Across the Disciplines, a refereed journal devoted to language, learning, and academic writing, publishes articles relevant to writing and writing pedagogy in all their intellectual, political, social, and technological complexity. Across the Disciplines shares the mission of the WAC Clearinghouse in making information about writing and writing instruction freely available to members of the CAC, WAC, and ECAC communities.
Editors' Note: Reflections on Across the Disciplines
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2005.2.1.01
Sharon Quiroz reflects on her first year editing an online journal. (Published June 28, 2005)
Pam Childers reflects on "the seasonal changes that metaphorically parallel our intellectual seasons at school." (Published February 9, 2005)
Acquiring Expertise in Discipline-Specific Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Exercise in Learning to Speak Biology, by Trudy Bayer, Karen Curto, and Charity Kriley
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2005.2.1.03
Trudy Bayer and her colleagues report the results of a study with 70 senior undergraduate biological science majors enrolled in a required course on Writing and Speaking in the Biological Sciences.Their study indicates that students demonstrated significant expertise in enacting a highly discipline–specific oral communication task.They attribute these results to a combination of students' ability to successfully deploy discipline–specific discourse to their own tacit knowledge of their field and instruction in both the disciplines of rhetoric and biology. (Published June 26, 2005)
Bridging Disciplinary Divides in Writing Across the Curriculum, by Geoffrey A. Cross and Katherine V. Wills
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2005.2.1.04
Geoffrey Cross and Katherine Wills report the results of a longitudinal study that assessed whether faculty writing workshops could facilitate writing in heterogeneous disciplines by linking specific, workaday writing activities (Tschudi, 1986) with Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (1974). Results show that participating faculty reported increases in reflective pedagogical practice, more critical selection of writing activities, and decreased time required to construct writing strategies to achieve disciplinerelated instructional goals. (Published June 26, 2005)
Plagiarism Across the Curriculum: How Academic Communities Can Meet the Challenge of the Undocumented Writer, by Jonathan Hall
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2005.2.1.05
Jonathan Hall argues that there is "a specifically WAC/WID approach to plagiarism" that can help us reduce plagiarism, help students incorporate sources into their writing effectively and honestly, and improve learning. (Published February 9, 2005)
Practical Advice for Supporting Learning through the Use of Summary/Reaction Journals, by Melissa A. Thomeczek, Dave S. Knowlton, and David C. Sharp
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2005.2.1.06
The authors of this essay regularly require students to engage in informal writing as a means to promote learning. One form of informal writing is the summary/reaction journal. In summary/reaction journals, students read a chapter or article, write a summary of that reading, and then react by offering their own insights and responses to the reading. The authors provide a theoretical rationale supporting the use of summary/reaction journals. Then, the authors describe how they introduce summary/reaction journals to students, support students as they journal throughout the semester, and assess journals once students submit them. This description can provide guidance for other faculty members in all disciplines who might consider using summary/reaction journals. (Published October 15, 2005)
This review continues the ATD (and, previously, Academic.Writing) tradition of reviewing the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Read and respond to reports on individual conference sessions, workshops, and special events at this year's Conference on College Composition and Communication. (Published April 4, 2005)
The contributors to this special issue consider how linguistically diverse students (a group so varied that researchers and practitioners employ a number of categories for student identification, including ESL, EFL, ELL, ESD, ELD, bilingual, and Generation 1.5) are faring in disciplinary classrooms.
Guest editor: Ann Johns, Linguistics and Writing Studies, San Diego State University