transfer – Elise's PhD Journey

Paper #6

The holiday season often prompts reflection, doesn’t it?

The ghost of Christmas past visits Ebenezer Scrooge in Disney's A Christmas Carol — The ghost of Christmas past visits Ebenezer Scrooge in Disney’s A Christmas Carol

We think of past holiday functions with family and friends, family and friends who have passed, and as academics, we look back on the semester—our students, our syllabi, ourselves—and try to convince our inner teacher that “we’ll get it right next semester.”

With the semester and the year coming to a close, this holiday season is particularly special for me, as I am 38 weeks and two days pregnant with my first child as of today. Needless to say, I’m a melting pot of emotions, I can’t reach my toes, and I’m ready to get my pre-pregnancy body back, but aside from all that, I’ve spent the last nine months reflecting on my childhood and my mother’s parenting choices and considering what I’ll do the same and what I’ll do differently to ensure I “get it right” with my own child (as if that’s possible).

So it’s ironic to me that this final ENGL 810 prompt encourages me to look back on what I’ve learned this semester and consider what contributions I will make to my field in the future. In doing so, I’ve realized that I really what to get it right—how I position myself as an academic, that is—but I have a long way to go. My main research interest is in transfer, but for this class semester, I needed a broader scope to focus on for a subdiscipline, so I have been looking at writing across the curriculum (WAC) and a little bit of how WAC informs discussions of transfer.

David Russell has been key in my understanding of WAC and transfer. He deals with the history of WAC in his work “American Origins of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Movement.”
It’s here that he indicates that the origins of WAC date back to the late nineteenth century and are a response to the progressive education that emerged from an industrialized society. We were able to gather this understanding from the readings we did in McComsky and Lauer, where we discussed the building pressure between the increased specialization of knowledge and professional work that was needed. Pressure still exists, but a different kind, and as I consider my role in the WAC field, it will be very important for me to emphasize the need for cultivating students to become effective citizens to alleviate the pressure of an unpredictable economy as well as unpredictable global tensions. Part of this involves developing curriculum that enables students to communicate effectively in both written and verbal contexts, but part of this also involves helping students understand the interrelatedness of what they do both inside and outside of the classroom.

David Russell’s work on activity theory has also informed my understanding of WAC and transfer. He uses this theory to analyze human behavior and consciousness in terms of an activity system. Activity systems are social and negotiable, and as such, every activity system is unique. It’s for this reason, learners often struggle to apply the skills that were learned in one activity system to another activity system due to their inability to adapt those skills. While every activity system is unique, learners often fail to recognize the similarities between them. As a scholar, activity theory helps me understand how the rhetorical situation of my classroom works and enables me to negotiate it more effectively. Thus, in the future, I see myself drawing on this theoretical knowledge to build a case for WAC and transfer at my institution.

Epistemologically, I align myself with social constructivism, “wherein knowledge is understood to be dynamic, provisional, and developed and mediated socially as people operate within various ‘communities’ of knowledge.” Psychologist Lev Vygotsky, scientist Thomas Khun, and rhetorician Kenneth Bruffee—though they come from different disciplinary backgrounds—have informed my understanding of social constructivist epistemology. Ultimately, understanding social constructivism allows me to make the teaching and learning experience transparent, which is essential to successful transfer as students leave my English classroom and enter into classrooms of other disciplines. But further, drawing on social constructivism will make me a more effective scholar and colleague, as I tackle questions about WAC and transfer at my institution.

For WAC scholars in general, WAC remains to be a challenging pedagogy to assess because WAC looks different at every institution. In assessment, scholars seek to determine what is best practice for their program, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that best practice for one program will be the same for another program. This has been an issue that has surfaced at my institution, where we have been under a QEP and looking to other institutions to determine where and how we want to align ourselves in order to promote a stronger interdisciplinary research focus. Herein lies a main area of study for me and potential contribution moving forward: How can we adapt a WAC curriculum that is effective for our institution while still cultivating effective citizens? And more broadly, how can we utilize WAC to promote transfer not only across the curriculum horizontally, but vertically as well?

I find my questions about the field and what it has in store for me to be parallel to my questions about child-rearing and the potential of the little one inside me. Perhaps I will cultivate an effective citizen at home and figure out how to transfer what I learn from him or her to my classroom. Either way, I recognize the value of reflection during all times of the year. I just hope my reflection begins to lead to me to some answered questions before I generate too many more new ones.

