Assessing writing in cross-curricular programs: Determining the locus of activity

Writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs had their genesis in grass-roots efforts to promote attention to writing in all disciplinary areas. At first based on generic faculty-development activities with little regard to systemic and institutional concerns, WAC programs are now more often engaged in assessment and research of writing, especially to measure the effects of the program on student learning and development. Yet little scholarship in WAC has analyzed assessment efforts in light of locations and types of WAC activities. This essay first describes two axes, one representing the “space” or location of WAC activity, and the other representing levels of assessment and other research on writing. When brought together, these axes create a matrix of possible types and centers of WAC activity. A case is made for the department or academic program as a locus of activity for WAC implementation and assessment that has not been fully explored in program development.     

The battle hymn of the activist teacher: Taiwanese school teachers’ resistance to curriculum changes

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the simplistic and reductive image of Taiwanese schoolteachers, and reveals their actions of resistance during the turmoil of the recent curriculum reform controversy. Despite the fact that teachers are not usually portrayed as progressive and revolutionary agents, in the face of the disputed curriculum revision in 2014, some Taiwanese teachers came forward to oppose its implementation through demonstrations, hunger strikes, and litigation. The wider public's attention to this issue and ensuing student movement can be attributed to these teachers’ pioneering activism. By means of interviewing 12 teachers, this article explores activist teachers’ political self-efficacy, the creation of their pressure groups, and their apprehension about fighting against the authorities. The recording of this teacher-initiated social movement demonstrates ‘teachers as activists’, and hopefully will inspire educators not to limit their influence solely to the classroom.     

Student Writing in Higher Education: Contemporary confusion,traditional concerns

In this paper, we focus on the 'problem' of student writing in higher education. We set out to explore this problem from two perspectives: first, from the perspective of 'non-traditional' student-writers as they attempt to engage in academic writing and, second, from the perspective of a cultural-historical tradition of scientific rationality. A common frame of reference for these perspectives we see as a 'discourse of transparency', whereby language is treated as ideally transparent and autonomous. We illustrate how this discourse of transparency is currently enacted and historically situated. We argue that current academic practices need to be located within a broader historical and epistemological framework both in order to reach a deeper understanding about what's involved in student writing and in order to inform meaningful pedagogies.     

Examining the Impact of Explicit Language Instruction in Writers Workshop on ELL Student Writing

abstract

In the context of our work as literacy specialists, we taught teachers to use sentence frames to support ELL students’ writing. We then studied the impact of their instruction on students. Our analysis of student writing samples revealed no groupwide developmental trends so we posed deeper questions about their work using the data analysis methods learned through the action research process. We report our findings about the relationship between student writing development and language instruction. We discuss our learning as well as implications for our work supporting teacher instruction.     

Under the Umbrella: Pedagogy,knowledge production,and video from the margins of the movement

Abstract

In September 2014, students and Hong Kong citizens took to the streets demanding universal suffrage. Cell phones and video cameras in hand, amateur student filmmakers were some of the first to capture the police tear-gassing young people that brought the city to its feet. Young people were positioning themselves as storytellers and knowledge producers on the streets. How has this restructured hierarchy of knowledge production often found in university education in Hong Kong? How too has being active participants and/or passive observers of the events of the Umbrella Movement translated into a pedagogy of experience in student’s daily lives, and how has this knowledge returned to the classroom? Specifically, I am interested in ways that young women who are not Cantonese first-language speakers understand their role in the movement and the kinds of knowledge they produced. Through interviews with these diverse students, and visual data from the footage they shot during the protests, we gain a rare glimpse into the multicultural world gathered beneath the umbrella of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and how a new generation of young female filmmakers are using video to share their changing perspectives on democratic reform, education, and everyday life.     

Student voice in an age of ‘security’?

ABSTRACT

As student voice has become popularised as a school reform strategy, it has been critiqued as another instrumental strategy that schools may use to govern students’ speech, bodies and subjectivities. What necessitates further analysis is the relation between student voice and regulatory modes of governance entwined with geopolitical attention to security in and beyond disciplinary institutions. In this article, ethnographic accounts from students at a comprehensive coeducational public secondary school where student voice was adopted as a school reform strategy are read with and through a policy context concerned with security (in particular, the Australian Government’s Schools Security Programme and the Living Safe Together policy strategy), and Foucault’s problematisations of ‘security’ in lectures published in Security, Territory, Population. It is argued that student voice is entwined with contemporary security policies and practices; securing the material borders of the school is inextricable from limits placed on the discursive articulation of feeling in and beyond school gates.     

