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 classroom study focuses on middle school students' historical thinking and writing about history, after their having worked with artifacts chosen to represent a specific historical period. Although this research contributes to a growing body of literature on the historical thinking and learning of school age children, it represents a beginning inquiry into how middle school students' historical thinking and writing about history are assisted through use of objects.
A Texas history class at a middle school in Austin, Texas provided the data for the study. The researcher taught a lesson in which students examined artifacts, classified them according to their possible use, and determined their relationship to one of four cultures living in Texas in 1685. The artifact assemblages included objects reflective of each culture (i.e., food items, arrow points, metal buttons, shells, etc.).
During the time students worked in groups and conversed about the significance of the artifacts, audio-tape recorders at each work station recorded their conversation. The transcribed audio-tapes served as part of the data. Following this activity, students composed individual essays to reveal their group's decision about what culture the artifacts they examined most represented. Students' compositions provided additional data.
The researcher created a four point hierarchical protocol, based on Wineburg's studies (1991 a & b), with each level representing a more cognitively complex way of thinking about history. The protocol was used for the purpose of analyzing the transcribed and written data, to determine the cognitive complexity of students' thinking and writing about history. In order to determine reliability, two independent readers coded the data, following the same guidelines used by the teacher/researcher. The obtained reliability was high.
The major finding of the study held that students' historical thinking and learning of a period in history were enhanced through their working with artifacts. Students' learning engaged their multiple senses. This finding supports the use of original sources and artifacts in the teaching of history as a means by which students might think and learn about history in a cognitively complex manner.
Writing in physical education classes was investigated as a means of providing fifth graders with additional practice in writing. According to research, additional time spent writing in all content areas aids in the improvement of the quality of writing. This study involved 89 fifth grade subjects in four classes of a suburban school. Two classes wrote weekly at the conclusion of their physical education classes on predetermined topics that were relevant to the lesson. All classes wrote weekly in language arts classes on previously selected topics using various genre.
Data collected included inventories of interest in writing and physical education, quality of writing assessments using a six point rubric for both physical education and language arts topics, and the number of words written for each subject's writing. The ability of each subject was made available from IQ scores received on the CAT and from the written expression subtest scores. Scores of ability were correlated with the quality of writing assessments.
The results of this study indicate a high interest in physical education and a low interest in writing. The quality of writing in physical education classes was lower than the quality of writing in language arts class for all ability groups. Ability did not appear to be a factor when compared to quality of writing. Those who wrote in the physical education classes showed very little improvement in the quality of writing in language arts class. This study suggests that there is a need to investigate methods to improve the quality of student writing.
A number of recent books, articles, and nationwide assessments tell us that students are not learning history. In response, individuals and groups, from a wide variety of cultural and political perspectives have engaged in intense debates over what history should be taught. They suggest remedies that, no matter what the political or cultural perspective, tend to view the students as lacking any historical knowledge and understanding. But what seems to have gotten lost in these debates, which have centered on such issues as multiculturalism, the content of textbooks, and national standards, is the question of pedagogy--how a subject is taught and knowledge is transmitted. Thus, these debates over content have tended to ignore the recent research into reading and composition. This research finds that these are processes to which individuals bring their prior life experiences, knowledge, and beliefs. This dissertation focuses on how a pedagogy, which utilized students' prior knowledge and experiences as one starting point for instruction, impacted student learning. Were the students able to refine, revise, and add to their own views as they learned and developed historical narratives about key events, individuals, and eras in United States History? What did they learn in terms of historical thinking and understanding? To answer these questions I studied the work of a racially and ethnically diverse eleventh-grade U.S. History class and four case study students. I learned the importance of developing reading and writing strategies that provide students, as points of departure, opportunities to articulate their views and questions about U.S. History. I discuss the hard work necessary to help students, once engaged in this process, refine and revise their views as they encounter and study the varied individuals and events that make up U.S. History. In a diverse classroom, this process created moments of tension as students, in trying to explain their ideas, stated and argued different perspectives on individuals and events, both historical and contemporary. I conclude that these classroom challenges and dynamics highlight the teacher's critical role in helping students move towards the development of historical thinking skills and historical understanding.
As compositionists have recently acknowledged, two strands have developed in writing Across the curriculum research and practice, the write-to-learn strand, dominated by a pedagogy that advocates writing as a mode of learning and the learn-to-write strand, dominated by research in learning to write in the disciplines. Using an ethnographic study of a dance class, this dissertation argues that, perhaps, the two strands are not completely adequate for a viable Theory of writing Across the curriculum. As a result, the dissertation challenges scholars to reconsider writing Across the curriculum practice and research in light of broader conceptions of learning and literacy. Findings from a study of a dance class (including perspectives from the instructor, students, and the texts in the course) present perplexing questions for writing Across the curriculum practitioners. While writing Across the curriculum practitioners assume that every discipline is or can be logocentric, the epistemology of the discipline of dance is not always logocentric. In fact, the discipline of dance forwards alternative literacies--imagistic and kinesthetic ones--and language remains a contested site of knowledge, a point of dance or a metaphor of dance rather than the central vehicle for the production of knowledge. Dancers mean with their bodies, not always with words. This discipline's complex relationships with language confound common writing Across the curriculum pedagogies and call for reexamination of issues such as academic acculturation, alternative literacies, and conceptions of texts that impinge on or challenge writing Across the curriculum practice in many disciplines.
Current research in English/language arts advocates the incorporation of writing in content areas Across the curriculum as a means of learning content as well as a means of evaluating content mastery. Focusing on the content area of social studies and acknowledging the importance of the text as a teaching tool, this study examined to what degree and in what manner selected social studies textbooks incorporated writing. Texts selected for the study were nationally published history textbooks which had been adopted for use in the state of Virginia at grades seven and eleven, where the teaching of United States history is mandated in Virginia. Accompanying the basal textbooks as a primary tool of instruction is the complementary teacher manual or guide. Using Britton's categories for functions of writing (i.e., Expressive, Transactional and Poetic) and Donlan's four categories of writing particular to the social studies (i.e., Reporting, Exposition, Narration and Argumentation), an analysis was made of writing assignments offered via selected social studies textbooks and their accompanying teacher manuals. Text packages selected for the study reflected those U.S. history texts adopted for use in Virginia at grades seven and eleven. The treatment of writing in the selected textbook packages was examined to determine the reflection of current research and Theory in the area of composition. Findings paralleled the national Applebee study of 1981 finding that most writing required in secondary schools was of a Transactional nature, most often requiring students to report or explain information, seldom requiring creative writing as with Narration. Moreover, examination of state and national social studies professional journals revealed relatively little support in instructing social studies educators on how to include writing in this content area.
This study examined the effectiveness of writing-to-learn (WTL) activities in college art history and art studio courses. WTL is rare in all disciplines, including art. The study began with a survey of over 400 universities known to have writing Across the curriculum (WAC) programs; it found that the few art teachers who are seriously committed to writing assign large amounts of writing, much of it informal WTL, and provide sophisticated support for formal assignments. This study also carried out two pre-test/post-test comparison studies, one in art history classes and one in art studio classes. Art history experimental groups wrote both expressive and critical essays, in class, on art masterpieces about once every two weeks. The literature review showed that traditional teachers, even those who want their students to practice critical thinking skills, such as art criticism, worry that the introduction of writing into the classroom will displace lecture time, reducing coverage. This study hypothesized that in-class WTL exercises would improve retention of facts, even though hours of lecture would be lost, because students who wrote would become more engaged in the course, that is, more interested and alert, since they would regularly have to do what the teacher was doing--discuss art. Pre-test/post-test scores confirmed the hypothesis. In the drawing comparison study, the experimental group wrote twelve out-of-class informal journal entries on their problems and accomplishments in carrying out drawing assignments. for pre- and post-tests, students drew still-life drawings with charcoal at the beginning and end of the course. The drawings were rated by art teachers not otherwise involved in the study. It was hypothesized that the experimental group, by focusing on their problems through writing, would learn more than the control group, which did no writing. The hypothesis was confirmed by the ratings. Finally, the drawing class journals were examined for evidence of the usefulness of journals to teachers for monitoring purposes. That evaluation revealed that journals were useful for understanding and following student learning and for improving teaching.
