Across the Disciplines最新文献

{"title":"Fifty Years of WAC: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going?","authors":"M. Palmquist, P. Childers, Elaine P. Maimon, J. Mullin, Rich Rice, Alisa Russell, D. Russell","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116618569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Theorizing WAC faculty development in multimodal project design","authors":"Crystal N. Fodrey, Meg Mikovits","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.04","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses why and how to support faculty working with student writers on multimodal projects at all levels across the disciplines. The authors argue that faculty need support in the design, implementation, and assessment of multimodal projects so that students are better positioned to transfer writing knowledge and (multimodal) composing practices throughout and beyond their undergraduate careers. Building upon recent scholarship on transfer and multimodality, in concert with Anne Beaufort’s (2007) conception of knowledge domains from which successful writers draw, a framework is presented for implementing theory-driven WAC faculty development in multimodal assignment design. The authors conclude by summarizing faculty responses to engagement with these theories at a workshop session, describing multimodal assignments created by faculty, and sharing an assignment design guide that scaffolds the development of multimodal projects. [O]ne might ask: “I grant you that the text makes sound, but is it also sound in the sense of being purposeful, rigorously crafted, or soundly constructed?”...“Is the theory supporting this work really sound?” — Jody Shipka, “Sound Engineering: Toward a Theory of Multimodal Soundness” Adam Banks (2015), in his conference address as Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, considered the necessity of retiring the essay—of the need “to promote the essay to dominant genre emeritus”—in favor of exploring changing literacies and their importance in multimodal and multigenre communication. While this is a laudable promotion—inspiring even— doing so within the context of a Writing Across the Curriculum program poses particular challenges when working with faculty who are entrenched in primarily alphabetic text-based disciplinary writing traditions and demand sound theorization to be convinced of good reasons to design and implement multimodal projects that diverge from the dominant genres of their fields. At Moravian College, faculty across disciplines teach writing within First-Year Writing Seminar (FYWS) and other general education and discipline-specific writing-enriched contexts as is common at small liberal arts colleges (Gladstein & Rossman-Regaignon, 2012). Because on average under 15% of FYWS sections at Moravian are taught by writing specialists, our goal for faculty development is to introduce writing studies praxes to the broader campus community so that faculty can bring this knowledge to both their FYWS and upper-division courses.1 We have found that framing faculty conversations about writing pedagogy around the connection between transfer of writing knowledge and abilities and the Theorizing WAC Faculty Development in Multimodal Project Design 43 ATD VOL17(1/2) building of metacognition around genre difference has been a particularly effective rhetorical strategy for helping faculty to understand and appreciate the need for students to engage with disciplinary knowledge in mu","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"222 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131332065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reflecting on the past, reconstructing the future: Faculty members� threshold concepts for teaching writing in the disciplines","authors":"Christopher Basgier, Amber Simpson","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.02","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of scholarship in writing studies has started exploring threshold concepts for writing, providing a synoptic view of the transformations students undergo as they learn about writing. However, the field has not yet undertaken a systematic investigation of threshold concepts for the teaching of writing. A distinction between threshold concepts for writing and threshold concepts for the teaching of writing is especially important for WAC initiatives that work with faculty in the disciplines who may not have extensive training in writing pedagogy. Research into threshold concepts for the teaching of writing in the disciplines can help WAC professionals better understand the conceptual transformations these faculty experience as they participate in our programs. In this article, we present three threshold concepts for the teaching of writing in the disciplines that we identified: effective writing pedagogy involves iterative, multifaceted change; students’ development as writers can be supported through scaffolded interventions; and genres can be taught as actions, not (just) as forms. To illustrate these concepts, we share faculty narratives from a survey and focus groups, which we analyze using a narrative framework for identifying threshold concepts derived from phenomenographic analysis. We conclude by suggesting additional candidates for threshold concepts for the teaching of writing in the disciplines, and commenting on the value of narrative for promoting faculty reflection and assessing WAC faculty development.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"476 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116168505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Designing a racial project for WAC: International teaching assistants and translational consciousness","authors":"C. Bushnell","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.03","url":null,"abstract":"This essay argues that international teaching assistants (ITAs) bring to their writing and teaching of writing a perspective shaped by translation. They occupy intercultural spaces that make them acutely sensitive to complexities of language, and by extension, to the struggle to write well. Their struggle to write across languages and cultures can and should be recognized and mobilized in the teaching of writing, not only as an effort to achieve writing competence but also as a deflection of dominant ideologies inherent in dominant languages. This essay suggests that WAC practitioners activate this between-language experience toward producing writing instruction that is culturally and racially aware by considering ITAs models of translational consciousnesses—mindsets habituated to the process of working between languages and cultures and increasingly valuable to universities where the ability to understand and discuss