Category Archives: Scholarship on WAW

Use this category to publicize, index, annotate, and discuss articles and books that engage in scholarship about the WAW approach.

Assignments, Blogs, Scholarship on WAW

Hendrickson & Garcia de Mueller 2016 – “Inviting students to determine for themselves what it means to write across disciplines”

Leave a comment

Hendrickson, Brian, and Genevieve Garcia de Mueller. “Inviting Students to Determine for Themselves What it Means to Write Across Disciplines.” The WAC Journal 27 (2016). Retrieved from https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/journal/vol27/hendrickson.pdf

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph: “Situated in the literature on threshold concepts and transfer of prior knowledge in WAC/WID and composition studies, with particular emphasis on the scholarship of writing across difference, our article explores the possibility of re-envisioning the role of the composition classroom within the broader literacy ecology of colleges and universities largely comprised of students from socioeconomically and ethnolinguistically underrepresented communities. We recount the pilot of a composition course prompting students to examine their own prior and other literacy values and practices, then transfer that growing meta-awareness to the critical acquisition of academic discourse. Our analysis of students’ self-assessment memos reveals that students apply certain threshold concepts to acquire critical agency as academic writers, and in a manner consistent with Guerra’s concept of transcultural repositioning. We further consider the role collective rubric development plays as a critical incident facilitating transcultural repositioning.”

Scholarship on WAW

Writing About Writing Working Bibliography

Leave a comment

If you would like to see any work not represented in this working bibliography, please send additions to geoffrey.clegg [at] mwsu [dot] com. I will update this as needed.

Articles and Books:

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth Wardle. Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. University Press of Colorado, 2015.

Adler-Kassner, Linda, et al. “Assembling Knowledge: The Role of Threshold Concepts in Facilitating Transfer.” Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer. Editors: Anson, Chris M., & Moore, Jessie L. Fort Collins, Colorado: The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, USA, Chapter 1, pp 17-48.

Adler-Kassner, Linda, John Majewski, and Damian Koshnick. “The Value of Troublesome Knowledge: Transfer and Threshold Concepts in Writing and History.” Composition Forum. Vol. 26, 2012.

Allen, Matthew, Mary McCall, and Gracemarie Mike. “First-Year Composition through a Global Engineering Perspective.” connexions 1.2 109-133 (2013).

Andersen, Rebekka. “Teaching Visual Rhetoric as a Close Reading Strategy.” Composition Studies 44.2 (2016).

Beemer, Cristy. “Sophists or SMEs? Teaching Rhetoric Across the Curriculum in the Professional and Technical Writing Classroom.” Teaching English in the Two Year College 44.2 (2016): 204.

Behm, Nicholas N., Gregory R. Glau, and Deborah H. Holdstein. WPA Outcomes Statement—A Decade Later. Anderson: Parlor, 2012. Web.

Bird, Barbara. “A Basic Writing Course Design to Promote Writer Identity: Three Analyses of Student Papers.” Journal of Basic Writing 32.1 (2013): 62-96. Web.

Bird, Barbara. “Writing about Writing as the Heart of a Writing Studies Approach to FYC: Response to Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions” and to Libby Miles Et Al., “Thinking Vertically”. College Composition and Communication, vol. 60, no. 1, 2008, pp. 165-171.

Carter, Shannon. “Writing about Writing in Basic Writing: A Teacher/Researcher/Activist Narrative.” BWe: Basic Writing e-journal, vol. 8-9, 2009, pp. 1.

Charlton, Jonnika. “Seeing is Believing: Writing Studies with ‘Basic Writing’ Students.” BWe: Basic Writing E-Journal (2009): 8-9.

Clark, Irene L., and Andrea Hernandez. “Genre awareness, academic argument, and transferability.” The WAC Journal 22 (2011): 65-78.

Devet, Bonnie. “The writing center and transfer of learning: A primer for directors.” The Writing Center Journal (2015): 119-151.

Dieterle, Brandy, and Stephanie Vie. “Digital First-Year Composition: Integrating Multimodality into a Writing about Writing Approach.” Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies 3.1 (2015): 276-289.

Downs, Doug. “Teaching First-Year Writers to use Texts: Scholarly Readings in Writing-about-Writing in First-Year Comp.” Reader: essays in reader-oriented theory, criticism, and pedagogy, 2010, pp. 19.

Downs, Doug and Elizabeth Wardle. “Reimagining the Nature of FYC Trends in Writing-About-Writing Pedagogies.” eds. Ritter, Kelly, and Paul Kei Matsuda. Exploring Composition Studies : Sites, Issues, Perspectives. Logan: Utah State UP, 2012, pp. 123-144.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn, and Jennifer Wells. “Beyond Knowledge and Skills: Writing Transfer and the Role of Student Dispositions.” Composition Forum. Vol. 26, 2012.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn. “Connected Pedagogy and Transfer of Learning: An Examination of Graduate Instructor Beliefs vs. Practices in First-Year Writing” Journal of Teaching Writing 28.1 (2013): 53-84.

Finer, Bryna. “Exploring Composition Studies: Sites, Issues, and Perspective.” Composition Studies 41.1 (2013): 157-61. Web.

Fishman, Jenn, and Mary Jo Reiff. “Taking it on the Road: Transferring knowledge about rhetoric and writing across curricula and campuses.” Composition Studies 39.2 (2011): 121.

Fraizer, Dan. “First Steps beyond First Year: Coaching Transfer after FYC.(First Year Composition).” Writing Program Administration 33.3 (2010): 34. Web.

Hardy, Jack A., Ute Römer, and Audrey Roberson. “The Power of Relevant Models: Using a Corpus of Student Writing to Introduce Disciplinary Practices in a First Year Composition Course.” Across the Disciplines 12.1 (2015): n1.

Hassel, Holly, and Joanne Baird Giordano. “Transfer institutions, transfer of knowledge: The development of rhetorical adaptability and underprepared writers.” Teaching English in the Two Year College 37.1 (2009): 24.

Hill, Heather N. “Tutoring for Transfer: The Benefits of Teaching Writing Center Tutors about Transfer Theory.” The Writing Center Journal (2016): 77-102.

Howson, Emily, Chris Massenburg, and Cecilia Shelton. “Reflections on Building a Popular Writing Course.” Issues 1.1.

Ihara, Rachel. “Student Perspectives on Self-Assessment: Insights and Implications.” Teaching English in the Two Year College 41.3 (2014): 223-58. Web.

Klausman, Jeffrey. “Review: Writing about Writing: A College Reader.” Teaching English in the Two Year College vol. 39, 2012, pp. 421-422.

Kraemer, Don J. “Just Comp.” Writing Program Administration 35.2 (2012): 85. Web.

Kutney, Joshua P. “Will Writing Awareness Transfer to Writing Performance? Response to Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle,” Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions”.” College Composition and Communication 59.2 (2007): 276-279.

Looker, Samantha. “Writing about Language: Studying Language Diversity with First-Year Writers.” Teaching English in the Two Year College 44.2 (2016): 176.

McCracken, I. M., and Valerie A. Ortiz. “Latino/a Student (Efficacy) Expectations: Reacting and Adjusting to a Writing-about-Writing Curriculum Change at a Hispanic Serving Institution.” Composition Forum, vol. 27, 2013.

Miles, Libby, et al. “Commenting on Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle’s” Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions”.” College Composition and Communication 59.3 (2008): 503-511.

Miley, Michelle, and Doug Downs. “Crafting Collaboricity: Harmonizing the Force Fields of Writing Program and Writing Center Work.” Writing Program and Writing Center Collaborations. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 25-45.

Nava, Angelica T. “Where Teachers and Students Meet: Exploring Perceptions in First-Year Composition.” Young Scholars In Writing 9 (2015): 119-127.

Nowacek, Rebecca S. Agents of integration: Understanding transfer as a rhetorical act. SIU Press, 2011.

Perrault, Sarah. “Course Description UWP 011: Popular Science & Technology Writing is a sophomore-level.” Composition Studies 40 (2012): 112-133.

Read, Sarah, and Michael J. Michaud. “Writing about Writing and the Multimajor Professional Writing Course.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 66, no. 3, 2015, pp. 427.

Reiff, Mary Jo, Anis Bawarshi, and Michelle Ballif. Ecologies of Writing Programs: Program Profiles in Context. Anderson: Parlor, 2015. Web.

Robertson, Liane, Kara Taczak, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. “Notes toward a Theory of Prior Knowledge and Its Role in College Composers’ Transfer of Knowledge and Practice.” Composition Forum. Vol. 26, 2012.

Ruecker, Todd. “Reimagining” English 1311: Expository English Composition” as “Introduction to Rhetoric and Writing Studies”.” Composition Studies 39.1 (2011): 87.

Samuels, Robert. “Contingent Labor, Writing Studies, and Writing about Writing.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 68, no. 1, 2016, pp. A3.

Sánchez, Fernando, Liz Lane, and Tyler Carter. “Engaging Writing about Writing Theory and Multimodal Praxis: Remediating WaW for English 106: First Year Composition.” Composition Studies 42.2 (2014): 118.

Scott, Tony. “Subverting Crisis in the Political Economy of Composition.” College Composition and Communication 68.1 (2016): 10.

Skeffington, Jillian K. “Enhancing Transfer from First-Year Composition: A Pedagogy of Shorter Essays.” Journal of Teaching Writing 27.2 (2012): 27-45.

Smitherman, Carey E., and Amanda K. Girard. “Creating Connection: Composition Theory and Creative Writing Craft in the First-Year Writing Classroom.” Currents in Teaching and Learning 3.2 (2011).

Sylvia, Cami, and Michael J. Michaud. “Looking Into Writing.” Composition Studies 43.2 (2015): 186.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “Intractable Writing Program Problems, Kairos, and Writing about Writing: A Profile of the University of Central Florida’s First-Year Composition Program.” Composition Forum, vol. 27, 2013.

Wardle, Elizabeth, and Doug Downs. “Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: Revisiting ‘Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions’ Five Years on.” Composition Forum, vol. 27, 2013.

Wardle, Elizabeth and Doug Downs. “Looking into Writing-about-Writing Classrooms.” First-Year Composition: From Theory to Practice, eds. Deborah Coxwell-Teague and Ronald F. Lunsford. Parlor Press, 2014.

Wardle, Elizabeth and Doug Downs. Writing about Writing: A College Reader, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, 2014.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “Understanding “transfer” from FYC: Preliminary results of a longitudinal study.” Writing Program Administration 31.2 (2007): 65-85.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “’Mutt Genres’ and the Goal of FYC: Can We Help Students Write the Genres of the University?.” College Composition and Communication (2009): 765-789.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “Creative Repurposing for Expansive Learning: Considering ‘Problem-Exploring’and ‘Answer-Getting’Dispositions in Individuals and Fields.” Composition Forum. Vol. 26. No. 1. 2012.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “Continuing the Dialogue: Follow-up Comments on” Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions”.” College Composition and Communication 60.1 (2008): 175-181.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “Intractable Writing Program Problems.” Composition Forum. Vol. 27. 2013.

Wells, Jennifer. “They can Get there from here: Teaching for Transfer through a “Writing about Writing” Course.” The English Journal, vol. 101, no. 2, 2011, pp. 57-63.

White-Farnham, Jamie. “Writing 302: Writing Culture.” Composition Studies 40.2 (2012): 92.

Yancey, Kathleen, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak. Writing across contexts: Transfer, composition, and sites of writing. University Press of Colorado, 2014.

DISSERTATIONS

Smith, Katie M. Transitioning to Writing about Writing: A Consideration of the Metawriting Teaching Approach at the University of Arkansas, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2014.

Pappas, Stephanie L. Research shows: Recasting Research Instruction in Writing-about-Writing Approaches to First-Year Composition, vol. 74, 2013.

Watson, Hilary. Writing about Writing: One Student’s Challenges Producing a Scholarly Personal Narrative Thesis and Applying the Outcomes as a Student Affairs Professional, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2016.

Goertel, James. Perception is Reality: The First Year Composition Student, Writing about Writing Discussions, and the Author-Informed Text, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2016.

 

Blogs, Faculty Development, Program Building, Scholarship on WAW

Reflecting on WAW: A Pedagogical Journey

1 Comment

HeatherCamp-e1418266046552-217x300

by Heather Camp, Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition at Minnesota State University, Mankato 

The invitation to guest blog for the writing-about-writing network has led me to reflect on the ways I have benefited from WAW over the last five years. As I survey this period, I see a dynamic relationship between WAW and my teaching philosophy, a relationship that has challenged and changed me as a teacher and administrator.

Like others interested in WAW, my initial explorations were motivated by the work of David Smit, Anne Beaufort, Elizabeth Wardle and others who were asking pointed questions about the transferability of writing skills acquired in first-year composition. These questions impelled me toward transfer research, including Linda Bergmann and Janet Zepernick’s maxim that we teach students “how to learn to write” for future writing situations (emphasis added). This seemed like a genius idea to me, and it shaped my personal teaching philosophy and the theoretical orientation of the Composition Program I direct.