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.
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.
How Historians Think was a semester-long Writing Across the Curriculum course offered to freshmen at Carnegie Mellon University during the fall of 1985. The course, an alternative to the basic required freshman writing course, was offered to students who scored highest in the freshman class on the English section of the College Boards. We designed the course on the premise that students could improve their writing skills and learn about a specific body of knowledge historical methodology simultaneously. We drew on research which claimed that writing facilitates students' intellectual growth because it elicits high level cognitive processes and complex conceptual demands. The reading material for the course included two books--a writing text and a historical work--and fifteen articles which demonstrated numerous ways historians think and write about the past. We required students to investigate the various components of historical analysis through reading, discussing and writing about the information. All three activities actively involved students in the learning process. Classroom activities involved direct student interaction with the materials, with the teacher, and with each other to promote a higher level of learning than merely passively listening to a lecture. Some of the writing assignments attached to the readings helped students become more receptive readers, while other writing assignments helped students to digest, assimilate, and accommodate new information into their existing cognitive structure. Multiple drafts and peer reviews for each of the four major paper assignments helped students to focus and at times to reformulate their ideas and provided feedback to sharpen their prose. The readings, writing assignments, and class activities attempted to increase knowledge and to develop intellectual skills and analytical abilities in both history and writing. We utilized multiple evaluation measures to determine the success of the course in improving students' writing skills and in increasing their knowledge and understanding of historical analysis. The results of various measures concurred that we achieved both of these major goals. The instructors, external evaluators, and students agreed upon the overall success of the course, which students rated higher than most other English and History courses.
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.
Because of recent emphasis upon the process of writing, rather than the product of writing, educators see writing not only as a means of communicating knowledge, but also as a part of the acquisition of knowledge. What is not yet clear is whether writing about a discipline other than English should be an integral part of the English composition class, dual subject Approach, or whether writing about a discipline should be conducted within the discipline, single subject Approach (Kinneavy, 1983). Over a two-year period, writing samples, writing attitude surveys, and final grades in a history class were collected to determine which of the two approaches to writing about and within a discipline are effective in improving quality of writing, changing attitude toward writing, and enhancing learning. One group had a dual class program in which World Civilization content served as the reading content for the English class, and the students' writing assignments were about the World Civilization content. A second group had a single class program in which the content and writing assignments in the English class were the same as in all of the English classes at the college. The World Civilization class was the same for both groups; the students wrote more within the discipline under the direction of a professor who had received training at two writing Across the curriculum workshops. The English professor received the same training. Pre-writing and post-writing samples and pre-writing attitude and post-writing attitude surveys were taken from each group as well as final exam grades in the World Civilization courses. The writing samples and attitude surveys were scored, and t-tests were used to determine differences between pre- and post-writing samples and pre- and post-attitude surveys. Pearson product-moment correlations were used to determine relationships between post-writing samples and post-attitude surveys and between post-writing samples and final World Civilization grades. There were no significant differences in the pre-writing and post-writing samples of both the dual subject group and the single subject group. There were significant differences in the pre-writing attitude and post-writing attitude surveys of the dual subject group, but there were no significant differences in the pre-writing attitude and post-writing attitude surveys of the single subject group. There was no significant correlation between post-writing samples and post-writing attitude surveys for both groups, and there was no significant correlation between post-writing samples and final exam grades in World Civilization for both groups.
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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