Theses & Dissertations

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.

Category: Business

Clark, John M.. (1995). Cognitive Apprenticeship, Motivation, and College Writing: Theoretical and Pedagogical Considerations. | View Details

This study recursively constructed a view of Cognitive Apprenticeship--an educational Approach introduced in 1989 by Collins, Brown, and Newman--and a research-based view of the collegiate writing motivations endemic to first-year, second-year, and fourth-year college students. The view of Cognitive Apprenticeship ultimately constructed was influenced by a two-year case study of Business Administration students' writing motivations foundational to project, but so, too, were that case study and its findings strongly influenced by the represented features of Cognitive Apprenticeship. The overall purpose of this project was to define a body of Theory informative to a more consistent, more learning-focused Approach to writing throughout the college curriculum. The body of Theory suggested in the text was based on current Theories of cognition, learning, and motivation, expanding and particularizing Collins, Brown, and Newman's concept of Cognitive Apprenticeship. The project was based upon five major goals: (1) to provide a view of Cognitive Apprenticeship and its concomitant Theories comprehensive enough to prove its worthiness as a pedagogical Theory and comprehensible enough to be applied by all collegiate instructors who teach with writing, (2) to gain evidence of curricular motivations' interactions with cognition and learning, (3) to establish congruity between Cognitive Apprenticeship's features and characteristics of intentional, higher order learning, (4) to identify and model evolving collegiate writing attitudes and motivations, and (5) to determine the influences on subsequent writing motivations of students' causal attributions regarding college writing outcomes. The study concluded that Cognitive Apprenticeship is highly congruent with the reported motivations of collegiate writers. Furthermore, all groups in the study were determined to have relatively high motivations toward intentional, higher order learning, with first- year students determined to be the group most strongly motivated by the intrinsic characteristics of a college writing task or writing situation. Though not an original study focus, potentially crucial gender-based differences in writing-focused attitudes and motivations were also noted. Suggestions for first-year college writing, implications for writing programs and writing Across the college curriculum, and suggestions for further, similarly focused empirical studies were also included.

Gumnior, Elisabeth C.. (1994). The Effects of Writing Across the Curriculum Efforts on School of Business Faculty at Indiana University. | View Details

This study describes the short- and long-term effects a four-year writing-Across-the-curriculum (WAC) project had on selected School of Business faculty. Based on classroom observations and interviews, the study examines how the faculty reacted to the WAC practices the writing consultants brought into undergraduate business courses and how these reactions were related to factors specific to business education, such as the close connection between business school departments and the business community. Chapter One introduces the major questions driving the study. Chapter Two describes the writing consultant project. The three consultants all had different philosophies and pedagogical approaches. The differences among them influenced the development of the program, and shaped the faculty's responses. Chapter Three discusses changes in the undergraduate accounting curriculum. Many of these changes are motivated by professional organizations and the business community who have considerable influence on the classroom practice of faculty and their attitudes toward models of curricular change such as the writing consultant project. Chapter Four examines these attitudes in detail by providing the case studies of two accounting professors who worked with the writing consultants with varying results. The cases demonstrate that the consultant model while useful may also be limiting. Chapter Five, therefore, furnishes a case study demonstrating that the limitations of the consultant model can be overcome by developing collaborative projects that involve the writing consultant and the faculty as partners. Chapter Six concludes the study by reasserting the need for such collaborative projects especially at large research-oriented universities where it may be philosophically impossible to implement centrally administered WAC programs. One-on-one contact between WAC consultants and faculty will serve not only to strengthen WAC efforts of programs and individual faculty but also to make the developing WAC discipline as inclusive as possible for faculty from all disciplines.

Chan, Michele M.. (1989). Writing in a Small Business Management Course: Doing Business/Doing School (Esl, Hong Kong, Business Education)... | View Details

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.

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