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.
Writing-to-learn strategies have been well documented in the promotion of student learning (Poirrier, 1997c). Less is known about how teachers come to use these strategies in every day instruction. This study is a description of the experiences of one science teacher at a large suburban high school who shared writing-to-learn strategies with his department to promote the use of these strategies in daily instruction of his colleagues. The strategies involved (1) improving reading comprehension using paraphrasing, (2) activating prior knowledge using generic questions: who, what, where, when, why, & how, and (3) writing before and after other classroom activities to activate prior knowledge and then better integrate new information. The strategies were shared during informal meetings at lunch. Participation was voluntary. of the eighteen faculty members, four chose to implement the strategies on a longer-term basis. Follow-up analysis in subsequent years, showed that the strategies were still in use and that the colleagues who used the strategies had passed them on to newly inducted members of the department. Results were discussed with regards to how teachers acquire or decline the incorporation of new teaching ideas in the normal course of their work in collegial settings.
The purpose of this study is to propose, justify, and Theorize a cultural studies-based pedagogy for the rhetoric of science that would be useful in composition and writing Across the curriculum courses. In contemporary western society, which ascribes truth to knowledge gained by science, scientific discourse reigns as the most privileged rhetoric and is often not questioned. The development of a cultural studies-based pedagogy would potentially allow students to gain a critical perspective of this type of discourse—that is, to learn to recognize the inherent rhetorical characteristics of producing and analyzing it—so that they can make more well-informed decisions about the numerous scientific and technological issues that face them and so that they can learn to recognize that their writing can help to construct science. To Theorize this pedagogy, work from postmodern Theorists on disciplinarity and power (Foucault), language (Lyotard), and education (Usher and Edwards) is combined with Althusser's notion of an ideological state apparatus to demonstrate how science operates as a powerful cultural institution that inscribes subjects. The roots of contemporary scientific discourse in the Renaissance are then explored to demonstrate that scientific rhetoric, as with any other form of rhetoric—arose from specific historical circumstances and self-interest. To connect these explorations of science/scientific discourse with the mission of composition, various conceptions of literacy as perceived by humanities scholars and scientific literacy as perceived by scientists and science educators are discussed. The contrast demonstrates that scientific literacy is often thought of in uncritical terms. Cultural studies is then introduced as a means of establishing a pedagogy for achieving a more complex scientific literacy. A case-based pedagogy that results from this Theorizing is introduced.
The purpose of this energy unit was to teach the basic concept of energy to ninth and tenth grade general biology students. The unit addressed the general concept of energy, and compared physical and biological energy; laws of thermodynamics, energy stored in chemical bonds, and energy transfer in an ecosystem from the sun to living organisms. The unit was built around a thematic Approach to teaching science, and included several laboratory experiments and 'hands-on' activities to promote conceptual understanding of energy. The instruction sought to incorporate writing Across the curriculum and elements of the constructivist philosophy. An additional goal of the unit was to help students feel comfortable with science and scientific thinking. Student interviews, comparison of pre-test and post-test scores, evaluation of journal entries, student writing samples, exit student evaluations, and cooperative learning group reports/projects were evidence that student learning was enhanced by the pedagogic methods utilized. The students were enthusiastic learners who constructed their own knowledge of energy.
While rhetoricians of science describe how professional scientists accomplish their persuasive tasks, not much is known about the processes by which beginning science students begin to acquire the confidence and skill necessary to be persuasive to themselves or others about their work. This thesis examines how an upper-level biology laboratory course shapes novice biologists into novice rhetors: these novices are placed in situations where they must learn to persuade themselves and attempt to persuade others. It also illustrates how the colliding values of those novices, the values of their instructor and my own values as a visiting rhetorician led to collaborations none of us had originally intended. New research in the rhetoric of specific academic disciplines seems to offer great opportunities for developing connections to disciplines, especially those in the sciences, which have been reticent in the past about participating in Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs. However, amassing data about professional rhetorics is a mixed blessing. Such new knowledge may make writing professionals feel more comfortable and lead them to believe that they are more competent than they probably should feel in another discipline's territory. This can lead to inappropriate assumptions about what novices should be expected to accomplish and what kinds of independent critical thinking they should be practicing. I have found that the kinds of student autonomy and creativity which many writing professionals value in their students may well be off-limits, or be considered a premature hazard, to the students within other disciplines. This ethnography combines three years of laboratory observations and case studies of seven student informants during a one semester course in molecular biology and genetics. By examining the students' activities and the environment in which they do their work, I identify and examine some of the ways novices perform two basic rhetorical tasks: how they persuade themselves, and how they try to persuade others, about their data. This provides a 'take' on how such student activities are situated within a scientific culture, and how different task and role representations can help or hinder students' evolution as agents. This in turn can give writing professionals a more grounded understanding of how the goals of students, communities, and instructors will enable and constrain their efforts.
Many educators agree that writing, used as an instructional strategy, can serve as a powerful learning process. It helps students integrate new ideas and experiences with older ones in any subject. Recently there has been increased interest in the use of writing for teaching and learning content in school subjects Across the curriculum. This study investigated the connections between writing and learning in middle school science. In particular the study focused on an investigation of the effectiveness of the use of expressive writing in the science content area both as an aid to student achievement and to the retention of learned information. The underlying premise of the study was that students would better understand content material and remember it longer if they wrote about what they were learning. Two groups of average ability eighth grade students constituted the subjects of the study. Both groups covered the same assignments and experienced the same instructional techniques during the study with one exception. The experimental group utilized expressive writing activities during the course of the instructional unit, while the control group experienced the more traditional instructional techniques devoid of expressive writing activities. Pretest and posttest scores were compared to determine the effectiveness of the expressive writing activities as a learning aid. A post-posttest was administered to determine the longer term effect of the independent variable on the retention of learned information by the students in the experimental group. During the study it became apparent that some of the students in the experimental group were beginning to use their writings to help them learn. Also, the differences between the posttest and the post-posttest means seemed to suggest that these students showed a somewhat greater retention of learned information. However, no statistically significant difference was found to exist between the two groups of students. The findings of this study show there is much to be learned about the significance of using writing as a learning enhancement. Implications for teaching and teacher training as well as recommendations for further research focusing on the collection of empirical data are included in the study.
Douglas Biber (1988) in his book Variation Across Speech and Writing offers a model in which texts can be compared along dimensions of linguistic variation. This is the most sophisticated study on genre differences that has been published so far. The present study presents the results of a search for the percentage of linguistic features specifically shared by texts in the field of biological science. The findings are compared to the general science corpora described in Biber's analyses. The study includes 700-word text samples extracted from larger texts. All texts were automatically included in readable codes for the computer, words were automatically counted, and 10 of the linguistic features (those which most frequently co-occurred in Biber's general science corpora) were automatically identified. After the computational analysis was done, inspection by the analyst of the computer results to check for errors was also mandatory as the program used, AnyTEXT$sp{rm TM},$ did not always recognize all the linguistic features. The frequency counts of linguistic features were normalized to a text length of 1000 words. By summing up the frequency of each of the linguistic features in the texts, I was able to average the factor score for each text Across all texts in the biological science genre and compute a mean dimension score for the genre. I then used this mean dimension score to compare and to specify the relations among three sub-genres: biology, microbiology and biochemistry. The findings of this analysis show that narrowing the corpus to a specific field provides an array of linguistic dimensions which do not necessarily coincide with the results of the general science corpora described in Biber's analysis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
This research is a study of science teachers' perspectives or world views about writing in science. One aspect of the writing-Across-the-curriculum movement, writing in science, is based on the premise that writing improves learning and that writing in science provides an understanding of science as a discipline. Chapter Two reviews the writing-to-learn literature focusing specifically on studies concerning writing in science. A two-phase, qualitative research design was used to describe science teachers' perspectives about writing in science. Phase I consisted of a questionnaire distributed to middle and high school science teachers. Three types of survey questions were used to capture aspects of science teachers' perspectives--open ended, semantic differential, and Likert. Phase II involved a series of interviews with five science teachers. The interview data were analyzed and interpreted using Strauss' notion of constant comparison. Chapter Three describes the methodology used in developing the questionnaire and selecting interview participants. Chapters Four and Five contain discussions of the analysis, interpretation, and findings of the questionnaire and interview data, respectively. After the questionnaire and interview data were analyzed and interpreted independently, the findings of both data sets were synthesized. This synthesis of the data, overall conclusions of the study and implications for researchers of writing, science education researchers and practioners are included in Chapter Six. In summary, the findings of this study suggest that: (1) the way science teachers perceive their own writing is significantly different than the way they perceive their students' writing; (2) science teachers have traditional models of what teaching and evaluating writing entails; (3) a dual science curricula exists which results in dual assignments and ways of evaluating success; (4) the science teachers' view of writing Across the curriculum may be the result of beliefs about the differences in writing in science and English classrooms, what teaching and evaluating writing entails, and what they believe is important to know about science; and (5) science teachers do not perceive writing in science as a concern.
This dissertation traces the roots of the writing Across the curriculum (WAC) movement in England and provides a rationale for its implementation in American higher education, especially in our nation's open access community colleges where students exhibit severe deficits in writing. for one of the basic tenets of the WAC movement contends that writing can be employed as a tool for, rather than as a test of, learning in any discipline wherein the student is able use words to make connections and discover meaning. The emphasis exists on the process Approach of writing rather than the product Approach that stresses form and syntactical correctness, not that the WAC movement ignores rules of syntax. Proponents of the writing Across the curriculum movement argue that writing is central to the learning process and that all faculty should endeavor to assist students to communicate concepts with clarity, meaning, and accuracy. The centerpiece of this dissertation presents two published articles from The Journal of College Science Teaching. The first article, entitled 'Writing to Learn Biology', chronicles the author's initial attempts in her Biology classes at Queensborough Community College to implement WAC techniques such as journals, focused on freewriting and microthemes. In this first article the author concludes that these WAC strategies actively engaged students in their own learning. This active involvement resulted in improved student learning. Furthermore, students enjoyed the class more as active rather than passive participants. Encouraged by the positive student response and her own intuition about the efficacy of using WAC techniques to actively engage students the author continued to experiment with interactive classroom strategies that would not only actively engage the learner but also improve scientific literacy. The second article entitled, 'Clustering: An Interactive Technique To Enhance Learning In Biology', describes an innovative pre-writing technique and its implementation in the biology classroom to accomplish these goals. The conclusion of the dissertation includes: (1) a research paradigm for analyzing students summary writing; (2) student feedback on the learning process and implications for future practice; and (3) reflections by the author on her sense of development and professional renewal vis-a-vis faculty development within the City University of New York and at Teachers College, Columbia University.
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.
Theses and dissertation abstracts and citation information are provided courtesy of UMI Company, except as noted in abstracts. Copyright © for UMI materials 1998-2009 UMI Company, A Bell & Howell Company. All rights reserved. To order a dissertation or thesis, visit http://wwwlib.umi.com/dxweb/gateway.
Copyright © 1997-2009 Colorado State University and/or this site's authors, developers, and contributors. Some material displayed on this site is used with permission.