References

Hewett, B. and Ehmann, C. (2004). Preparing educators for online writing instruction. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Russell, D. (1995). Activity theory and its implications for writing instruction. In J. Petraglia (Ed.), In Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction (51-78). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Paper #4

vietnam-war-hub-a While over 200,000 American troops were fighting abroad in the Vietnam War by the 1970s, American education at home was taking a shift toward science, technology, engineering, and math studies (STEM) in order to better prepare a workforce for post-industrial society. Writing education, as a result, also shifted, seeking to identify pedagogical approaches for getting students to think about the content in their various courses and the interrelatedness of writing between them. According to Kevin Eric DePew, Associate Professor of English at Old Dominion University, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) emerged as a product of the 70s and a response to this writing studies need: “Though they weren’t using the acronym STEM yet, you had the sense of making everything very STEM-like, or practical, including writing” (personal communication, October 26, 2016). In a post-industrial society in which services were dependent upon intelligent designers and users of technology, practicality in writing meant that the consumers, or students, would be able to see the usefulness and transferability of their writing skills across contexts.

WAC was one way to get students to perform better by using writing to get them to think about the course content. Today, linked courses, learning commons, and learning communities are an extension of WAC, and if done well, the literacy students learn in the writing class can be used to think
about the material being learned in classes of other subject matter. At institutions where WAC curriculums are utilized, instructors often talk to each other about ways of building knowledge that complement each other as well as foster the transfer of knowledge and skills.

teachers-talking

In the WAC field, different methods are utilized by administration, instructors, and scholars to test whether WAC pedagogy is effective. According to DePew, two of the most common methods are experimental study and case study (personal communication, October 26, 2016). To conduct an experimental study, a pretest is often administered at the beginning of the semester to see what the students have knowledge in. Two classes may be chosen, one of which serves as the variable group and is taught with a WAC pedagogy, and the second of which serves as the control group. At the end of the semester, another test is administered to see how student knowledge of the course material has changed among students throughout the duration of the course for both classes. In contrast, case studies are designed to prompt students to talk about how the writing is shaping their understanding of the content of the discipline. The use of writing to learn exercises in the classroom, for example, prompts students to think through key ideas and concepts, and case studies also allow us to witness student development through such exercises.

It seems that WAC, as a practical field, uses practical methods to determine its effectivity. Interestingly, the theories in the field that are used to generate knowledge are also practical. One common theory know-thyself represented in WAC is rhetorical theory, which Bazerman and Russell (1994) discuss in their introduction to Landmark Essays. WAC was evident in the rhetorical traditions of the Ancient Greeks as it is today, and for Bazermen and Russell, there is a long tradition in rhetorical theory to support the reasons we have WAC.

Trends in the field reveal that there has been a movement toward practical writing exercises; English instructors are using writing to help students think about the context of their writing situation. This movement has had more buy-in among faculty, a noteworthy point considering that in the beginning of the WAC movement, there were some scholars who pushed against WAC, advocating for expressivist approaches to FYC. DePew commentated that “[t]he desire among WAC stakeholders—deans, instructors, students, etc.—is to use WAC to build an infrastructure or transfer within the university that is sustainable. . . WAC is a field that works to create partnerships with other disciplines rather than trying to ‘save the disciplines’. Proponents of WAC don’t force people to do WAC. . . it should always be voluntary because in order to get success, one must breed success” (personal communication, October 26, 2016). Debates in the field are therefore old as most support the notion that for students to be effective writers in their STEM classes, they must develop the necessary (and practical) writing skills in their FYC classes.

In spite of its ambitions, common theories, methodologies, and trends, WAC remains to be a challenging pedagogy to assess because WAC looks different at every institution. In assessment, scholars seek to determine what is best practice for their program, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that best practice for one program will be the same for another program, so why is it that while WAC seeks to encourage students to see interdisciplinarity across contexts, WAC is rarely the same across institutions?

References

Bazerman, C., & Russell, D. (Eds.). (1994). Landmark essays on writing across the curriculum. New York, NY: Hermagoras Press.

Paper #3

I struggle in admitting I am an English professor. My students call me
“professor” and my mail comes to me with “professor” in the greeting, yet I still have a hard time introducing myself as such though I’ve been teaching at the collegiate level for five years—I usually just tell people, “I teach English.” “Professor” suggests that I have earned respect from my field and academia as a whole. The title suggests that I have studied, reflected, and can articulate where I align myself in my field. My apprehensions about being called “professor” were affirmed when I was tasked with this blog post, and I began to realize the challenge—and value—in being able to articulate how I align myself theoretically and epistemologically. What theories frame my pursuit of knowledge? What are my beliefs about discovering knowledge about my field? Perhaps I have struggled to embrace my position as an educator because I had not before defined myself in these terms, and in doing so, I had not before claimed a position as a scholar in my field or in academia.

