Across the Disciplines最新文献

{"title":"From the Margins to the Centre: Reflections on the \"Past-Present-Future\" of Literacy Education in the Academy","authors":"Alisa Percy","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.3.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.3.11","url":null,"abstract":"This paper engages with the central theme of this special issue, “From the Margins to the Centre,” as a particular kind of narrative that occupies the imagination of literacy educators in the academy, particularly those who are located in the “centre,” but whose experience ironically finds them “pinned to the margins” (Stevenson & Kokkin, 2007) of mainstream teaching and learning. Writing primarily from an Australian perspective as an educator experienced in attempting to embed authentic literacy education into the curriculum (from the centre) (Skillen, Merten, Trivett, & Percy, 1999), as a researcher attempting to make sense of the nature of change agency this requires (Percy, 2011a, 2011b), and as an academic leader developing policy at the institutional level in an attempt to legislate embedded practices into existence (Percy & Taylor, 2015), in this paper I briefly explore the seduction and frustration of the “margins to centre” narrative and provide an overview of a selection of literature that illustrates the ways in which we have imagined this trajectory. I then discuss how these narratives can be seen to be bracketed within an era where the discourses of standards and skills became privileged over other ways of thinking about education, and on the one hand created a space for the literacy educator to emerge, but on the other hand tended to derail our more progressive desires by their capacity to invoke their twin discourses of decline and transparency. The paper ends by providing one brief and new example of how we are attempting to put the discourses of standards and skills to work through policy and course review procedures at one Australian university.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"2015 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114605964","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":"On the Borderline: Writing about Writing, Threshold Concepts of Writing, and Credit-Bearing Academic Writing Subjects in Australia","authors":"Andrew P. Johnson","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.3.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.3.12","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers the relevance and application of Writing About Writing (WAW) (Downs & Wardle, 2007; Wardle, 2009) and Threshold Concepts of Writing (TCW) (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015) in the Australian higher education context. These approaches to literacy and writing curriculum development have been developed in the United States context as a critical reinvention of the first-year composition curriculum and as resolving what has been termed the “content problem” – the lack of a consensus about what the discipline of composition should teach in first-year writing classes (Seitz, 2005). Without a strong tradition of first-year writing or an offering of academic writing subjects as credit-bearing parts of the curriculum in Australia, it is not surprising that the discussion or consideration of these ideas has been minimal in this context. However, as this paper will argue, to the extent that such courses or programs are becoming more common in Australian higher education, academic literacy educators face new demands from institutions and students while continuing to respond to perennial misconceptions of their field as being merely a remedial grammar or student support service on the margins of the main teaching and learning work undertaken in disciplines. Insofar as WAW and the TCW literature help to clarify the disciplinary status and goals of literacy programs, the paper argues that they suggest a way forward.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116589768","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":"Writing in the Disciplines and Student Pre-professional Identity: An Exploratory Study","authors":"James Croft, M. Benjamin, P. Conn, Joseph M. Serafin, Rebecca Wiseheart","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.2.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.2.09","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines student perceptions about (i) whether writing in undergraduate disciplines contributes to the development of student pre-professional identity (PPI) and (ii) how writing in such disciplines affects PPI relative to other classroom activities. The study was conducted at St. John’s University in New York, which has a very diverse student population, and involved four different undergraduate disciplines—First-Year History, Chemistry (STEM), Legal Studies, and Speech Pathology. Data was derived primarily from student survey responses. Our findings suggest that writing in undergraduate courses can affect student PPI. Further, the extent to which writing contributes to PPI relative to other course activities appears to be related to four things: whether the course was in the student’s major; how professionally authentic the students perceived the writing in the course to be relative to other course activities; the extent to which the instructor works through the disciplinary writing process with the students; and the extent to which the student already has a PPI. Higher education institutions are under growing pressure to prepare students for professional employment and the world of work (Jackson & Wilton, 2017; Trede, Macklin, & Bridges, 2012). Billett (2009) argues that one of the responsibilities