Locating visual communication across disciplines: How visual instruction in composition textbooks differs from that in science-writing textbooks

Abstract

This article shares results from a qualitative research project that examines the similarities and differences in how composition textbooks and science-writing textbooks address visual communication topics. This research has two goals. First, it seeks to better understand how visual communication is practiced and valued in the composition and natural science disciplines by analyzing the visual terms used and themes covered in the textbooks. Second, by exploring differences in disciplinary expectations and conventions, the research demonstrates how visual communication skills taught in FYC may not always be universally valued by all disciplines. This article concludes with insights composition instructors can use to prepare students for the differences in communication practices they will face when writing in the science disciplines, even if FYC does not teach science writing specifically. Likewise, tracking students’ learning in FYC would aid WAC/WID instructors and science instructors as they build upon students’ prior knowledge and assumptions when teaching the particulars of visual communication. The disciplinary conventions for visual rhetoric in science writing differ significantly from those often taught in composition courses. Scholarship and instruction on writing in the sciences include significant examinations of the use of visuals. For example, science research writing often requires that written text and visuals work together: both elements convey noteworthy results, and audiences can read and skim both text and visuals to glean main ideas and concepts. Thus, the teaching of visual communication conventions is necessary in science classrooms. However, the ways in which composition studies scholars theorize how visuals are integrated in composition courses emphasize different values from the practices in science writing and instruction. As such, students’ knowledge and abilities related to visual data in composition courses might not transfer effectively to writing and reading contexts elsewhere. Research in the sciences is filled with quantitative, numeric data suited for visual presentation and visual representations of organisms, habitats, and processes occurring in the natural world. Meanwhile, data in composition research traditionally has taken a more qualitative, discursive form. The early work on visuals was perceived to be part of the domain of professional/technical writing and not of composition studies until The New London Group (1996) argued that composition instructors should likewise attend to visuals in a move toward multiliteracies. This introduced research in writing studies to areas of data visualization, aesthetics, and information visualization (infovis) where scholars have studied and designed all types of visuals in a variety of media, argued for new venues to house new media projects, and considered a wide range of challenges that exist for