Since 2000, GMU colleague Terry Myers Zawacki and I have been conducting a study of perceptions by faculty and advanced undergraduate students of the conventions of writing in their disciplines. We have been interested both in how they identify characteristics of disciplinary writing and in how they see themselves, as writers, in relation to those characteristics. Two research traditions, the WID studies of Bazerman, Herrington, McCarthy et al and the “alternative discourses” studies of Fox, Bizzell, LeCourt et al, have provided background for our study, which has been supported in part by a grant from the Council of Writing Program Administrators. The findings of the first phase of our research were published as “Questioning Alternative Discourses: Reports from across the Disciplines” in ALT.DIS: Alternative Discourses and the Academy, eds. Christopher Schroeder, Helen Fox, and Patricia Bizzell (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook/Heinemann, 2002, pp. 80-96).
The findings have been based on interviews with published faculty from a range of fields in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural and physical sciences. In addition we have conducted a survey of students majoring in a wide array of fields and will be conducting focus groups of students in Spring 2003.
Findings thus far lend credence to a WAC orientation for FYC based less on “sample” or “model” or “representative” documents and more on an inquiry-based model that teaches students how to understand different writing environments, as well as their own interests and desires as writers and scholars. We are currently developing a book project based on this research.
What Should First-Year Composition Students Learn about Writing across the Curriculum?
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