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.
A lot is happening behind the scenes at ATD, and I am pleased to share some of it. Initial submissions are up. My suspicion is that research efforts that slowed amid COVID are back on track, with more scholars submitting findings. We continue to see a significant percentage of revise and resubmit manuscripts come back for another round of review, which I read as an indicator of the quality of the feedback provided by our team of consulting readers. It is still too soon to make firm predictions beyond this year, but I think we may be positioned to return to regular issues published quarterly. To put that possible trajectory in context, the current issue is our first single issue since Fall 2019.
Our first issue of 2024 features articles on the important role of listening in writing fellow work, on the challenges of navigating writing expectations in the first year of a doctoral program, and on undergraduates’ views of science and interventions for STEM education to expand attention to the social. The issue concludes with q a series of reflections on Harvey J. Graff and his contributions to writing studies.
Introduction to Volume 21, Issue 1/2
Michael J. Cripps
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.01
“There are other ways to answer this:” Development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge via Listening as a Benefit to Writing Fellows across Disciplines
Naitnaphit Limlamai, Emily Wilson, & Anne Ruggles Gere
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.02
While much research has been devoted to understanding how peer tutoring benefits tutors, less attention has been given to how peer tutors develop pedagogical content knowledge as an additional benefit of working with students as they write. In this qualitative study of 15 undergraduate Writing Fellows (writing-focused peer tutors who work in large undergraduate gateway courses at the University of Michigan), we explore how Fellows describe their interactions with students in order to understand how they developed more nuanced knowledge of content and honed their pedagogical skills. We use the framework of interpretive and hermeneutic listening in a novel way in order to understand how the Fellows’ listening orientation towards students informed their pedagogical strategies. We found that Writing Fellows took students seriously as sense-makers and used their numerous interactions with students and their close proximity to novice perspectives to develop flexible thinking about the subject and to inform their teaching.
Navigating Contradictions while Learning to Write: A Disciplinary Case Study of a First-Term Doctoral Writer
Lizzie Hutton, Mandy Olejnik, & Miranda C. Kunkel
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.03
For most graduate writers, acclimating to doctoral-level inquiry is fraught with numerous tensions, whether regarding the development of scholarly identity (Gardner et al., 2014), navigating graduate school’s newly decentralized sources for support (Simpson, 2012), or mastering the writing and research conventions that govern disciplinary practice. Using a Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework, this case study analyzes the first-term experiences of Miranda, a first-year PhD student from the field of gerontology (who is also a co-author), and the tensions she feels around the drafting and revision of a single paper. Drawing from Engeström (1987), we theorize Miranda’s challenges around motive, authority, and expert feedback as comprising three “contradictions” engendered by the contemporary activity system of doctoral-level learning-to-write, contradictions that at once challenge the writer’s going presumptions about writing even while they enable new concepts and solutions to emerge. This analysis finally encourages researchers to take a wide, cultural-historical view of the many contexts in which doctoral students write during their first terms, including the instructor-led classroom, the larger culture of the program and institution, and the current high-pressure realities of doctoral-level academic study in the United States.
Leveraging Grant-Writing for Transforming Students’ Normative Views of STEM
Maureen A. Mathison & Alexandria DeGrauw
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.04
Today, efforts in WAC/WID to address social issues are gaining traction. Parallel to the shift in WAC/WID is a shift in STEM. Practices in STEM are responding to larger social concerns that include recruiting more diverse populations and improving research in consideration of its value and consequence to various publics. Rather than conceive of STEM as a homogeneous group or as representing narrow interests of progress, the social context of STEM is also gaining traction, though the uptake is slower. STEM instructors often lack the knowledge to incorporate social issues into their curriculum, much less address social change through writing instruction. This article contributes to the social turn in WAC/WID STEM in two ways. First, it examines STEM students’ attitudes toward science to find out how they view the social in science since its importance in STEM is increasing, but instruction is lagging. And second, given our results, we suggest grant-writing as one way to facilitate the social into STEM writing pedagogy because of its critical importance as a genre in the field.
Harvey J. Graff: A Tribute
John Duffy, MIke Rose, Michael Harker, Patrick W. Berry, & Peter Mortensen, with response by Harvey J. Graff
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.05
Social historian Harvey J. Graff is nothing if not prolific and wide-ranging across time, space, and disciplines. In an academic career spanning some fifty years, Graff has published on interdisciplinarity, the history of childhood, and urban history, among many other topics. In recent years, as professor emeritus of English and history and Ohio Eminent Scholar and Academy Professor at Ohio State University, Graff has established himself as a formidable public intellectual, weighing in on issues in higher education, contemporary politics, and the U.S. media. In recognition of his contributions, several scholars whose research owes a debt to Graff decided to offer at the 2017 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland, Oregon what was in essence a festschrift to Graff, a public testament of how his vision of literacy scholarship enhanced their own. Several of those papers are collected here, along with a summary reflection by Graff himself. We have chosen to publish these papers, those of us who were present in Portland, well after that event. We do this not because Graff requires additional acclamation—the list of awards and honors is extensive—but rather as an affirmation of his enduring influence on our work, on literacy studies, and on writing studies more broadly.