cultural and racial difference is central to the collegiality of the institution. As WAC practitioners, we must help our ITAs recognize the significance and value of their conditions of translation in order to begin to unpack the layers of complexity that cultural and racial difference brings to writing practices across campus. I have become—as I’m sure everyone does who has left his or her country—someone else. Someone who has translated myself into other cultural codes. [...] And since it is a generally acknowledged idea that something is lost in translation, it should come as no surprise that we unlearn—at least partially—what we used to be, to make room for what we have become. —Négar Djavadi, Disoriental, translated from the French by Tina Kover Writing professionals (Rodrigue 2012, Simpson, et al. 2015) often remark on the great value graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) add to writing across the curriculum programs on campus. However, international graduate teaching assistants (ITAs) are not often singled out as a resource for writing programs, either for writing across the curriculum or for writing in the disciplines. In fact, ITAs are often thought to be struggling with their own writing in ways that make them unreliable personnel for the assessment of good writing form and style, even as they are often extraordinary assets when it comes to content knowledge. Refuting this common perception, this essay argues, first, that ITAs bring to their writing and teaching of writing a perspective shaped by translation, including keen understandings regarding 1) translation processes, 2) the power of words to convey (and misconvey), shape (and distort) ideas, and 3) cultural biases of language structures and use. Second, ITAs occupy intercultural spaces that make them acutely sensitive to complexities of language, and by extension, to the struggle to write well. ITAs, as speakers of other languages at universities (like my Designing a Racial Project for WAC","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126106969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Locating visual communication across disciplines: How visual instruction in composition textbooks differs from that in science-writing textbooks","authors":"Erin Zimmerman","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2020.17.1-2.05","url":null,"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","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114536158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tracking the Sustainable Development of WAC Programs Using Sustainability Indicators: Limitations and Possibilities","authors":"Michelle Cox, Jeffrey R. Galin","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.4.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.4.20","url":null,"abstract":"Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing Writing Across the Curriculum Programs (Cox, Galin, & Melzer, 2018a) lays out a systematic whole systems approach to program development that draws on complexity theories and integrates the use of sustainability indicators (SIs) for monitoring and assessing program sustainability. However, the SI part of the whole systems approach methodology may be overly burdensome and even premature for assessing the sustainability of smaller and younger WAC programs. Further, aspects of the SI methodology need clarification to be useful to the larger WAC programs that would benefit from its use. This article provides important correctives to and elaborations of the treatment of SIs in Sustainable WAC that will help WAC program directors more effectively decide whether and how to use this tool as part of a whole systems approach to develop more sustainable and impactful WAC programs. In response to a need for a more theorized and systematic approach to developing WAC programs that are both transformational and sustainable, we, along with our co-author, Dan Melzer, drew from complexity theories to create the whole systems approach (WSA) to WAC program development. Our book, Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing Writing Across the Curriculum Programs (2018), emphasizes a slow, deliberate, and strategic approach to program development that includes coming to a deep understanding of campus culture and context, the use of mission and goals to guide development, the inclusion of stakeholders in determining program mission and activities, and ongoing assessment of program sustainability through the use of sustainability indicators (SIs). Sustainable WAC lays out a methodology that includes four stages: Understand, Plan, Develop and Lead (see Figure 1). Each stage draws from ten principles (pp. 46-47) we derived from the theories and includes associated strategies and tactics. We integrated the development and tracking of SIs across all four stages, a strategy we adapted from sustainable development theory to define, assess, and ultimately monitor program sustainability (Bell & Morse, 2008; Bossel, 1999; Hardi & Zdan, 1997). During the Understand stage, the director, while coming to a deeper understanding of campus context and mood, identifies “baseline” SIs, which we are here reconceptualizing as “proto-SIs.” During the Plan stage, the director gathers a group of stakeholders to form a WAC committee and then works with this group to consider how to best position WAC for connectivity within the campus network, develop the program’s mission and goals, develop program SIs, determine the slate of projects that Tracking the Sustainable Development of WAC Programs 39 ATD, VOL16(4) would fulfill the mission and goals, and consider how these projects would impact different groups on campus, particularly marginalized and disenfranchised groups. During the Develop stage, the d","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117094506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"WID Course Enhancements in STEM: The Impact of Adding \"Writing Circles\" and Writing Process Pedagogy","authors":"Tereza Joy Kramer, Joseph Zeccardi, R. Concepcion, Chi-An W. Emhoff, Steve Miller, Krista Varela Posell","doi":"10.37514/ATD-J.2019.16.4.