Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity

Writing is often defined by what it is: a text, a product; less visible is what it can do: generate new thinking (see 1.5, Writing Mediates Activity ). As an activity undertaken to bring new understandings, writing in this sense is not about crafting a sentence or perfecting a text but about mulling over a problem, thinking with others, and exploring new ideas or bringing disparate ideas together (see Metaconcept: Writing Is an Activity and a Subject of Study ). Writers of all kinds—from self-identified writers to bloggers to workplace teams to academic researchers—have had the experience of coming upon new ideas as a result of writing. Individually or in a richly interactive environment, in the classroom or workplace or at home, writers use writing to generate knowledge that they didn\u27t have before

Disciplinary and Professional Identities are Constructed Through Writing

While people can negotiate how identities are constructed through writing in a variety of contexts (see 3.1 , Writing Is Linked to Identity ) , many first encounter unfamiliar disciplinary (or professional) discourse in college. In most American colleges and universities in the United States, students complete-general education courses (introductory courses designed to introduce students to both ways of thinking and disciplinary perspectives within the university) before continuing on to specialized courses within their chosen disciplines or fields. This increasingly discipline-specific learning process involves both the simple acquisition of new knowledge and an expansion and transformation of identity, of a learner\u27s \u27sense of self \u27 (Meyer and Land 2006, 11). Writing—as a means of thinking, a form of inquiry and research, and a means for communication within a discipline—plays a critical role in that identity transformation and expansion. Disciplines have particular ways of asking and investigating questions enacted through and demonstrated in writing; teachers or researchers demonstrate their memberships in disciplines by using writing in ways validated by disciplines. It is thus through writing that disciplines (and writers [see 2.3, Writing is a Way of Enacting Disciplinarity ]) are both enacted and encountered by writers—first as students, and then as professionals throughout their careers

Threshold Concepts and Student Learning Outcomes

One of the premises of this edited collection is that descriptions of writing matter, and matter deeply. Writing—for reasons articulated throughout this collection—is particularly vulnerable to uneven or problematic portrayals. In higher education, it has become common practice to characterize student learning about writing via identified learning outcomes that students are to meet by the end of a course or program; more recently, entire undergraduate degree experiences are described through an outcomes framework. For example, postsecondary educational reform efforts like the American Association of Colleges and Universities\u27 Liberal Education, America\u27s Promise (LEAP) Initiative structure the undergraduate degree experience around identified essential learning outcomes, one of which is written and oral communication ( LEAP 2013). Outcomes offer a way to articulate more clearly what shared values for learning might be and how courses support those values; further, they provide an entry point for meaningful assessment. As Jeremy Penn explains, educational outcomes, when employed within a university context and through extensive faculty and student engagement, can exhibit learning and achievements that are unique to each of our institutions and [facilitate] a dialogue about what we expect students to learn in our institutions (Penn 2011, 12) . Working to describe what students should learn as undergraduates is, of course, a worthy goal. The challenge is to ensure writing development is depicted in meaningful ways

What New Writing Teachers Talk About When They Talk About Teaching

As a discipline with academic roots in pedagogy (Harris 1996), composition studies has fostered increasingly visible and structured programs to mentor new writing instructors. Several recent essay collections compile examples of programs, thoughtfully theorized approaches, and careful explorations of how to best support and nurture new instructors of first-year writing (see, for example, Pytlik and Liggett 2002; Ward and Perry 2002). It is now common that new college writing teaching assistants (TAs) participate in at least one pedagogy seminar designed to guide them through their initial teaching experience and provide an introduction to composition studies (see Dobrin 2005). Additionally, individual accounts of new instructors like those by Wendy Bishop (1990), Elizabeth Rankin (1994), and Sally Barr Ebest (2005) help provide a rich context for further research on the pedagogical development of new writing instructors

Relentless Engagement with State Educational Policy Reform: Collaborating to Change the Writing Placement Conversation

This article describes the educational reform efforts surrounding writing placement in one state context. We propose that placement offers a particularly useful engagement point because it is often controlled by state-level policies and it directly impacts the lived experience of first-year college students. To document how we worked across institutions in our state, we describe a series of events that occurred over several years and that fostered collaborative exchanges. Then, we explore the challenges and opportunities afforded by our long-term engagement with policymakers. Ultimately, we propose strategies that writing program administrators might consider as they become engaged with state-level higher education polic

Reclaiming Writing Placement

Writing assessment research has long described the harmful effects of using standardized test scores for writing placement. Now, national higher education reform efforts are critiquing the use of these tests as well. In this article, we explore how external pressures in higher education offer new spaces for WPAs to advocate for richer placement processes. We propose that placement is a moment where faculty can and should shape the conversation in order to help others — policymakers and nonprofit agencies involved in remediation reform— see placement anew. Finally, we describe our own locally developed writing placement process as one possible placement approach that encourages student reflection and draws on faculty expertise

The Effects of Writing Pedagogy Education on Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Approaches to Teaching Composition

The authors report the initial results from a three-year, two-site, multimodal study of the relationship between formal pedagogy education and teaching practices for graduate teaching assistants (TAs) in first-year writing. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of data from 88 multiple-choice and short-answer surveys and 41 semi-structured interviews demonstrates uneven integration of key composition pedagogy principles into TAs’ views of teaching writing; additional analysis reveals very few differences between first- and beyond-first-year TAs or between TAs at the two sites. The authors recommend that on a national level, TA writing pedagogy education be routinely and robustly extended into at least the second and third years of new teachers’ work in composition programs. In addition, the authors recommend that writing pedagogy education focus on reflective practice and problem solving to help TAs integrate pedagogical strategies more thoroughly into their principles and practices

Shared Landscapes, Contested Borders: Locating Disciplinarity in an MA Program Revision

It is not unusual to consider a discipline spatially as a space defined or touched by a particular characteristic or force (Wardle and Downs, this collection, emphasis added). This conceptualization makes visible the metaphor at play here: territories are demarcated and differentiated from neighboring environments by borders that can be more or less visible. In this chapter, we use our experience as faculty members invested in a substantive revision of an MA program revision to explore how that process of delineation opens up new questions about disciplinarity. We sought to create a generous curricular space within an MA degree, one that accounted for our own disciplinary expertise, the needs and interests of our students, and the vision of our university. As we did so, we were also constructing a curricular map of what Rhetoric and Composition looks like in the locus of situated, locally responsive, socially productive, problem-oriented knowledge production that MA-granting institutions might provide (Vandenberg and Clary-Lemon 2010, 258)

Participation and Collaboration in Digital Spaces: Connecting High School and College Writing Experiences

As literacy educators, we\u27re particularly mindful of two different and current conversations about digital literacies that directly inform our experiences in the classroom. The first conversation stems from the development and initial implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for high school instruction (Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO] and National Governors Association [NGA] 2010) and the work informing the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Framework), a statement that outlines expectations for incoming college students (Council of Writing Program Administrators [CWPA], National Council of Teachers of English [NCTE], and the National Writing Project [NWP] 2011). These documents directly affect our curricular decisions in a host of ways. The second conversation that informs our experiences in the classroom is a larger cultural conversation about the implications of digital literacy practices and opportunities. Together, these twin conversations highlight the unsettled, ever-shifting landscape in which the authors of this chapter (Rachel Bear, a high school English teacher; Heidi Estrem and Dawn Shepherd, college professors and writing program administrators; and James E. Fredricksen, a college English education professor) work

Organic Writing Assessment: Dynamic Criteria Mapping in Action

Organic Writing Assessment represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation of an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows DCM\u27s flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/1303/thumbnail.jp