Other ideas from WAW appealed as well. Long concerned with the question of content for FYC, I eagerly embraced the notion that writing itself was a rich and appropriate subject matter for the course. I felt that this content would teach students more about writing than would readings about popular culture or current events. I also was persuaded that incorporating composition scholarship into the course would provide students with a more concrete introduction to the notion of disciplinary communities and their unique discourse practices. These ideas continue to speak to me, even while I now recognize (through WAW-based teaching experience) the complexities that accompany these pedagogical decisions.

On multiple occasions, I have helped develop a WAW curriculum for my university’s Composition TAs, who teach English 101. During their first semester of teaching, these teachers work from a common syllabus and assignment sequence designed by a group of TA mentors and myself. In the WAW renditions we have adopted, we have embraced a loose definition of WAW, one that accepts Downs and Wardle assertion that “any meaningful genre, form, writing-related content, and medium can make an appearance in a WAW class” (133 emphasis added). Anecdotal evidence suggests that teachers have valued adopting readings on the writing process most of all; these readings, they claim, have provided a foundation for the process orientation of the class. Metacognitive practices also seem to have been widely accepted.

Today, I continue to grapple with the transfer question that led me to WAW. However, I am in a different place than I was five years ago. New voices and ideas have entered the conversation and are influencing my teaching philosophy in various ways. These ideas include findings from neuroscience on how the brain learns, retains, and retrieves information—and what that means for teaching. They include research on the importance of novelty and relevance in remembering. And they include my own longitudinal research on writing teacher development and the evolution of teachers’ theories and practices over time. This new body of knowledge alternately affirms and challenges tenets from WAW and is helping me continue to work out my philosophy of teaching.

At their best, Composition theories and pedagogies spur us to ask new questions, take our work more seriously, evolve our teaching practices, wrestle with tensions between practice and theory, and come to a better understanding of our teaching priorities. They keep us alert, engaged, and curious. I am grateful for the growth opportunities I have been afforded by WAW, and to the vibrant scholarly community it has permitted me to join, whose members share my interests but travel on their own unique, intellectual journeys.

Works Cited:

Bergmann, Linda and Janet Zepernick. “Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students’ Perceptions of Learning to Write.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 31.1-2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 124-149.

Downs, Doug and Elizabeth Wardle. “Reimagining the Nature of FYC: Trends in Writing-about-Writing Pedagogies. In Exploring Composition Studies: Sites, Issues, and Perspectives.    Eds. Kelly Ritter and Paul Kei Matsuda. Logan: Utah State UP, 2012. 123-144.

Blogs, Scholarship on WAW, Teaching Strategies

At Home with Writing about Writing

Leave a comment

Cynthia A. Cochran, Illinois College

December 5, 2015

A few years ago I began to learn about a growing community of people teaching writing in a way that would eventually make me feel right at home: Writing about Writing. I had not yet discovered Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs’ book of that title and had neglected to read their seminal article on this teaching approach, but at conferences I began to hear people using the term, and a departmental colleagues began using Writing about Writing.  One year at 4Cs, I took a look at its chapters and noticed assignments similar to those I had developed for my students, such as chapters on literacy narratives and writing processes, an explanation of discourse communities, metacognitive questions, and even some of the essays and articles I had been using with students.

Having a background in rhetoric and composition studies, I was delighted – and intrigued — to see some of my favorite research articles, too, seminal works in writing studies. It was almost a coming home.

Over the next year, I continued to use the same book I had recently adopted, Gary Goshgarian’s Exploring Language; its range of readings on language in written, oral and visual communication interested my students and I found them to be useful as springboards to getting students to consider their own language use at a metacognitive level. Themes in my course drawn from Exploring Language chapters all focused on some dimension of visual, verbal, or semiotic communication included freedom of speech and censorship; hate language; sign language and visual rhetoric; discourse communities and genre; language, identity, and literacy narratives; propaganda; and writing processes. The students seemed receptive enough and they certainly improved their writing, but I did not think they were as advanced at the metacognitive level as I wanted them to be so as to facilitate transfer of writing knowledge and skill from my class to all their other classes.

I began to question my approach, specifically, whether my syllabus did enough to encourage or require students to read and possibly do empirical studies of writing. Were a literacy narrative and an assignment like an etymology essay enough? Had I been too timid about introducing students to methods of inquiry I use? I began to think so.