of higher education is to help socialize students to the roles and cultures of their intended professions. Higher education can support this important socialization process by adopting pedagogical practices that help students develop a pre-professional identity (Pittman & Foubert, 2016). Pre-professional identity (PPI) is defined as “an understanding of and connection with the skills, qualities, conduct, culture, and ideology of a student’s intended profession” (Jackson, 2016, p. 926). Research finds PPI enhances both professional and academic success (Nadelson, Warner, & Brown, 2015; Jackson, 2016; Jackson, 2017). PPI is associated with persistence in the STEM disciplines (Chang, Eagan, Lin, & Hurtado, 2011; Graham, Frederick, Byars-Winston, Hunter, & Handelsman, 2013), employability (Jackson, 2016; Tomlinson, 2012), job satisfaction (Holland, 1985), and lower job attrition once students are in the workforce (Renn & Jessup-Anger, 2008). Research on the development of PPI has focused primarily on students’ transition from graduate programs to entry level positions in the field (e.g., Pittman & Foubert, 2016; also see Trede et al., 2012 for review), but the development of PPI can also begin during the undergraduate years (e.g., Jackson & Wilton, 2017). Undergraduate students, for example, can be encouraged to join pre-professional clubs and communities, participate in mentoring programs with professionals practicing in the field (Pittman & Writing in the Disciplines and Student Pre-professional Identity 35 ATD, VOL16(2) Foubert, 2016), and engage in experiential learning, academic service-learning, internships, and practica (Jackson, 2016)","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115555529","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":"The Place of Practice in Contemplative Pedagogy and Writing","authors":"K. Kinane","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"Contemplative pedagogy is part of the larger emerging field of Contemplative Studies. Louis Komjathy (2018) has observed three characteristics shared by various aspects of Contemplative Studies: practice commitment, critical subjectivity, and character development. This paper uses these three characteristics to describe and define a “contemplative course” and “contemplative writing.” First, this paper describes a contemplative approach to the development of the General Education course “Curiosity, Playfulness, Creativity” in terms of the author’s practice commitment, critical subjectivity, and character development. Second, the paper discusses these three characteristics as they apply to students’ contemplative writing experiences and assignments in that course. These notes on theory and practice may provide inspiration for educators across disciplines to craft contextinformed contemplative courses and experiences that tap into the radical, transformative power of contemplative traditions.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115808702","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":"Building a Contemplative Research Writing Course: Theoretical Considerations, PRactical Components, Challenges, and Adaptability","authors":"N. F. Zamin","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.03","url":null,"abstract":"Responding to the call for the contemplative teaching of writing initiated by O’Reilley (1993) and extended by Kirsch (2008; 2009), Kroll (2013), Kroll (2008), Wenger (2015), and Harrison (2012), among others, this article explores the theoretical considerations, practical components, challenges, and adaptability involved in teaching a contemplative research writing course. This article takes up the theoretical considerations of teaching a contemplative research writing course by examining the growing need for contemplative writing as a practice of mindfulness in an increasingly de-selfed academic culture (Hurlbert, 2012). Relatedly, this article examines the challenges involved when a pedagogy makes attendant assumptions about students, knowledge creation, the role of mindfulness in higher education, and the holistic decentering of the classroom space. Concerning the practical components of a contemplative research writing course, this article describes the central roles of contemplative silence (Kirsch, 2009) and freewriting, sustained inquiry writing projects, stable writing groups, and cycles of revision and reflection. Following this, this article takes up the challenges often engendered by the deployment of contemplative pedagogies in the context of higher education. Finally, this article describes the use of this course as a model for fostering writers’ engagement with their own disciplinary knowledge that is adaptable for sustained writing courses across the disciplines.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116722758","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":"Contemplation as 'Kairotic' Composure","authors":"W. Stavenhagen, Timothy R. Dougherty","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"142 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116300357","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":"Writing into Awareness: How Metacognitive Awareness Can Be Encouraged Through Contemplative Teaching Practices","authors":"Kate Chaterdon","doi":"10.37514/ATD-J.2019.16.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2019.16.