Guest editors: Erin Beaver, Colorado Mountain College; Brian Hendrickson, Roger Williams University; & Justin Nicholes, University of Wisconsin-Stout
Since its emergence in the late 1970s in the United States as a coherent scholarly and programmatic enterprise, writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines (WAC/WID) has been invested in shaping how writing is taught and used as a tool for teaching and learning in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) (Russell, 2002). Through this evolving relationship, WAC/WID has gone from informing the design, implementation and assessment of individual writing assignments in the STEM classroom (Bean, 2011) to entire programs in quantitative reasoning (Condon & Rutz, 2012), and through a paradigm that increasingly foregrounds not just faculty development but the student learning experience (Nicholes, 2018). Meanwhile, both WAC/WID and STEM education are separately evolving in response to shifting currents in and beyond higher education, including deeper consideration of students’ racial and linguistic identities (Perez‐Felkner & Gayles, 2018; Poe, 2013) and deeper skepticism toward conceptions of disciplinarity that have for decades defined both STEM and WAC/WID and the relationships between them (Gere, Swofford, et al., 2015; Hawkins, et al., 2018; Rademaekers, 2015).
With the understanding that such shifts warrant a constant revisiting of how STEM and WAC/WID can continue to learn from and contribute to one another’s advances in teaching and learning, proposals to this special issue of Across the Disciplines might take up one or more of the following questions, whether through a theoretical, empirical, or historical lens, either at the classroom, programmatic, institutional, or disciplinary level:
In addition to the above questions, proposals might address one or more of the following: Data analytics on student engagement; Data visualization; Digital and multimodal literacy; Faculty professional development; Issues in academic integrity/plagiarism; Professional/industry workplace contexts; Reading instruction; Science communication and journalism; Second language, multilingual, and/or translingual teaching/learning/learners; Transfer and transitions (high school to college, college to beyond).
We encourage submissions from scholars in both WAC/WID and STEM, including those involving interdisciplinary collaboration, and we strongly recommend that all submissions engage scholarship in both WAC/WID and STEM teaching and learning.
We also strongly encourage queries and are more than happy to provide guidance to interested authors on crafting a strong proposal. We recognize that this is a challenging time for many scholars, and we will be responsive to necessary contingencies as we move forward with this special issue.
Deadline for Proposals: October 1, 2020 deadline extended to October 11, 2020
Notification of Acceptance: November 1, 2020 extended to November 15, 2020
Manuscripts Due: March 31, 2021
Final Revised Manuscripts Due: June 1, 2021
Publication: Fall 2021
Proposal Format and Submission: Please submit a 500-word proposal (not counting references) explaining your topic, the research and theoretical base on which you will draw, and your plans for the structure of your article. Please remove identifying information from your proposal and submit it via the form: https://coloradomtn.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_elF5S741w1rMc8R.
Final manuscripts should not exceed 8000 words (including abstract, references, and appendices). Across the Disciplines follows APA 7th edition style guidelines (except with author first names included in references).
Please send queries to all three special issue editors: Erin Beaver (ebeaver@coloradomtn.edu), Brian Hendrickson (bhendrickson@rwu.edu), and Justin Nicholes (nicholesj@uwstout.edu).
References
Anson, Chris M. (2015). Crossing thresholds: What's to know about writing across the curriculum. In L. Adler-Kassner & E. Wardle (Eds.), Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies (pp. 203-219). Utah State University. muse.jhu.edu/book/40635
Boquet, Beth, & Lerner, Neal (Eds.). (2016). WAC and high-impact practices. [Special Issue]. Across the Disciplines, 13. https://wac.colostate.edu/atd/special/hip/
Bruce, M. L., Coffer, P. K., Rees, S., & Robson, J. M. (2016). Write on the edge: Using a chemistry corpus to develop academic writing skills resources for undergraduate chemists. Chemistry Education Research and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1039/C6RP00005C
Chen, Diana A., Mejia, Joel Alejandro, & Breslin, Samantha. (2019). Navigating equity work in engineering: Contradicting messages encountered by minority faculty. Digital Creativity, 30(4), 329–344. https://doi-org.rwulib.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/14626268.2019.1678486
Chen, Ying‐Chih, Hand, Brian, & McDowell, Leah. (2013). The effects of writing‐to‐learn activities on elementary students’ conceptual understanding: Learning about force and motion through writing to older peers. Science Education, 97(5), 745-771. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21067
Condon, William, & Rutz, Carol. (2012). A taxonomy of writing across the curriculum programs: Evolving to serve broader agendas. College Composition and Communication, 64(2), 357-382. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43490756