After much reflection, I found that I align myself theoretically with David Russell’s (1995) explanation of activity theory which “analyzes human behavior and consciousness in terms of activity systems.” Through the activity system, we see 1.) the subject, or the writer, who 2.) mediates the situation in order to 3.) achieve an objective or outcome (n. pag). In effect, the activity system takes on a triangular shape that depicts each aspect of the activity system as dependent on the other two. The subject chooses which tool he will use to mediate the situation (in this case, writing) and how he will use it, but whether or not he achieves the objective—or finishes his written assignment—depends on how well he uses his tool to manage the situation he is in. Ultimately, the writer is impacted by the tool and the objective, modifying his use of the tool and his understanding of the objective as he pushes forward to completion. Therefore, activity systems are social and negotiable, and as such, every activity system is unique. However, learners often struggle to apply the skills that were learned in one activity system to another activity system due to their inability to adapt those skills. While every activity system is unique, learners often fail to recognize the similarities between them.

It is activity theory that gives me a language with which I can study transfer, which Perkins and Salomon (1988) describe as “something learned in one context [that helps] in another” (p. 22). That something, often consisting of a single skill or a set of skills, is beneficial to learners, who are ultimately responsible for their own independent ability to successfully manage writing situations. Downs and Wardle hold that this management is best understood through Russell’s lens of activity theory. Hence, the Writing about Writing approach, first introduced to the field in 2007, was designed in part as a response to a long-standing discussion on how to promote transfer in first-year composition classrooms.

Epistemologically, I align myself with social constructivism, “wherein knowledge is understood to be dynamic, provisional, and developed and mediated socially as people operate within various ‘communities’ of knowledge.” Psychologist Lev Vygotsky, scientist Thomas Khun, and rhetorician Kenneth Bruffee have contributed to our current understanding of social constructivist epistemology (p. 33). In essence, our inner speech, or thoughts, are on a higher level than our verbal, or social speech (Vygotsky), and these inner thoughts are inspired by our interactions with the social world around us, which is complex, interdisciplinary, and shapes our knowledge (Kuhn). Therefore, collaborative learning strategies, or social opportunities, enable us to use our higher level thoughts in conjunction with our surrounding environments that are working to shape our knowledge and in turn shape our output (e.g. verbal and written speech) (Brufee) (Hewett and Ehmann, 2004, pp. 34-37). Social constructivism allows me to make the teaching and learning experience transparent, which is essential to successful transfer as students leave my English classroom and enter into classrooms of other disciplines.

My theoretical and epistemological alignment are connected to my professional objectives as an educator and a faculty member at my current institution. I want students to understand the interconnectivity of the disciplines they are studying and the value of a liberal arts education. At the beginning of every semester I ask them, “What is a liberal arts education?” Their responses are limited to the idea that they need to be “well-rounded”—a reminder for me every semester that students need to see the social nature of learning and the activity systems in which they engage. A reminder that, as a professor, I am a window through which my students will view the university and the English discipline for 15 weeks, and I better know where I align myself in order to help align them.

References

Downs, D. & Wardle, E. (2007). Teaching about writing, righting misconceptions: (Re)envisioning “First-Year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies.” CCC, 58(4), 552-584.

Hewett, B. and Ehmann, C. (2004). Preparing educators for online writing instruction. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Perkins, D.N, & Salomon, G. (1988). Teaching for transfer. Educational Leadership, 46(1), 22-32.

Russell, D. (1995). Activity theory and its implications for writing instruction. In J. Petraglia (Ed.), In Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction (51-78). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

PAB Entry #6

college-writing-and-beyond In Appendix A to her second book, College Writing and Beyond (2007), Anne Beaufort worked to improve learning outcomes, “including positive transfer of learning for an academic writing class.” But five years later, after further reading, reflection, and observation of her students’ difficulties, she recognizes the need to give students “a stronger skill base in academic writing and to foster more positive transfer of learning from writing courses to other contexts for writing” as she articulates in her article, “College Writing and Beyond: Five Years Later” (2012). Here, she revisits her sample course outline and previous suggestions, acknowledges the problems she sees with the pedagogy and curriculum she previously set forth, and explains what she is now experimenting with as she continues to teach college writing.

Beaufort highlights four considerations for improvement to her previously proposed curriculum:

Clarifying assumptions about learning goals in writing courses
The issue of guideline for course theme(s) and the relationship to teaching for transfer
Applying principles of transfer of learning explicitly to the pedagogy associated with associated with any writing tasks in any instructional setting
The ideal types and number of genres in academic writing classes with pragmatic aims

When discussing her first consideration, Beaufort acknowledges that “the major writing projects proposed in Appendix A are not the best for helping students gain analytic skills and rhetorical skills in typical academic genres. Students are asked to write in too many genres in a single writing course and in genres that are not widely used in a lot of other academic disciplines.”