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"According to a growing body of research, fostering a metacognitive awareness of the writing process is integral to the development of strong writers. Writing scholars (e.g., Driscoll & Wells, 2012; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczac, 2014; Gorzelsky, Driscoll, Pazcek, Jones, & Hayes, 2017) suggest that developing this awareness can improve rhetorical awareness and transfer of writing knowledge across disciplinary contexts. Many of these scholars also suggest that metacognitive awareness can be fostered through reflective (and—I argue—contemplative) writing practices. Informed by this research—as well as scholarship from the burgeoning field of contemplative pedagogy—I designed and taught an upper-division writing course at the University of Arizona (during the fall of 2014) titled “Writing Into Awareness.” Students in this class (who hailed from a variety of disciplines across the arts and sciences) were encouraged to engage in contemplative writing practices in order to explore what Parker Palmer (1998) refers to as the “inner landscape,” while also being mindful of the external expectations placed on a particular writing task. This essay argues that contemplative writing—as distinct from reflective writing—fosters simultaneous awareness of the internal and external factors at work in the writing process. In this course, such simultaneous awareness of author and audience developed students’ meta-awareness, thereby improving transfer. Metacognition & Transfer in the Writing Class When I try to explain what “metacognition” means to my students, I usually start by giving them the simplest definition I have ever come across—I tell them metacognition is “thinking about thinking.” Eventually, we begin to unpack and then complicate this definition a little bit more. Cognitive psychologist John H. Flavell (1976), for example, describes metacognition as “one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes and products” (p. 232). Developing this further, we discuss what this concept means for learners in general, and writing students in particular. Educational psychologist Barry Zimmerman has linked metacognitive awareness to self-regulated learning (1986), and says that selfregulated learners are: metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning process. Metacognitively, self-regulated learners are persons who plan, organize, self-instruct, self-monitor, and self-evaluate at various stages during the learning process. (p. 308) Writing Into Awareness 51 While this definition usually necessitates a brief discussion about why monitoring and managing one’s own learning is a desirable goal, it also helps students better understand why metacognition is important, and why all of us—students and teachers—should strive for a learning environment that fosters metacognition. In short, metacognitive awareness allows us to recognize where we are succeeding as learners, where we need to work harder, and how we can go about achi","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116399133","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 Mindfulness as Heuristic for Writing Evaluation: Transforming Pedagogy and Quality of Experience","authors":"Jennifer Consilio, S. Kennedy","doi":"10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/atd-j.2019.16.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"Mindfulness, or present-moment awareness, and its associated qualities of calm/relaxation, nonjudgment, intentionality, concentration, and compassion, are increasingly being used to help cultivate self-awareness, attention, and optimal learning experiences. After defining mindfulness and selecting key concepts, we apply the construct and features of mindfulness to writing evaluation in the form of contract grading, offering a model for using mindfulness as a generative heuristic for pedagogy. In turn, we create a new, innovative, mindfulness-based writing evaluation process and pedagogy, widely applicable across disciplines. This Mindful Grading Agreement Process, or MGAP, helps cultivate several desirable teaching-learning outcomes, including: 1) student agency, creative risk-taking, and intrinsic motivation; 2) enhanced potentiality for transfer of learning through more co-created reflection; and 3) a pedagogy grounded in collaborative evaluation processes, privileging quality of experience for teachinglearning writing and student agency. In effect, the MGAP makes possible an integrated pedagogy of “what is”—paying better attention to students lived experiences and literacies. We offer, then, a model for productively applying mindfulness to teaching and learning as well as a mindfulness-based tool for evaluating writing in a variety of disciplinary contexts.","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"159 8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128957545","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":"The Translingual Challenge: Boundary Work in Rhetoric and Composition, Second Language Writing, and WAC/WID","authors":"Jonathan Hall","doi":"10.37514/ATD-J.2018.15.3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2018.15.3.10","url":null,"abstract":"This article applies the perspective of “boundary work,” an approach originating in science studies, to relations between the disciplines of Second Language Writing (SLW) and rhetoric and composition (R&C), especially to controversies surrounding the concept of translingualism. Boundaries both separate and connect, a dual potential to exacerbate tensions or to create opportunities for cooperation. Translingualism has sometimes been regarded by R&C as a radical innovation and by SLW as a distracting novelty, but a closer exploration shows both common historical roots and shared contemporaneous parallels in disciplines such as applied linguistics and second language acquisition. For WAC/WID, the translingual challenge may lead to a deconstruction of the L1/L2 binary and to the further rhetorization of correctness, as