Elrod, Susan, & Kezar, Adrianna. (2016). Increasing student success in STEM: A guide to systemic institutional change. Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Emerson, Lisa. (2016). The forgotten tribe: Scientists as writers. The WAC Clearinghouse. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/emerson/tribe.pdf
Emerson, Lisa. (2019). “I’m not a writer”: Shaping the literacy-related attitudes and beliefs of students and teachers in STEM disciplines. In V. Prain & B. M. Hand (Eds.), Theorizing the future of science education research: Contemporary trends and issues in science education (pp. 169-187). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24013-4_11
Gere, Anne Ruggles, Knutson, Anna V., & McCarty, Ryan. (2018). Rewriting disciplines: STEM students’ longitudinal approaches to writing in (and across) the disciplines. [Special issue on transdisciplinary and translingual challenges for WAC/WID]. Across the Disciplines, 15(3), 63-75. https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/trans/gereetal2018.pdf
Gere, Anne Ruggles, Swofford, Sarah C., Silver, Naomi, & Pugh, Melody. (2015). Interrogating disciplines/disciplinarity in WAC/WID: An institutional study. College Composition and Communication, 67(2), 243-266. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24633857
Hanauer, David I., Graham, Mark J., & Hatfull, Graham F. (2016). A measure of college student persistence in the sciences (PITS). CBE-Life Sciences Education, 15(4), 1-10. 10.1187/cbe.15-09-0185
Harrison, Rebecca L., & Parks, Brooke. (2016). How STEM can gain some STEAM: Crafting meaningful collaborations between STEM disciplines and inquiry-based writing programs. In Alice Johnston Myatt & Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Writing program and writing center collaborations: Transcending boundaries (pp. 117-139). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59932-2_6
Hawkins, John N., Yamada, Aki, Yamada, Reiko, Jacob, W. James. (Eds.). New directions of STEM research and learning in the world ranking movement: A comparative perspective. Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98666-1
Hendrickson, Brian. (2016). Studying and supporting writing in student organizations as a high-impact practice. [Special issue on WAC and high-impact practices]. Across the Disciplines, 13(4). https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/hip/hendrickson2016.pdf
Knight, Jonathan D., Fulop, Rebecca M., Márquez-Magaña, Leticia, & Tanner, Kimberly D. (2008). Investigative cases and student outcomes in an upper-division cell and molecular biology laboratory course at a minority-serving institution. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 7(4), 347-430. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.08-06-0027
Mallette, Jennifer C. (2017). Expanding efficiency: Women's communication in engineering. Engineering Studies, 9(3), 195-221. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2017.1397677
Mehlenbacher, Brad, Autry, Meagan Kittle, & Kelly, Ashley Rose. (2015). Instructional design for STEM-based collaborative, colocated classroom composition. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 58(4), 396-409. 10.1109/TPC.2016.2517538
Nicholes, Justin. (2018). How exposure to and evaluation of writing-to-learn activities impact STEM students’ use of those activities. The WAC Journal, 29, 189-206. https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/journal/vol29/nicholes.pdf
Perez-Felkner, Lara, & Gayles, Joy Gaston. (Eds.). (2018). Special issue: Advancing higher education research on undergraduate women in STEM. New Directions for Institutional Research, 179, 1-137. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1536075x/2018/2018/179
Poe, Mya. (2013). Re-framing race in teaching writing across the curriculum. Across the Disciplines, 10(3). https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/race/poe.pdf
Pugalee, David K. (2001). Writing, mathematics, and metacognition: Looking for connections through students' work in mathematical problem solving. School Science and Mathematics, 101(5), 236-245. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2001.tb18026.
Rademaekers, Justin K. (2015). Is WAC/WID ready for the transdisciplinary research university? Across the Disciplines, 12(2). http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/articles/rademaekers2015.cfm
Roozen, Kevin, & Erickson, Joe. (2017). Expanding literate landscapes: Persons, practices, and sociohistoric perspectives of disciplinary development. Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press. http://ccdigitalpress.org/expanding/
Russell, David. R. (2002). Writing in the academic disciplines, 1870–1990: A curricular history (2nd ed.). Southern Illinois University.
Simpson, Steve, Clemens, Rebecca, Killingsworth, Drea Rae, & Ford, Julie Dyke. (2015). Creating a culture of communication: A graduate-level STEM communication fellows program at a science and engineering university. Across the Disciplines, 12(3). http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/graduate_wac/simpsonetal2015.cfm
Stroumbakis, Kostas D., Moh, Namjong, & Kokkinos, Dimitrios. (2015). Community college STEM faculty views on the value of writing assignments. The WAC Journal, 27, 142-154. https://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol27/stroumbakis.pdf
Thornton, Steve. (2020). Threshold concepts in primary school maths and science: An investigation of some underlying ideas of STEM. In Amy MacDonald, Lena Danaia, & Steve Murphy (Eds.), STEM education across the learning continuum: Early childhood to senior secondary (pp. 233-247). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2821-7_13