Embracing Difficulty across the Disciplines: The Difficulty Paper as a Tool for Building Disciplinary Literacy

Students face challenging texts and concepts across the disciplines in higher education, and many students lack the reading skills and strategies to make sense of them. The aim of the small study described in this article was to explore the benefits, if any, of the difficulty paper, a written formative assessment that asks students to explore their difficulties with challenging texts. An inductive analysis of student difficulty papers in a multidisciplinary “Great Works” course suggests that the paper encouraged students to address their confusion without dismissing it and helped students to model the processes of good reading. Findings also suggest that the assignment may be a useful tool to develop disciplinary habits of mind. The article concludes with an example of how educators might use the difficulty paper in science and mathematics courses

Instrument to Evidence to Argument: Visual Mediation of Invisible Phenomena in Scientific Discourse

This dissertation examines how scientists and scientific editors have approached specific problems related to visualization and visual argumentation in scientific texts. These problems are related to the following research questions: (1) How are new visualization practices established as scientifically credible? (2) How do scientists modify existing instrument output to make new visual arguments? (3) How do scientists use verbal and visual means to transform problematic data into acceptable support for novel claims? (4) What are the practical and ethical boundaries of modifying visual artifacts for scientific arguments? (5) How do scientists refute established (but incorrect) visualizations that have been widely accepted as accurate representations of reality? This project considers these issues rhetorically by examining a number of recent and historical cases. The first three case studies explore how scientists created both compelling and uncompelling visual arguments by mediating the visual output of instruments with rhetorical strategies. These case studies focus on visualizations from physical science: x-ray diffraction photographs, graphics establishing the theory of plate tectonics, and visualizations of atmospheric phenomena. In each case, visualizations articulated invisible phenomena in new ways, transforming unclear or seemingly unremarkable data into convincing knowledge claims. My analysis of these cases explores how scientists integrate visuals into the analogical, causal, transitive, symmetrical, and dissociation arguments that are so essential to the practice of science. The later case studies examine broader concerns regarding ethics, persuasion, and modern scientific visualization. I examine recent issues related to the digital generation and manipulation of scientific images and rhetorical issues related to scientists' increasing dependence on complicated computer algorithms for creating visual arguments

Reading persuasive texts affects preservice teachers\u27 beliefs about cultural diversity in the classroom

Research has suggested that teachers’ beliefs toward culturally diverse classrooms are affected during teacher education. Text reading, as one of the major learning activities in initial teacher education, is supposed to affect teachers’ educational concepts and beliefs. We conducted two experiments to test the impact of reading a positively or negatively oriented persuasive text about diversity on preservice teachers’ belief change. In Study 1 (N = 42), we found that belief change varied significantly as a function of the direction of the text condition, and that the reading of the texts led to a significantly stronger belief change if the text was in alignment with participants’ prior beliefs. Study 2 (N = 57) revealed a middle-sized but nonsignificant moderator effect for prior knowledge (p = .08, ηp 2 = .06), suggesting that participants with more prior knowledge were less likely to be persuaded by the text. The results provide new insights into factors that may affect the development of preservice teachers’ diversity beliefs. (DIPF/Orig.

Frameworks for Collaboration: Articulating Information Literacy, and Rhetoric and Writing Goals in the Archives

Rhetoric and composition scholars have recently called our attention to the value of archival research in the undergraduate classroom, leading to rich collaborations with archivists and librarians at many institutions. As we engaged our own pedagogical collaboration as a university archivist and English faculty member, we realized that, though we might use slightly different language to articulate them or cite different sources in support of them, many of our learning goals overlapped. As we explored these goals together, we realized that they evidenced a correspondence in our disciplines that we had not explored—one that is reflected in our fields’ recent outcomes statements: the 2011 Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing and 2016 Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. In this article, we briefly describe our course and use it as a touch point for comparing these disciplinary statements. We argue that analysis of the overlap between these two documents helps us articulate a new set of reasons for faculty to connect with their allies in libraries and archives to teach undergraduate research and writing

Barnes Hospital Bulletin

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/bjc_barnes_bulletin/1277/thumbnail.jp

Barnes Hospital Bulletin

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/bjc_barnes_bulletin/1242/thumbnail.jp

Born-freei learner identities: Changing teacher beliefs to initiate appropriate educational change

An earlier paper focused on how born-free learners constitute, negotiate and represent their identities after almost two and half decades of democracy in South Africa. Utilising the theoretical framework of subjective realities of educational change, in this article I set out to explore what implications teachers’ beliefs hold for born-free learners, and how teachers’ beliefs can be changed or adapted to initiate appropriate educational change. The focus of this article is on the beliefs of teachers and how the change thereof can contribute to educational change, based on how learners perceive their identities. The epistemological lens of social constructivism and the research strategy of narrative inquiry was used. Fifty-eight born-free learners across 6 research sites participated in this study. Semi-structured interviews and field notes comprised the data capture, which were analysed using the qualitative content analysis method. Findings reveal that shifting and diverse selfidentifications of born-free learners hold fundamental and crucial implications that reside at the heart of educational change, namely a change in teachers’ beliefs and in teachers’ practice