�Types of Writing,� Levels of Generality, and �What Transfers?�: Upper-Level Students and the Transfer of First-Year Writing Knowledge

Transfer-focused pedagogies like Writing about Writing (WAW) or Teaching for Transfer (TFT) have claimed to better facilitate transfer of writing knowledge from first-year composition (FYC) courses. These pedagogies have emerged alongside research indicating that students in upper-level writing intensive courses often do not transfer FYC knowledge. While research has suggested that these transfer-focused pedagogies do improve transfer during subsequent semesters, research has not sought to determine whether students’ long-term attitudes toward FYC knowledge is affected by these pedagogies. This article presents the results of an IRB-approved pilot survey study of what students enrolled in upper-level writing intensive courses at a small, private, Catholic, suburban university in the Midwestern United States remembered learning in their FYC courses, and whether they perceived that knowledge as having been useful for their writing. Results seem to indicate that some transfer-focused pedagogies do have significant effects on students’ perceptions of the usefulness and transferability of what they recall learning in FYC. Additionally, many students identify conceptual knowledge of genre and discourse communities as useful for their upper-level writing, though often using alternative terms, particularly types, styles, forms, or formats of writing. To a large extent, this is true regardless of whether students enrolled in a transfer-focused course or not, but responses from those who experienced a transfer-focused course give indications of a more sophisticated understanding. These results might indicate that students may be predisposed to remember and connect knowledge at intermediate levels of generality that could lead to new possibilities for teaching for transfer. In the last decade and a half, writing transfer has become a focus for teachers, scholars, and administrators (Anson & Moore, 2017; Nowacek, 2011; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014). Much of this interest came in response to several studies that found that students do not transfer knowledge from their first-year composition classes (FYC) to writing in their majors either because they do not believe what they learned is useful (Bergmann & Zepernick, 2007; Jarrat et al., 2009), or, even when they do believe that what they learned was useful, do not make use of that knowledge because they don’t feel it is necessary (Wardle, 2007). In response to these findings, transfer research has investigated how instructors might better facilitate transfer of writing knowledge, and researchers seem to agree that it is possible to more effectively teach for transfer (Moore & Anson, 2017; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014). Supported by this research, pedagogies that claim to better facilitate transfer are gaining in popularity (see Bird et al., 2019; Downs and Wardle, 2007; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014). Researchers, however, have not attempted to ascertain whether transfer-focused pedagogies improve students’ longer-term perceptions of the value and “Types of Writing” 285 ATD, VOL18(ISSUE3/4) transferability of writing knowledge learned in FYC. Most studies to date have focused only on student experiences and perceptions during semesters immediately following transfer-focused courses (see Robertson & Taczak, 2017; Taczak & Robertson, 2016; Yancey et al., 2018, 2019; Hoover et al., 2019). This article reports on a preliminary attempt to determine whether a transfer-focused FYC curriculum that draws from both writing about writing (WAW) and teaching for transfer (TFT) pedagogies affects what writing knowledge students recall and report finding useful for writing beyond FYC. The results of this study also have implications for the question of what writing knowledge seems to most usefully transfer, a question that Rebecca Nowacek (2019) argues “we have not, as a field, sufficiently grappled with” (p. 207). This IRB-approved pilot survey study seeks to answer the following questions: • To what extent does a WAW and TFT course impact student perceptions of the usefulness of FYC knowledge? • What knowledge do students spontaneously recall learning in their FYC courses? • What knowledge do students say they have found useful for writing in the contexts of their majors and/or outside of academics? • What implications might students’ identified knowledge and perceptions of its usefulness have for the question of what transfers and how? Review of Literature While transfer has become an increasing focus for composition, it has also become an increasingly conflicted term and concept (see Brent, 2012; DePalma & Ringer, 2011; Wardle, 2012, 2013). As Rebecca Nowacek (2019) notes, however, “transfer continues to function as a big-tent term for many acts of connection-making” (p. 202). Most alternative terms for transfer highlight that because writing varies so significantly from situation to situation, especially across contexts, writing transfer requires the transformation of prior knowledge. Michael-John DePalma and Jeffrey Ringer’s (2011) model of adaptive transfer is representative of this consensus. As they explain, “Adaptive transfer is the conscious or intuitive process of applying or reshaping learned writing knowledge in new and potentially unfamiliar writing situations” (p. 141). I will use the word transfer to mean this form of adaptive transfer unless qualified as routine transfer (the automatic replication of well-practiced knowledge). Transfer of FYC Knowledge Cannot Be Assumed Studies showing that students do not transfer writing knowledge from FYC (Beaufort, 2007; Bergmann & Zepernick, 2007; Driscoll, 2011; Jarratt et al., 2009) indicate that students erect boundaries between FYC experiences and knowledge in ways that lead them to dismiss the transferability of un-valued knowledge. As Linda S. Bergmann and Janet Zepernick (2007) report that in their focus group study of students at the University of Missouri, Rolla, they “repeatedly observed a tendency among students to actively reject the idea that what they learned about writing in high school or in first year composition (FYC) courses could be applied to the writing they were asked to do in courses in other disciplines” (p. 124). The authors note that this tendency seems to emerge from the perception that writing in FYC classes is fundamentally different from writing in other courses (p. 131). Susan C. Jarratt and her co-authors’ (2009) study of upperlevel students’ “pedagogical memories” confirms Bergmann and Zepernick’s results (p. 65), and Dana Driscoll (2011), in her study of student perceptions of the transferability of writing knowledge during FYC, similarly finds that “students in the study demonstrated a significant decline in perceptions towards the usefulness and transferability of FYC” (p. 9). Driscoll and Daewoo Jin (2018), reporting on a five-year longitudinal study, found that students displayed three different epistemologies: omnidirectional, valuing all knowledge; fatalist, believing that the ability to value, retain, and transfer knowledge is beyond students’