At the next 4C’s my curiosity drove me to the WAW SIG, partly to find out whether what I did was WAW enough, or WAW at all, or maybe something else. I entered the WAW house tentatively.

As I listened to colleagues describing their approaches to teaching first-year students about writing studies – not just about how to write – my curiosity grew, as did my comfort. It was great to meet people who had confidence that undergraduates in any field would and could learn more about writing and improve their own writing effectively through WAW. Remember, I had never included more than two assignments that asked students to examine writing as data. Maybe I didn’t need to be afraid to share my expertise with students more directly by engaging them in discussions about the study of writing.

So I changed plans. I began to include more assignments to engage students in metacognitive self-reflection about their recent writing to build on their literacy narrative. I reverted to using an assignment that asked students to collect interview data about writing in a particular discourse community. And I included a researched paper on a topic related to language. Finding a way to squeeze everything in was difficult to do in the context of teaching in a learning community defined mainly by my teaching partner’s first-year seminar topic (but that is an essay for another day).

Currently my approach is to introduce students to college writing through WAW by introducing them to themselves. From day one to the final, I layer in opportunities for students to reflect on their progress as writers: I periodically ask them to consider and self-assess their writing history, strengths and needs, processes and goals. After a first assignment in which they write a brief in-class essay on their writing strengths and needs, they read literacy narratives by a range of writers included in the anthology and then write their own essay on some aspect of their language identity. I still ask them to write researched paper on a topic related to course theme of language and communication. They also now do a brief assignment that involves interviewing someone in their chosen or current favorite field of study, find an example of writing in that major or profession (preferably something written by their interview subject), and use this as an example for analysis. The course ends with a final in-class reflective essay to cap their literacy project, which by that time will include their first-day essay, their literacy narrative, several self-assessment letters, and the final essay.

I still characterize my course as one that hits a half-way mark between WAW and writing about communication. Sometimes I share my own research with the students – whatever research I happen to have completed most recently, what I will be talking about in my next conference paper, or questions I would like to research. I report on recent findings in writing research whenever the moment arises. But although the students may draw on reports of empirical studies in their own research paper, their only data collection happens in the discourse community assignment. I may add a verbal think-aloud protocol assignment for them to study their writing process, an assignment harkening back to my teaching assistant days under the direction of Linda Flower.

I won’t bother you with the stories about improved course evaluations since I’m not certain those things are always worth the effort, but I will say this. I am feeling at home with WAW. I believe this approach is working, though I have no easy way to do a comparison study without sacrificial lambs. But I can see the evidence of the improvement in their writing and in the things some of them say in their self-assessments. Imagine my delight, for example, when one of them wrote about his assistant football coach, who had written a journal article! Because I want to increase students’ ability to think at the metacognitive level, I talk explicitly and often about transferring concepts and skills from one domain to another; the thread of self-assessment reinforces their metacognitive skill, which I hope will lead to greater transfer. (Perhaps there is a study about that in my future – and perhaps some students will collaborate in that research.)

WAW has slowly became home as I explore its rooms. Each assignment I try is like a piece of furniture to be moved, prized, or perhaps tossed to the curb. Now in my second year as At-Large Member on the WAW Steering Committee, I have grown in confidence that I am “doing WAW.” During the past year, I have been conducting research with Rebecca Babcock, interviewing instructors about WAW and examining their course materials. I am excited by what I am learning about what WAW is and can be. Through it all, I have grown more confident as I realize that WAW is a house with rooms to spare and lots of furniture to buy.

And yet, expansive as it is, WAW is a cozy house. I have become increasingly cognizant that the WAW community enfranchises me to live out and share with my students the expertise I have been so careful to nurture.

Postscript: For the landmark article justifying the use of WAW for teaching beginning college writers, complete with sample assignments, see Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle’s 2007 College Composition and Communication article, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning “First-Year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies” (58.4, pages 552-584).

Scholarship from WAW, Scholarship on WAW, Teaching Strategies

Downs, “Teaching first-year writers to use texts: Scholarly readings in Writing-about-Writing in First-Year Comp”

Leave a comment

Downs’ article provides great suggestions for helping students navigate scholarly articles.

Downs, Doug. “Teaching First-year Writers to Use Texts: Scholarly Readings in Writing-about-writing in First-year Comp.” Reader: Essays in Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy (2010): 19-50.