How Can We Change Our Habits If We Don’t Talk About Them?

For the late nineteenth century pragmatists, habits were of great interest. Habits, and the habit of changing habits, they believed, reflected if not defined human rationality, leadingWilliam James to describe habit as “the enormous fly-wheel of society.” What the pragmatists did not adequately address (at least for us) is the role of power relations in the process of changing habits. In this article we discuss our experience of attempting to engage critique and reflection on habitual practices in music teacher education, offering the reader an article within an article. That is, we reflect on our failure to publish a critical article in a widely read practitioner journal by sharing the original manuscript and its reviews, with the hope that our experience might shed additional light on social reproduction and efforts aimed at change

Technical Communication Inclusionary Interventions Into Academic Spaces

While many efforts have been made to make higher education in the US more equitable, there are still academic spaces in which some knowledges and some knowledge makers are marginalized. In this dissertation, I identify three such spaces: technical editing, graduate instructor training, and online academic research in trans communities. When editors make revisions based solely in American Standard English, as most editing practices and teaching are currently based, they risk marginalizing non-heritage speakers of English and speakers of various dialects of English, like African American Vernacular English. I suggest that by shifting our focus of editing from grammar policing to editing for underrepresented audiences, we can make editing a more inclusive space for marginalized voices. I give examples of how to create these kinds of interventions both in the editing classroom and through workshops for faculty. Next, I address how programs can better support graduate student instructors’ sense of wellbeing. I suggest that one of the best ways to develop inclusive interventions in graduate instructor training is by inviting graduate students to help design the ways in which departments communicate student wellbeing. Finally, to intervene into the anti-trans violence that continues to scour the United States, I propose an intervention into the ways that academics study online trans communities. Through these kinds of interventions, I demonstrate that we can continue the work of creating more inclusive spaces in higher education

Taking the Leap Toward Publication

In this article we reflect on some of our interactions with graduate and new scholar authors via our work as long-standing members of the current and former Editorial Board of the Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education/ Revue canadienne des jeunes chercheures et chercheurs en éducation (CJNSE/RCJCÉ). Using our reflected experiences as a foundation, we discuss here some of the details involved in publishing a first article. The overall aim of this article is to demystify the publishing process and to inform graduate students about the required elements and processes involved in the preparation of their manuscripts and the subsequent process of publication from submission, to reviews, and editing. In turn, we hope to encourage new researchers and theorists to take the leap and publish their first articles

Making the Academic Writing Process Explicit for Doctoral Students in the Social Sciences

The purpose of this article is to clarify the academic writing process and stages of publication for novice scholars. With doctoral student mentorship being highly dependent on relationships with faculty mentors, the quality and type of mentorship received varies widely. We designed this article to provide a shared starting point for new scholars trying to navigate the writing and publication process. We use our experiences as three newly tenured faculty members to provide some guidance for students. Additionally, this article adds to the existing body of knowledge on the academic writing process by bringing some hidden curriculum and norms to the forefront and making the information available to all students. Article highlights include four areas of focus of academic publishing: (a) the presentation to publication process; (b) journal choice and preparing for journal submission; (c) revision as a communal process; and (d) the journal response. Within this article, we have recommended several places where new scholars can make decisions ranging from where to submit papers, who and how to ask for help, and ways that they can respond to reviewers

Bringing pedagogy to doctoral publishing

This article explores the role of publication in taking forward the work of the doctorate. Low publication rates from doctoral degrees have been noted as a problem in the quality of doctoral education for preparing students to participate in research cultures. At the same time there is ambivalence and some resistance among doctoral supervisors and candidates about the place of publication in doctoral work. This article argues that issues of writing and publication need to be systematically addressed within doctoral pedagogy. In a climate of increasing pressure to publish during and after candidature, pedagogies need to take up a more explicitly outward-looking stance, developing a stronger orientation to induction and participation in the world of peer-reviewed publication. These arguments are developed through two case studies that illustrate ways of supporting doctoral researchers to effectively recontextualise their dissertation writing for wider audiences. <br /

Peer Review in the Contemporary Corporation

My dissertation explores the history, pedagogy, and practice of peer review in academia and in the workplace, so that I could suggest strategies for improving peer review in the contemporary corporation. Several scholars have studied collaborative writing—of which peer review is just one type—but few have specifically and thoroughly treated the subject of peer review. I surveyed the technical writers in my organization as well as other local writers about their thoughts on peer review. For improving peer review in the workplace, two predominant themes emerged: improve the corporate culture and assign a manager to the process. Therefore, I explore how to create a sense of community in the organization, and I propose a leader of the peer review process—the technical editor. My final chapter discusses the pedagogical implications of my study, and includes suggestions for preparing technical communication students (i.e., technicaleditors) for such a leadership role in the workplace

Making the Academic Writing Process Explicit for Doctoral Students in the Social Sciences

The purpose of this article is to clarify the academic writing process and stages of publication for novice scholars. With doctoral student mentorship being highly dependent on relationships with faculty mentors, the quality and type of mentorship received varies widely. We designed this article to provide a shared starting point for new scholars trying to navigate the writing and publication process. We use our experiences as three newly tenured faculty members to provide some guidance for students. Additionally, this article adds to the existing body of knowledge on the academic writing process by bringing some hidden curriculum and norms to the forefront and making the information available to all students. Article highlights include four areas of focus of academic publishing: (a) the presentation to publication process; (b) journal choice and preparing for journal submission; (c) revision as a communal process; and (d) the journal response. Within this article, we have recommended several places where new scholars can make decisions ranging from where to submit papers, who and how to ask for help, and ways that they can respond to reviewers

Composition Under Review: A Genre Analysis Of Book Reviews In Composition, 1939-2007

Although reviews have been a part of two flagship composition journals, College English and College Composition and Communication throughout their publication histories, little attention has been shown to them in any full length research studies. This dissertation study provides a historical genre analysis of reviews to illustrate the role of reviews in reflecting and contributing to composition\u27s struggle for full disciplinary status. Methodologically, this mixed methods study uses historical analysis, genre analysis, and an interview study to investigate reviews and their functions in the field of composition. A corpus of 90 reviews, 45 from each journal, was analyzed from 1939 to 2007, to study how reviews reflect the disciplinary trajectory of composition studies, the genre trends of reviews as they reflect the development of changing research and scholarship in composition, and the editorial perspectives and contextualization of the review genre and the development of reviews in the field. The research finds that historically, reviews prove to reflect the development of the field over time; that textually, the review genre displays four moves, describing, evaluating, situating, and theorizing; and that professionally, the editors contextualize the reviews as an important contributor to the scholarship of the discipline. The main findings include a genre shift from short reviews and book reviews to the review essay. The shift is a move from a focus on description and evaluation to a focus on situating the review and the books within composition studies and using the review as a launching point for further disciplinary theorization. The findings also indicate that while reviews are not a primary genre in the field, they do reflect and contribute to the historical publication record of composition in its development as an academic discipline

Working with Graduate Student Writers

The purpose of this guide is to aid faculty across the university in supporting graduate students as writers. The guide offers information on the context of graduate student writing and on the development of graduate students as scholarly writers, addresses some common concerns about graduate student writing, and shares methods and activities for supporting writing development at the graduate level