we find ways to help faculty help students negotiate language choices within a context of acceptance of their full linguistic repertoire and empowerment of their writerly choices. Robert Frost’s (1969) poem “Mending Wall” famously suspends itself between two repeated and contradictory principles: “Good fences make good neighbors” and “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” In my first two sections, I want to talk about how two disciplinary neighbors, rhetoric and composition (R&C) and second language writing (SLW), define their relationship, how they patrol the borders between their territories. Specifically, I’ll focus on the question of why R&C, despite its tradition as an English-only monolingualist discipline, has in recent years embraced “the translingual approach” (Horner et al., 2011)—witness the many sessions at recent conferences in the field with variations on “translingual” in the title—while some in SLW have resisted translingualism as irrelevant or even antithetical to its own disciplinary interests—witness the “Open Letter” (Atkinson et al., 2015). This results in the paradoxical situation of a self-described “transdisciplinary field” (Matsuda, 2013) attempting to draw firm institutional, pedagogical, and disciplinary boundaries around itself, while a field that has been accused of being notoriously slow to change appears enthusiastic in accommodating its theories and research, if not yet its pedagogies, to the translingual challenge. Why, that is, does SLW apparently believe that good fences make good disciplinary neighbors, while R&C, if not quite ready to tear down the wall, at least has ceased to love it? After this initial discussion of disciplinary responses, ranging from informed or uninformed enthusiasm to ambivalent or resistant boundary work, my third section will examine how translingualism can be and has been placed in its historical context and in relation to parallel contemporaneous developments in fields such as critical applied linguistics. My concluding section will turn to the question of how an inherently transdisciplinary field like WAC/WID, in its pedagogy and its professional development and i","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117240231","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":"Thinking Through Difference and Facts of Nonusage: A Dialogue Between Comparative Rhetoric and Translingualism","authors":"L. Mao","doi":"10.37514/ATD-J.2018.15.3.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2018.15.3.15","url":null,"abstract":"Difference or facts of nonusage present a challenge to teacher-scholars of writing and rhetoric in WAC/WID and beyond. How can they appropriately engage different language and rhetorical practices in the classroom and relations of power asymmetry in discursive engagements? How can they effectively address issues of disciplinarity and challenge dominant paradigms and traditions in response to the needs and aspirations of linguistically and culturally diverse students? This article addresses these and other related questions by putting comparative rhetoric in dialogue with translingualism. Focusing on their objects of study and methods of inquiry, the article seeks to illustrate how comparative rhetoric and translingualism give voice and space to language and rhetorical practices that have been misrepresented, underrepresented, or not represented at all and how they together shed a new light on the imperative to teach, study, and speak with and for different rhetorical traditions and different language practices. Lately the field of WAC/WID, as well as the broader field of rhetoric and composition, has been grappling with issues related to linguistic and rhetorical diversity and to how to teach and speak with and for different language and rhetorical practices without either denying their discursive interconnectivities or unnecessarily conflating their discipline-specific characteristics (e.g., Zawacki and Cox, 2014). Several key questions have since become the focus of attention. For example, how can the field address linguistic and rhetorical differences in ways that do not rely on Euro-American-centric ideology for adjudication or affirmation? What new terms of engagement should/can be developed to move beyond such ideology and to recognize and appreciate the significance of occasions and practices of language use in meaningmaking and in identify formation? How can we as teachers of writing and rhetoric effectively challenge relations of power asymmetry in discursive engagements and respond to different languages and rhetorics in the classroom? What should we exactly do when confronted with difference in language and rhetorical practices? Should we sweep them under the rug by appealing to the purported utility and value of the Western Rhetorical Tradition or Standard English in the name of a generic “academic writing?” The flip side of this approach focuses on the forms difference takes and using the Western Rhetorical Tradition or Standard English to pit them against one another. Or should we direct our attention to such questions as: “What might this difference do? How might it function expressively, rhetorically, and communicatively? For whom, under what conditions, and how” (Horner et al., 2011, pp. 303-304)? These and other related questions have so far energized the WAC/WID specifically as well as the broader field of rhetoric and composition, and generated a growing number of compelling responses to date. Comparative rhetoric and translin","PeriodicalId":201634,"journal":{"name":"Across the Disciplines","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128761961","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}