerned with the content of the students' papers each reacted differently to the way the concepts were organized and expressed. The patterns of language use related specifically to the concerns of the respective content areas and the disciplinary context within which the assignment was set. It was with this interactive aspect of the texts that the students had most difficulty and to which the professors reacted most consistently. In both the freshman chemistry and the urban planning courses, neither student was given direct help with the linguistic requirements of the assignments. The results of the study have important implications for the role of the ESL writing classes in relation to the demands of the content areas.
The purpose of this study was to collaboratively create curriculum, and was based on the following question: What can be learned about curriculum and curriculum development through the utilization of a curricular framework in which interrelated curricular engagements are used as assessment potentials for making Theoretically consistent curricular decisions about learners and learning? The curricular framework functioned as an organizational device to support learners in using reading, writing, and art as engagements to learn, and provide teachers with assessment potentials for making more informed and Theoretically consistent curricular decisions in the classroom. Curricular engagements included write-alongs, sketch to stretch, cloning an author, freewriting, and literature circles. Data collection and data analysis were grounded in qualitative research methodology, and driven by social constructivist and ethnographic perspectives. Human and non-human data sources were used. Human sources totaled 103 informants (10 teachers, 77 students, 15 parents, 1 Director). Non-human sources included historical artifacts and school brochures. Data collection procedures included fieldwork, participant interpretation, unstructured interview, journal writing, photography, audio-video taping, and anecdotal record keeping. Data was analyzed using the constant comparative method. Based on data analysis, this study offers a model of curriculum as inquiry that highlights four new relationships: (1) between curriculum and assessment in which both are conceptualized as potentials for inquiry, (2) between curriculum as inquiry and a cultural ecology of schooling in which the latter is conceptualized as a Theoretically consistent system of values Across five dimensions: intentional, structural, curricular, pedagogical, evaluative, (3) between curriculum as inquiry and a socio-historical context of schooling in which the latter is conceptualized as a system of values that reflect the most current curricular worlds of teachers and students, and (4) between curriculum as inquiry and underlying learning processes in which the latter are conceptualized as different ways of situated knowing. This model of curriculum as inquiry is then situated within a larger model of education that supports diversity and a Theory of learning that highlights difference. Implications are raised for using curriculum as inquiry as a potential for repositioning ourselves as teachers and learners.
This investigation analyzes qualitatively what happened as several teachers constructed a process for implementing portfolio use and assessment in their respective disciplines. This study relies on the use of discourse analysis and other qualitative methods, as it probes the nature and process of meaning-making. The analysis focuses on conversations with teachers both on one-on-one interviews and in full group discussions. An analysis of these discussions provides a means to a deeper understanding of the process used by the teachers to discern for themselves the meaning of portfolios, especially with respect to the participants' own social, cultural and educational context. This study investigates how selected teachers from two private high schools in six different subject matter disciplines used portfolios and initiated portfolio assessment in what each considered to be a writing Across the curriculum Approach in their classes. The study also deals with the quality of 'writing to learn' and 'learning to write' that the writing Across the curriculum movement advocates. The meaning-making process of the teachers and the concerns each had about portfolio use and assessment in combination with workshop procedures, particularly small group work, are the focal points of the research. Although the author was tempted to make sweeping conclusions about how teachers use portfolios in various disciplines, it simply could not be done. Therein lies a weakness of qualitative research, and therein lies an inherent strength. Portfolio use and assessment serve rather as a means to an end. The study provides one more facet of the ongoing conversation and debate concerning teachers and their meaning-making processes in a social, cultural, and educational context.
Although only 85% of all seventh graders in Texas passed a statewide direct writing assessment (a written sample responding to a uniform prompt) in 1990 (up from 66% in 1986), no particular writing program or systematic remedy has been adopted to diminish the problem and increase the scores. In some schools, writing Across the curriculum (WAC) is one program being used which has the potential to diminish the problem. This study investigated two questions: (a) is there a relationship between WAC programs and overall improvement in student composition? and (b) what are the qualities that make a WAC program successful and long-lived? Five school districts in various areas of Texas were chosen for this study. Within each of the five districts, two middle schools of similar size and socioeconomic status were selected, one with a WAC program and the other without one. for the quantitative research 16,000 composition scores were analyzed; for the qualitative research, principals and teachers from the five WAC campuses expressed through on-site interviews their perceptions regarding the improvement of student writing. Analyses of the data yielded these results: during the 1986-1990 period, the five WAC schools increased the percentage of their passing composition scores by thirteen percent while the five nonWAC campuses increased their percentage only eight percent. Teachers in all five schools said that students improved in fluency and organization and wrote for more purposes and audiences. The consensus of those interviewed is that WAC changes teacher, student, and administrator attitudes toward writing in many positive ways. The following qualities are needed to make a WAC program successful and long-lived: committed teachers in every department; English teachers who can help with evaluation, materials, and instructional techniques; and administrators who will support WAC in planning, scheduling, and providing staff development. In summary, the date collected for the present study speaks strongly in favor of having a WAC program at the secondary level.
This was an investigation to determine if significant differences exist in the instruction of editing skills for fifth grade students in schools in Pennsylvania whose school scores in editing skills as measured by the Educational Quality Assessment (EQA) are above or below their predicted band. The problem focused specifically on the question: Is there a relationship between good writing process instruction and good editing skills knowledge? EQA data was used to identify schools that had scored consistently above their predicted band in writing skills or below their predicted band in writing skills. Schools were then assigned as matched pairs according to their skill performance and demographics. To assure that demographically similar schools were matched, the scores for four variables were obtained from EQA data. The four variables were community type, parent occupation, parent education, and grade enrollment. A total of eighty schools, or forty matched pairs were used for the study. A survey that had been developed by the researcher and that was based on factors which critics in the area of writing considered to be important in the development of good writing skills was mailed to the schools identified for the study. Teachers in grades one through five in those schools were asked to complete the survey. After the surveys had been returned to the researcher, a school score for each question on the survey was computed providing a mean for each question for each school. These school scores were used to compare the schools in the above-band group with the schools in the below-band group. Since the matched pairs were of schools that were alike demographically but had scored differently on the EQA, t tests were used to compare the means computed from the survey questions. Variables used for analysis were in-service training in the writing process, conferencing, revision, audience awareness, writing Across the curriculum, teacher writing, student choice of topic, integration of reading with writing, and team writing. Analysis of the data showed that there was no significant relationship between writing process techniques and good editing skills scores.
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.
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