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2019.16.4.19","url":null,"abstract":"This study reports on a quantitative assessment of enhancements to a Writing in the Disciplines course in Kinesiology. The assessment coded student writing produced in semesters before and after a Kinesiology course was enhanced with both iterated peer review groups and writing-process scaffolding. These enhancements were developed through a sustained partnership between WAC and disciplinary faculty. Analysis of the results revealed significantly higher scores in five Learning Outcomes developed to align with the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (2011). These findings offer quantitative evidence that adding writing-process pedagogy and iterated peer review improves student outcomes in both writing and critical thinking. Writing in the Disciplines (WID) courses are intended to teach the discursive conventions of a particular genre and to enrich learning through the metacognition spurred by writing. These courses can be complex to teach, as they demand expertise in both disciplinary knowledge and writing pedagogy; therefore, the addition of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiatives provides support for incorporating writing best practices into courses in ways that reinforce, clarify, and enhance learning. However, as Thomas Deans (2017) notes, while curricular models of WID/WAC initiatives are generally considered helpful, their pedagogical impacts are obscured by a dearth of data. Proceeding from the premise that such initiatives lead to improved student outcomes, it remains to be seen just how and to what extent those improvements manifest in student writing. Data on the impacts of these supports could inform a host of curricular and pedagogical decisions – including which models are most effective, at what point in the cognitive development of the writer, and what they should cover; how to pace and scaffold assignments in a semester; and even how to apportion time in a given class. Accordingly, Deans’ study compares the undergraduate capstone papers produced by students in partialcredit writing courses to those produced in full-credit courses in a variety of disciplines. Joan Graham’s (1992) taxonomy of integrated writing instruction delineates three types: writing components, writing adjuncts, and writing links. Components are parts of full-credit core courses or programs, whereas adjuncts and links are separate writing courses connected to core courses or programs. Thus, components are non-credit-bearing in and of themselves, unlike adjunct and linked courses. Partial-credit adjuncts meet less frequently and/or for shorter duration than full-credit links, which WID Course Enhancements in STEM 27 ATD, VOL16(4) mirror components in terms of both credit weight and meeting frequency/duration (Graham, 1992). Deans (2017), using Graham’s taxonomy, found that adjunct writing courses were broadly consistent with linked writing courses in terms of their impacts on various aspects of student writing measured in the study, specificall","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130348102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Data Power in Writing: Assigning Data Analysis in a General Education Linguistics Course to Change Ideologies of Language","authors":"Valentina Fahler, C. Bazerman","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.4.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.4.18","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the intellectual consequences of writing about data in relation to disciplinary concepts. We collected and studied written assignments from sixteen students in which they had to analyze data provided by the instructor in a general education linguistics course. We also surveyed them at the beginning, middle, and end of the course to determine their prior experiences with language and language studies, their processes in completing assignments, and their attitudes toward language, data, and linguistic analysis. These assignments and surveys were supplemented with course documents and interviews with the instructor and two of the TAs. This study reveals that the students in varying ways and to varying degrees came to see language use and language users in more disciplinarily sophisticated ways and to discard stereotyping, discriminatory, or stigmatizing beliefs they might have held. The students also to varying degrees came to understand the nature of linguistic data and methods. Further, there were varying interactions between the experience with data and the exposure to disciplinary concepts, based on prior academic and non-academic experiences, as well as individual dispositions toward learning. Findings suggest that students learning to select, represent, and analyze data in answering disciplinary questions and arguing for disciplinary conclusions in their writing are significant parts of their development as academic writers.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"153 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114851950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using Shared Inquiry to Develop Students' Reading, Reasoning, and Writing in the Disciplines","authors":"Sandra Egege, K. Vered","doi":"10.37514/ATD-J.2019.16.3.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2019.16.3.15","url":null,"abstract":"It is commonly accepted in the academy that developing a critical thinking capacity and related capabilities will make students more effective thinkers and writers, and that these are desirable traits for graduates to have no matter what path they take after graduation. While most academics agree that critical thinking is an essential component of university education, they are less clear about what constitutes critical thinking and how it is, or can be, incorporated within their own teaching and assessment practices without displacing disciplinary content (Moore, 2011). This article discusses how the Shared Inquiry (SI) discussion method can be deployed to teach disciplinary content and critical thinking simultaneously. Qualitative evidence from the method’s application in a Screen & Media Studies subject taught at Flinders University, South Australia, is presented to demonstrate the benefits of SI in developing critical thinking among undergraduate student cohorts.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131900374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From the Margins to the Centre: Whole-of-Institution Approaches to University-Level Literacy and Language Development in Australia and New Zealand","authors":"K. Vered, Susan Thomas, L. Emerson","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.3.10","url":null,"abstract":"Across the Disciplines is an open-access, peer-review scholarly journal published on the WAC Clearinghouse and supported by Colorado State University and Georgia Southern University. Articles are published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs) ISSN 1554-8244. Copyright © 1997-2019 The WAC Clearinghouse and/or the site’s authors, developers, and contributors. Some material is used with permission. From the Margins to the Centre: Whole-of-Institution Approaches to University-Level Literacy and Language Development in Australia and New Zealand","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127256411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}