The formal report project as shared‐document collaboration: A plan for co‐authorship

The four‐phase project described here is based both on current social theories of writing and on contemporary studies of writing on the job and in the classroom. Phase one suggests methods for team organization, phase two the proposal submission, phase three the individual discussion chapter component, and phase four group components and team editing. Both teacher and student provide input for report evaluation. The author's survey of 29 formal report groups found positive attitudes toward both the formal report and collaborative writing.     

Toward Expert Thinking: How curriculum case writing prompts the development of theory-based professional knowledge in student teachers

The present paper explores what, and how, student teachers may learn about theory and practice from writing cases, and examines some pedagogical features that may contribute to these results. Drawing on data collected from our course "Principles of Learning for Teaching", including student cases from outline to final drafts and students' course reflections, we found that students' successive case drafts demonstrated a development from naïve generalizations to sophisticated, theory-based explanations of the issues at play in their cases. In particular, we suggest that students' cases demonstrated some of the moves that Berliner (1986, 1991) identified as characteristic of more "expert" thinking about teaching. We propose that reading theory in context with writing cases, that sharing cases with peer readers, that specific, theoretically grounded, and concrete feedback from instructors, and that providing multiple opportunities for revision may have been most useful in helping student teachers learn to think like a teacher.     

The role of questioning in writing tutorials: a critical approach to student-centered learning in peer tutorials in higher education

ABSTRACT

Peer tutoring in higher education aims to enhance student learning, and confidence. In writing centres, peer writing tutors use critical questioning to make the tutorial sessions student-focused and productive. The nature of questions influences the outcomes of the tutorials, yet research has not devoted sufficient time to unpacking what form this questioning takes, and the potential value for students and tutors. This paper explores the kinds of questions asked, the challenges posed to students and tutors, and implications for the learning process. Tutors’ experiences during tutorials and their reflections in written reports are used to unpack and explore questioning in tutorials. The paper highlights questioning as relevant in writing centre spaces due to its central role in shaping student learning about writing. The findings have relevance for peer tutoring in higher education generally, and indicate the importance of peer tutors learning to use questions to engage effectively with students.     

INNOVATIONS IN TEACHING COMPUTER LITERACY: A CLASSROOM RESEARCH PROJECT

In Fall 1989, the author revamped his coursse syllabus for Computer Literacy by introducing individualized learning contracts, along with journal writing and journal sharing. This self‐study summarizes the author's experiences with that new syllabus, examines student outcomes in terms of student satisfaction and student success rates, and compares these results with those obtained by the same instructor in the same course the previous year. The results suggest that students are more satisfied with the new format and that some student subgroups, especially females and blacks, were more successful.     

Balancing Institutional Demands with Effective Practice: A Lesson in Curricular and Professional Development

ABSTRACT

Online writing courses have developed in importance to meet student learning and institutional expectations; over time, a controversy about training online instructors and building sustainable programs has emerged. This article relates training demands within the University of Arizona’s Writing Program and development of an online professional & technical writing certificate. The article proposes training instructors with master courses and building a sustained program through a participatory design to create a professional and integrated environment.     

Profiles of self-perceived competencies and conceptions of academic writing in university students / Perfiles de competencias y concepciones sobre la escritura académica en estudiantes universitarios

Abstract

This study analyses Spanish undergraduates’ perceptions of their competency in academic writing, as well as their perception of the criteria that define its quality. We identified student profiles and examined their relationship with (1) certain sample characteristics, such as years of university experience, area of study and students’ gender, and (2) variables related to the process of writing, namely the students’ perception of the writing process and the importance they attribute to its characteristics. The data obtained came from the European Writing Survey (EUWRIT) which was administered to 1,044 students from nine Spanish universities. Profiles were identified by means of k-means cluster analysis. The relationship between these profiles and the variables studied was examined by means of chi-squared analyses and univariate ANOVAs. Two profiles were identified: students who are confident about their writing skills and who acknowledge the importance of writing in their field of knowledge; and students who are relatively confident about their writing ability and who consider writing to be relatively important in their subject area.     

The lessons of international education reform

This paper examines the nature of education reform in English‐speaking countries in an attempt to draw out its implications for other countries. The focus is on three main areas of reform: decentralization and local management of schools, markets and choice programs, and increased use of large‐scale student assessment. Other countries should be very cautious in borrowing these ideas about education reform for at least three reasons: these reforms embody problems of contradictory purposes; reforms with similar names actually end up looking quite different because of contextual differences; and such reforms are weakly connected to teaching and learning and hence to outcomes. A program of reform in any setting should be grounded in a clear sense of educational purpose that fits the particular social context.     

