About Writing Studies

The following passages were really useful in helping me think about my own field. Taken from Doug Downs book chapter, "Teaching First-Year Writers to Use Texts."

Writing Studies is marked by a free mix of research methodologies from the humanities and social sciences—or in Michael Carter's terms, the meta-genres of research-from-sources and empirical inquiry (396-98)...Despite its positioning in English departments, Writing Studies also often behaves like a social science. While showing discomfort with positivist empirical epistemology (or a humanist's fear of parametric statistics), the field was born in and continues to value data-driven rather than only or purely theoretical analysis... Resulting from this blended epistemology, a given article may work across multiple fields and take methods as it finds them, even though such practice can lead to methodological "looseness" that the fields originating the methods might take issue with. Writing Studies texts also tend to valorize personal experience and believe that more can accurately be said about the experiences of a small number of writers discussed in detail (as through ethnography, case study, longitudinal study, and interview) than about larger datasets generated through experiment with only limited control of variables. At the same time, drawing from their humanities and literary-studies roots, scholars in the field read and analyze textual discourse with unusual sensitivity. Unlike those fields, however, Writing Studies finds as much value in reading unfinished student texts in this fashion as it does literary texts—a distinction Robert Scholes has argued strongly distinguishes the values of Literary Criticism and Writing Studies. (33-34)

Personal Statement planning?

A Pedagogy of Activity

• Opportunity for student-to-student dialogue/interaction
• Opportunity to write before speech (discussion...we never launch into "So what did you think of the readings?")
• opportunity for collective problem/question posing
• visibility of student words (written)
• frequent opportunity for informal dialogue/conversation w/faculty (written)--blogs, discussion board, "comment" feature of google docs
• collaborative learning and task completion

Importance of talk

Once children begin telling their stories on paper, we'll get a glimpse of what they actually are learning, and from that, we'll find out what we need to teach more explicitly. (17)

This passage fascinates me and pushes me to consider the notion of an pedagogy of induction or inductive pedagogy...if I understand it right? "...inductive reasoning, arguing from observation, while Rizik is using deductive reasoning, arguing from the law of gravity." Similarly, there might be inductive teaching, teaching from observation of student talk and deductive teaching, which is teaching from...what?

...many of the problems of the infant and junior schools would be solved if we could have more adults or older children to engage in talk, for it is above all talk with an understanding older person that is wanted, talk that arises directly out of shared activity in and around the classroom (James Britton, qtd in Horn/Giacobbe p. 19).

By providing opportunities for her students to make meaning and by giving language to what they do, she is doing what Britton advises, "patiently exercising the special kind of leadership [needed] to build a talking community" (James Britton, qtd in. Horn Giacobbe, p. 19)

A new story about Writing

Any regular reader of this blog will know that new story: writing is not the transmission of information but the creation of knowledge. Writing is not perfectible, and there’s a reason the world’s best writers have the world’s best editors. Grammar is merely one of a great number of concerns in writing, not the central one. “Writing” includes composition, not simply inscription: it begins with thinking about what to say and ends in a reader’s hands, not with drafting. Writing is not an empty container into which content is dumped; the container is the content. Thus, writing is a situated activity responding to particular exigencies, different every time, not a universal skill that can be learned once and “mastered.” Revision is developing writing, not fixing it, and thus a sign of mature writing, not bad writing: most professional writers expect that their first draft is a starting point, not an ending point. Writing is not usually the work of lone geniuses inspired by a muse; writers usually work collaboratively with other writers and especially with readers. Writing is usually not easy for good writers, and it is usually not the kind of thing that ought to be.


--Doug Downs, Bedford Bits, May 23, 2012.

Core beliefs

1. Quantity: students must write a lot of words--ideally in frequent low stakes ways which don't feel onerous to them or you, which can be assessed quickly, if at all, and which add up to a significant portion of students grade (20-30 percent).
2. Public: writing must be public and it's presence must be made visible in your course on a daily basis. Low stakes writing should be shared frequently and high stakes writing should be as well.
3. Course management system: in order to accomplish 1 & 2, as frequently as possible and ideally all the time writing must be done in digitally, by using the CMS. (this means that laptops should be encouraged in class and frequent trips to writing labs should be taken.
4. Class time: class time should be allocated to ACTIVITY--lecture is just one kind of activity and should not be the primary activity of class time. Activities which engage students in writing-related activities (individual writing, group/collaborative writing, peer-review, discusion of student texts--low stakes and high) should far outweigh the activity of lecture.
5. peer review: all major or high stakes writing should be peer-reviewed multiple times/drafts before it is handed in for a grade.

Teaching writing effectively means adopting a student (as opposed to a content) centered orientation towards the classroom. You are there to teach students how to KNOW and to DO things. Knowing and doing are equally important. Effective student-centered instructors develop a repertoire of strategies and tools for structuring classroom activity to facilitate knowing and doing. They are constantly adapting their practice to expand the range of strategies and tools they deploy to accomplish their objectives. Communications technologies are key tools in student-centered teaching.

Internship Opportunities

RI Monthly magazine (12 hours per week required)

Fall, Spring, Summer internships

To Apply: write to them by email (no website info for interns)

cover letter

resume

links to previous work (at least 2 published examples of work, not school papers)

Direct Letters of Inquiry to:

Jamie Coelho

jcoelho@rimonthly.com

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Genie McPherson Trevor
genie@ediblerhody.com
www.ediblerhody.com

What is research-writing?

As compositionists should know, research-writing (and therefore research) is not simply about assembling readymade information, but about changing the ways a topic can be looked at and about making new cross-connections between material. (87)

Scott, Patrick. "Bibliographical Problems in Research on Composition." College Composition and Communication 37 (1986): 167-77.

SSTW Readings for Next Time

Selected Print Resources on Writing to Learn

Adams, P. (Ed.) (1973). Language in Thinking. Harmondsworth: Penguin Press.

Applebee, A.N. (1985). Writing and Reasoning. Review of Educational Research, 54(4), 577-596.

Britton, J., Burgess, T., Martin, N., McLeod, A., & Rosen, H. (1975). The Development of Writing Abilities (11-18). London: Macmillan Education.

Bruner, J. (1975). Language as an Instrument of Thought. In A. Davies (Ed.), Problems in language and learning. London: Heinemann.

Emig, J. ( 1977). Writing as a Mode of Learning. College Composition and Communication, 28, 122-28.

Forsman, S. (1985). Writing to Learn Means Learning to Think. In A. R. Gere (Ed.), Roots in the sawdust: Writing to learn across the disciplines (pp. 162-174). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Fulwiler, T. & Young, A. (1982). Introduction. In T. Fulwiler and A. Young (Eds.), Language connections: Writing and reading across the curriculum (pp. ix-xiii). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Herrington, A. (1981). Writing to Learn: Writing Across the Disciplines. College English, 43, 379-87.

Kiefer, K. (1990). An Alternative to Curricular Reform: Writing in the Natural Science/Engineering Curriculum. In Proceedings of the Core Across the Curriculum Conference (Keystone, Colorado, October 6-8, 1990). The American Association for the Advancement of Core Curriculum.

Knoblauch, C., & Brannon, L. (1983). Writing as Learning through the Curriculum. College English, 45, 465-74.

McLeod, S.H. (1989). Writing across the curriculum: The second stage, and beyond. College Composition and Communication 40,(3), 337-343.

Odell, L. (1980). The Process of Writing and the Process of Learning. College Composition and Communication, 36, 42-50.

Palmquist, M., Rodrigues, D., Kiefer, K., and Zimmerman, D. 1995. Enhancing the audience for writing across the curriculum: Housing WAC in a network-supported writing center. Computers and Composition 12, 335-353.

Parker, R. P. (1985). The Language across the Curriculum Movement: A Brief Overview and Bibliography. College Composition and Communication, 36, 173-177.

Parker, R. P., & Goodkin, V. (1987). The Consequences of Writing: Enhancing Learning in the Disciplines. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook.

Russell, D.R. (1990). Writing Across the Curriculum in Historical Perspective: Toward a Social Interpretation. College English, 52, 52-73.

Walvoord, B.E. 1992. Getting started. In Writing across the curriculum: A guide to developing programs, edited by S.H. McLeod and M. Soven. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Wilkes, J. (1978). Science Writing: Who? What? How? English Journal, 67, 56-60.

Young, A., and Fulwiler, T. 1986. Writing across the disciplines: Research into practice. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook.