front cover of Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices
Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices
Innovating Teaching across Disciplines
edited by Angela Glotfelter, Caitlin Martin, Mandy Olejnik, Ann Updike & Elizabeth Wardle
Utah State University Press, 2022
Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices demonstrates that it is possible for groups of faculty members to change teaching and learning in radical ways across their programs, despite the current emphasis on efficiency and accountability. Relating the experiences of faculty from disciplines as diverse as art history, economics, psychology, and philosophy, this book offers a theory- and research-based heuristic for helping faculty transform their courses and programs, as well as practical examples of the heuristic in action.
 
The authors draw on the threshold concepts framework, research in writing studies, and theories of learning, leadership, and change to deftly explore why faculty are often stymied in their efforts to design meaningful curricula for deep learning and how carefully scaffolded professional development for faculty teams can help make such change possible. This book is a powerful demonstration of how faculty members can be empowered when professional development leaders draw on a range of scholarship that is not typically connected.
 
In today’s climate, courses, programs, and institutions are often assessed by and rewarded for proxy metrics that have little to do with learning, with grave consequences for students. The stakes have never been higher, particularly for public higher education. Faculty members need opportunities to work together using their own expertise and to enact meaningful learning opportunities for students. Professional developers have an important role to play in such change efforts.
 
WAC scholars and practitioners, leaders of professional development and centers for teaching excellence, program administrators and curriculum committees from all disciplines, and faculty innovators from many fields will find not only hope but also a blueprint for action in Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices.
 
Contributors: Juan Carlos Albarrán, José Amador, Annie Dell'Aria, Kate de Medeiros, Keith Fennen, Jordan A. Fenton, Carrie E. Hall, Elena Jackson Albarrán, Erik N. Jensen, Vrinda Kalia, Janice Kinghorn, Jennifer Kinney, Sheri Leafgren, Elaine Maimon, Elaine Miller, Gaile Pohlhaus Jr., Jennifer J. Quinn, Barbara J. Rose, Scott Sander, Brian D. Schultz, Ling Shao, L. James Smart, Pepper Stetler
 
[more]

front cover of Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity
Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity
Rita Malenczyk
Utah State University Press, 2018

Edited by four nationally recognized leaders of composition scholarship, Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity asks a fundamental question: can Composition and Rhetoric, as a discipline, continue its historical commitment to pedagogy without sacrificing equal attention to other areas, such as research and theory? In response, contributors to the volume address disagreements about what it means to be called a discipline rather than a profession or a field; elucidate tensions over the defined breadth of Composition and Rhetoric; and consider the roles of research and responsibility as Composition and Rhetoric shifts from field to discipline.

Outlining a field with a complex and unusual formation story, Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity employs several lenses for understanding disciplinarity—theory, history, labor, and pedagogy—and for teasing out the implications of disciplinarity for students, faculty, institutions, and Composition and Rhetoric itself. Collectively, the chapters speak to the intellectual and embodied history leading to this point; to questions about how disciplinarity is, and might be, understood, especially with regard to Composition and Rhetoric; to the curricular, conceptual, labor, and other sites of tension inherent in thinking about Composition and Rhetoric as a discipline; and to the implications of Composition and Rhetoric’s disciplinarity for the future.

Contributors: Linda Adler-Kassner, Elizabeth H. Boquet, Christiane Donahue, Whitney Douglas, Doug Downs, Heidi Estrem, Kristine Hansen, Doug Hesse, Sandra Jamieson, Neal Lerner, Jennifer Helene Maher, Barry Maid, Jaime Armin Mejía, Carolyn R. Miller, Kelly Myers, Gwendolynne Reid, Liane Robertson, Rochelle Rodrigo, Dawn Shepherd, Kara Taczak

[more]

front cover of Naming What We Know, Classroom Edition
Naming What We Know, Classroom Edition
Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies
Linda Adler-Kassner
Utah State University Press, 2016
Naming What We Know, Classroom Edition examines the core principles of knowledge in the discipline of writing studies, using the lens of “threshold concepts”—concepts that are critical for epistemological participation in a discipline. This edition focuses on the working definitions of thirty-seven threshold concepts that run throughout the research, teaching, assessment, and public work in writing studies. Developed from the highly regarded original edition in response to grassroots demand from teachers in writing programs around the United States and written by some of the field’s most active researchers and teachers, the classroom edition is clear and accessible for an audience of even first-year writing students.
[more]

front cover of Naming What We Know
Naming What We Know
Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies
Linda Adler-Kassner
Utah State University Press, 2015