Listening to students about the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong

Abstract

This article gives voice to student activists who participated in the 2014 Hong Kong pro-democracy Occupy movement, also known as the Umbrella Movement. It provides an alternative perspective from which to view those events. We want to examine how the activism impacted students’ understanding of their involvement and identity. We argue that it is necessary to interpret the experiences and voices of the leaders of the movement in light of other Asian student movements. We start by establishing parallels with various student movements across Asia over the last century: the May Fourth student movement (1919); the Beijing student movement preceding the Tiananmen incident (1989); the Sunflower Movement of Taiwan (March 2014) and its rejection of the very notion of ‘Cross-Strait’; and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement. We argue that civil disobedience by Hong Kong students existed before the street barricades of the Umbrella Movement, and already constituted a public, in a Deweyan sense. We further argue that the Umbrella Movement brought about a deep change in the self-image of Hong Kong students, and other education stakeholders’ political culture, and that its impact was felt beyond local boundaries.     

Creative cognition in gifted adolescents

Although outcome‐based education (OBE) is currently a popular reform movement, it is difficult to describe because of its many versions. Central to all interpretations, however, is a commitment to equity and excellence in learning for all students—particularly the traditional “have nots.” Whether OBE currently achieves these goals is not so clear, and its ramifications for gifted programs may be not only an operational definition of giftedness that expands opportunities, but also potential losses for bright students who, for whatever reasons, do not meet criteria for enrichments. These ramifications should pose concerns for gifted educators.     

Teaching academic writing at Spanish universities: analysis of relevant experiences and practices / La enseñanza de la escritura académica en la universidad española. Análisis de experiencias y prácticas relevantes

Abstract

This paper reports on the various training initiatives available in some Spanish universities which aim to promote academic writing. It focuses mainly on three existing writing initiatives developed at the Ramon Llull University, the Faculty of Education of the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Deusto. These initiatives aim to meet the needs of students who would like to improve the quality of their academic writing and are addressed to students in any degree programme, including undergraduate degrees, Master’s and doctorates. Feedback on students’ written work is essential in all three programmes. In addition, student support throughout the writing process is available, as are sessions where students can enlist the guidance of a tutor.     

Mapping the territory: Research methods and approach

Abstract

This article describes the development of an intervention for Rory, a thirteen year old male student diagnosed with verbal dyspraxia. The intervention took place in a secondary classroom. The stages in which the consultant to the classroom engaged in the development and delivery of a short‐term intervention are presented. The intervention involved the use of visual cues as a scaffold to writing and the provision of immediate feedback through conferencing. The student was also encouraged to use self monitoring. The aim of the intervention was to improve writing skills, demonstrated by increased sentence length and complexity. Significant progress was made by the student during the trial of the intervention. The process used by the consultant ‐ examining the situation and developing an intervention to specifically match the need of the student, has the potential to provide a model for those engaged in the development of responsive intervention in inclusive settings.     

Deep Breaths on Paper

Abstract

Calls for more attention to social work student writing have gone largely unanswered in the literature and, it can be assumed, in the classroom. An emphasis on writing skills will help prepare students for active and effective advocacy in their practices and in policy arenas. To assure social work instructors that writing instruction, like writing, is no mysterious and impossible chore, this article introduces three key concepts of composition theory: writing to learn, writing as process, and writing as social act. To demonstrate the interrelated applications of these concepts, various uses of classroom journals are presented. Further, instructors are encouraged to require multiple drafts of papers and to provide written assignment guides. Some suggestions for useful commenting on drafts are provided.     

The dream deferred: Why multicultural education fails to close the achievement gap. A cultural historical analysis

Abstract

The authors critically examine multicultural education and its failure to address the stark differences that characterize student achievement in North America in terms of a praxis that would bring equity in learning or other developmental outcomes. Arguing that dismantling proportional group based inequality depends on the systematic reform of structures and policies currently perpetuating the correlation between children's ethnocultural and economic history and their school achievement, we draw from a cultural historical theoretical framework to outline how the multiple and complex factors influencing underachievement might be better understood and, moreover, effectively counteracted in ways that begin to reverse the rates of school failure for U.S. ethnic minority students, in particular U.S. English learners.