When discussing the second consideration, she identifies her proposal in Appendix A to utilize a course theme, “Writing as Social Practice.” Beaufort’s concern here is not with the proposed theme, however—it is the limitation she implicitly set on potential themes: What I did not say as clearly as I would like to now is that this is only one possible course theme that would encourage in-depth intellectual exploration into subjects from any number of discourse communities.” Further, Beaufort notes that “Writing as Social Practice” as a theme “would enable writers to become more self-aware [but she] conflated that goal with the goal of teaching for transfer. Teaching for transfer can be accomplished, if appropriate strategies are used, no matter what the course’s subject matter.”

what-is-genre

For the third consideration, Beaufort expresses her concern for the little explicit instruction given to writing teachers that is needed to teach students to understand and apply key concepts to writing tasks (discourse community, genre, rhetorical context, etc.). She notes that “[t]asks must be framed appropriately and repeatedly in order for writers to carry forward those big concepts to help them analyze and successfully accomplish writing tasks in other situations.” Also, helping students to understand and apply genre theory should become a standard practice in composition pedagogy, which was not previously made clear in Appendix A.

For the fourth consideration, Beaufort submits, “I did not think through carefully enough whether the particular genres I suggested for writing assignments in Appendix A would be most efficacious for teaching core academic writing skills.” She explains that she has removed her previous assignments from the syllabus (literacy autobiography, genre analysis, and ethnography assignment) and replaced them with two major assignments: a rhetorical analysis of a nonfiction text and a literature review of a body of research that seeks to address an important question.

Beaufort’s revisions cause me to reflect on my own pedagogy and curriculum design for first-year composition. I appreciate her honesty and candidness, and question to what extent I am encouraging students to compose in genres that will be meaningless to them once they have completed FYC. Or, is the integration of genre awareness as a threshold concept in my curriculum useful regardless of the genres students actually compose?

Beaufort, A. (2012). College writing and beyond: Five years later. Composition Forum 26. Retrieved from http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/college-writing-beyond.php.

PAB Entry #5

In their article, “Articulating Claims and Presenting Evidence: A Study of Twelve Student Writers, From First-Year Composition to Writing Across the Curriculum,” J. Paul Johnson and Ethan Krase share their longitudinal study in which they examined transfer as a key component of argumentation from first-year composition (FYC) to writing across the curriculum (WAC) in the junior and senior years of college. After highlighting several studies that have also analyzed transfer of argument skills (Rose, 1989; Dias et al., 1999Smit, 2004; Thaiss and Zawacki, 2006; Wardle, 2007; Greene & Orr, 2007; Fukuzawa & Boyd, 2008), Johnson and Krase align themselves with Toulmin’s method of argument, noting that “Toulmin’s taxonomy of argument allows for accommodation of the generic features of argument, primarily its use of claims and evidence, across multiple disciplinary areas” (p. 33). They define claim as “the main point a writer hopes to assert,” which is supported by evidence, or what Toulmin called data (p. 32).

toulmin

Using these definitions, the authors conducted their study seeking to answer the following questions: “Did students employ claims in their writing in FYC and WAC? Were students’ claims clear, concise and qualified? Did students support claims with authoritative, varied, and documented evidence? As students progressed through and beyond FYC to WAC in their various undergraduate majors, did their abilities to employ claims and evidence improve?” (Johnson & Krase, 2013, p. 33).

Twelve students participated in the study, and in order to examine more closely “individual students’ transition from FYC to their later WAC coursework, [the authors] collected and triangulated data from multiple sources and at various stages of development” (p. 33). Data from each student portfolio allowed the authors to examine students writing at three specific points: 1.) the start of first-year composition, 2.) the end of first-year composition, and 3.) during writing across the curriculum.

The authors note that the evidence from their study suggests that the majority of the twelve students improved their ability to articulate claims and support them with evidence in FYC. In the WAC courses, the authors found that “[w]hile the students in this study encountered in WAC a diverse variety of genres, most of those genres required them to support claims with evidence. In this regard, students appeared to benefit from related instruction in FYC. That is to say, students’ development of ability to articulate and support claims in FYC appeared directly related to their ability to do so in their later WAC courses” (p. 46). But after reading this article, I have several questions for the authors about their methodology in this study. Were FYC instructors teaching with transfer—or WAC at the very least—in mind? While enrolled in WAC, were students prompted to recall the skills learned in FYC? To what extent were the students responsible for their own transfer?

These methodology questions beg some larger questions for me regarding WAC and transfer: How is transfer taught for in a WAC curriculum? To what extent is the onus left on the students to transfer writing skills across contexts? Do FYC instructors encourage students to think beyond FYC? Or do WAC instructors prompt students to recall what they learned in FYC?

Johnson, J.P. and Krase, E. (2012). Articulating Claims and Presenting Evidence: A Study of twelve student writers, from first-year composition to writing across the curriculum. The WAC Journal 23, 31-48.