Naming What We Know examines the core principles of knowledge in the discipline of writing studies using the lens of “threshold concepts”—concepts that are critical for epistemological participation in a discipline. The first part of the book defines and describes thirty-seven threshold concepts of the discipline in entries written by some of the field’s most active researchers and teachers, all of whom participated in a collaborative wiki discussion guided by the editors. These entries are clear and accessible, written for an audience of writing scholars, students, and colleagues in other disciplines and policy makers outside the academy. Contributors describe the conceptual background of the field and the principles that run throughout practice, whether in research, teaching, assessment, or public work around writing. Chapters in the second part of the book describe the benefits and challenges of using threshold concepts in specific sites—first-year writing programs, WAC/WID programs, writing centers, writing majors—and for professional development to present this framework in action.

Naming What We Know opens a dialogue about the concepts that writing scholars and teachers agree are critical and about why those concepts should and do matter to people outside the field.

[more]

front cover of (Re)Considering What We Know
(Re)Considering What We Know
Learning Thresholds in Writing, Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy
Linda Adler-Kassner
Utah State University Press, 2019
Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, published in 2015, contributed to a discussion about the relevance of identifying key concepts and ideas of writing studies. (Re)Considering What We Know continues that conversation while simultaneously raising questions about the ideas around threshold concepts. Contributions introduce new concepts, investigate threshold concepts as a framework, and explore their use within and beyond writing.
 
Part 1 raises questions about the ideologies of consensus that are associated with naming threshold concepts of a discipline. Contributions challenge the idea of consensus and seek to expand both the threshold concepts framework and the concepts themselves. Part 2 focuses on threshold concepts in action and practice, demonstrating the innovative ways threshold concepts and a threshold concepts framework have been used in writing courses and programs. Part 3 shows how a threshold concepts framework can help us engage in conversations beyond writing studies.
 
(Re)Considering What We Know raises new questions and offers new ideas that can help to advance the discussion and use of threshold concepts in the field of writing studies. It will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students in writing studies, especially those who have previously engaged with Naming What We Know.
 
Contributors:
Marianne Ahokas, Jonathan Alexander, Chris M. Anson, Ian G. Anson, Sarah Ben-Zvi, Jami Blaauw-Hara, Mark Blaauw-Hara, Maggie Black, Dominic Borowiak, Chris Castillo, Chen Chen, Sandra Descourtis, Norbert Elliot, Heidi Estrem, Alison Farrell, Matthew Fogarty, Joanne Baird Giordano, James Hammond, Holly Hassel, Lauren Heap, Jennifer Heinert, Doug Hesse, Jonathan Isaac, Katie Kalish, Páraic Kerrigan, Ann Meejung Kim, Kassia Krzus-Shaw, Saul Lopez, Jennifer Helane Maher, Aishah Mahmood, Aimee Mapes, Kerry Marsden, Susan Miller-Cochran, Deborah Mutnick, Rebecca Nowacek, Sarah O’Brien, Ọlá Ọládipọ̀, Peggy O’Neill, Cassandra Phillips, Mya Poe, Patricia Ratanapraphart, Jacqueline Rhodes, Samitha Senanayake, Susan E. Shadle, Dawn Shepherd, Katherine Stein, Patrick Sullivan, Brenna Swift, Carrie Strand Tebeau, Matt Thul, Nikhil Tiwari, Lisa Tremain, Lisa Velarde, Kate Vieira, Gordon Blaine West, Anne-Marie Womack, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Xiaopei Yang, Madylan Yarc
 
[more]

front cover of Writing Expertise
Writing Expertise
A Research-Based Approach to Writing and Learning Across Disciplines
Linda Adler-Kassner
University Press of Colorado, 2023

In Writing Expertise, Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle address the question, “How can instructors across disciplines best help students write well?” Drawing on research about how disciplines use writing to engage in shared ways of thinking, practicing, and demonstrating knowledge, the authors offer an approach that helps faculty across the disciplines invite students to bring new ideas and identities to their work. Throughout the book, Adler-Kassner and Wardle help instructors explore what it means to write well in their courses, fields, or disciplines and offer strategies and activities that can help them improve their assignments by infusing research-based writing activities into their courses.

Writing Expertise provides an innovative, equity- and research-based approach to writing in the disciplines that will enrich instructor and student thinking. Thoughtful discussions and well-designed activities provide the support needed to help instructors put disciplinary thinking into written form, develop systematic aways of learning about the students who write in their courses, and ultimately develop more effective, inclusive courses.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter