Dr. Rebecca S. Nowacek [email protected] University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire March 29, 2013 Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act Three main claims • Transfer is not just a cognitive act. It is also a rhetorical act. • Genre is crucial for transfer—especially the transfer of writing-­‐related knowledge. o Students regularly draw on identifiable antecedent genres o Writers often mean very different things when they use the same terms o The example of Henry: Bricolage • If writers are agents, instructors can serve as handlers. The “transfer matrix” Successful selling Unconscious seeing successful successful transfer integration frustrated frustrated transfer integration Unsuccessful selling Meta-­‐aware seeing Dr. Rebecca S. Nowacek [email protected] University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire March 29, 2013 A brief and incomplete bibliography of recent scholarship on transfer Adler-­‐Kassner, Linda, John Majewski, and Damian Koshnick. 2012. The value of troublesome knowledge: Transfer and threshold concepts in writing and history. Composition Forum, 26: http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/troublesome-­‐knowledge-­‐threshold.php Beaufort, Anne. 1999. Writing in the real world: Making the transition from school to work. New York: Teachers College Press. Beaufort, Anne. 2007. College writing and beyond: A new framework for university writing instruction. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Bergmann, Linda S. and Janet Zepernick. 2007. Disciplinarity and transfer: Students’ perceptions of learning to write. WPA: Writing Program Administration. 31(1-­‐2): 124-­‐149. Carroll, Lee Ann. 2002. Rehearsing new roles: How college students develop as writers. Carbondale: SIUP. Driscoll, Dana Lynn and Jennifer Holcomb Marie Wells. 2012. Beyond knowledge and skills: Writing transfer and the role of student dispositions in and beyond the writing classroom. Composition Forum, 26: http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/beyond-­‐knowledge-­‐skills.php Fishman, Jenn and Mary Jo Reiff. 2008. Taking the high road: Teaching for transfer in an FYE program. Composition Forum. 18. Fishman, Jenn and Mary Jo Reiff. 2011. Taking it on the road: Transferring knowledge about rhetoric and writing across curricula and campuses. Composition Studies. 39 (2): 121-­‐144. Jarratt, Susan C., Katherine Mack, Alexandra Sartor, and Shevaun E. Watson. 2009. Pedagogical memory: Writing, mapping, and translating. WPA: Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. 33(1-­‐2): 46-­‐73. Moore, Jessie. 2012. Mapping the questions: The state of writing-­‐related transfer research. Composition Forum 26. http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/map-­‐questions-­‐transfer-­‐research.php Nelms, Gerald and Rhonda L. Dively. 2007. Perceived roadblocks to transferring knowledge from first-­‐year composition to writing-­‐intensive major courses: A pilot study. WPA:Writing Program Administration. 31(1-­‐2): 214-­‐240. Nowacek, Rebecca. 2011. Agents of integration: Understanding transfer as a rhetorical act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Perkins, David N. and Gavriel Salomon. 1988. Teaching for transfer. Educational Leadership. Sept, 22-­‐32. Perkins, David N. and Gavriel Salomon. 1989. Are cognitive skills context-­‐bound? Educational Researcher. Jan-­‐Feb, 16-­‐25. Reiff, Mary Jo and Anis Bawarshi. 2011. Tracing discursive resources: How students use prior genre knowledge to negotiate new writing contexts in first-­‐year composition. Written Communication, 28: 312-­‐337. Robertson, Liane, Kara Taczak, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. 2012. Notes toward a theory of prior knowledge and its role in college composers’ transfer of knowledge and practice. Composition Forum, 26: http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/prior-­‐knowledge-­‐transfer.php Roozen, Kevin. 2010. Tracing trajectories of practice: Repurposing in one student's developing disciplinary writing processes. Written Communication,27.3: 318-­‐354. Rounsaville, Angela, Rachel Goldberg, and Anis Bawarshi. 2008. From incomes to outcomes: FYW Students’ prior genre knowledge, meta-­‐cognition, and the question of transfer. WPA: Writing Program Administration. 32(1): 97-­‐112. Rounsaville, Angela. “Selecting genres for transfer: The role of uptake in students’ antecedent genre knowledge.” Composition Forum, 26: http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/selecting-­‐genres-­‐uptake.php Schunk, Dale H. 2004. Learning theories: An educational perspective. 4th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson / Merrill, Prentice Hall. Thaiss, Chris and Terry Myers Zawacki. 2006. Engaged writers and dynamic disciplines: Research on the academic writing life. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers. Wardle, Elizabeth. 2004. Can cross-­‐disciplinary links help us teach ‘academic discourse’ in FYC? Across the Disciplines, 2. Wardle, Elizabeth. 2007. Understanding transfer as generalization from FYC: Preliminary results of a longitudinal study. WPA Journal. 31(1-­‐2): 65-­‐85. Wardle, Elizabeth. 2009. “Mutt genres” and the goal of FYC: Can we help students write the genres of the university? College Composition and Communication. 60(4): 765-­‐789. Dr. Rebecca S. Nowacek [email protected] University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire March 29, 2013 SEQUENCING ASSIGNMENTS:
PROMOTING TRANSFER WITHIN A SINGLE COURSE
When sequencing or deciding on the order of your assignments for the semester, you
may want to ask yourself three questions.
• First, want do you want your students to learn and be able to do by the end of
the semester (that is, what are your goals)?
• Second, what strengths will your students bring?
• Third, what do you anticipate your students will find difficult in achieving your
course goals?
With that knowledge in mind, you can then order your assignments to help your
students build the skills and acquire the knowledge to meet your end-of-semester goals.
(This is, in essence, what Wiggins and McTighe call “backwards design”). Although there
are many approaches to sequencing, here are three of the most common approaches to
sequencing assignments throughout the semester.
Repeating the Same Assignment, Varying it by Topic
In this approach, students repeat the same type of assignment, varied by subject
matter. For example, if students struggle to engage in sustained “close reading”
of texts, you might ask them to compose three two-page close readings
throughout the semester, each about a different literary text. This approach to
sequencing assumes that students will benefit from multiple opportunities to
master a particular genre or skill, or that the genre—the kind of writing
assignment—has become familiar, even transparent, to students, and that
therefore the genre is one of the best ways for students to learn the content of the
course.
Moving from Simpler to More Complex Assignments
In this approach, students begin with simpler, more fundamental genres or ways
of thinking, then move to more difficult assignments. Over the course of a
semester you might build up to a six-page critical review of several sources by
having students complete the following series of assignments: a one-page
summary of one source; a two-page summary and critique of a single source; a
four-page review of two sources (with revision); a six-page review of four
sources (with revision). This approach to sequencing assumes that students will
be better equipped to write longer papers or undertake more cognitively
challenging tasks if they first have the opportunity to build their skills and their
confidence.
Dr. Rebecca S. Nowacek [email protected] University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire March 29, 2013 Breaking a Complex Assignment into Smaller Parts
In this approach, you choose to make a challenging, complex assignment one of
the central activities of your course. You then break that complex assignment
into a series of smaller assignments that all contribute to that final project. For
example, a research paper might be broken down into the following stages: Topic
Area Statement; Library Assignment; Paper Prospectus; First Version of Paper
for Peer Review; Peer Review Comments; Second Version of Paper; Peer Review
Comments; Conferences, Paper Outlines; Final Version of Paper. This approach
to sequencing assumes students’ writing and learning will improve if students
have time to concentrate on and master various stages in the process of writing
the paper.
These three approaches to sequencing are not mutually exclusive; in fact, the third
approach often incorporates elements of the first two.
Although each approach has its benefits and no one sequence is superior, we can
generalize and say that assignment sequences—no matter what sequencing approach
you take—are most effective when you explain your sequence and the purpose of your
sequence to your students. Common sense tells us that students will be better able (and
perhaps even more willing) to meet our expectations if they understand not only the
requirements for individual papers but the purposes of those assignments as well.
One way to share with students the “big picture” of your assignment sequence is to talk
with them when you distribute a new paper assignment about how the new paper
relates to the last paper. For example, you might recap the skills or concepts or
knowledge that students focused on in their last paper and explain how those skills
might be used or those ideas might be complicated in the next paper. You might also
explain how working on this paper will help students meet your overall goals for them
in the course. You can also make such connections explicit on the assignment sheet itself
and when responding to drafts. In this way, your sequence of papers becomes not just
one assignment after another, but part of the process of learning to think and write in
ways valued in your discipline.
**This is a revision of a handout I initially developed (in collaboration with Brad Hughes) for the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-­‐Madison** Dr. Rebecca S. Nowacek [email protected] University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire March 29, 2013 Putting It Together:
Designing Your Own Sequence
(1) As you design your course (Blugold Seminar, bundled course, etc.), what
knowledge or skills would you like your students to have acquired (or
mastered!) by the end of the semester?
ü
ü
What does that suggest about the type of writing you should assign? Are there
particular genres that students should be familiar with? Are there particular
“antecedent genres” you think they may be likely to default to?
(2) What strengths will students bring?
(3) What do you anticipate that students will find difficult?
Dr. Rebecca S. Nowacek [email protected] University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire March 29, 2013 (4) What assignments or activities can you engage them in to help them achieve the
goals you articulated in #1?
•
What might it look like if students repeat a particular kind of assignment
several times?
•
What might it look like if students start with simpler assignments and move
to more complex ones?
•
What might it look like if students write a larger paper in stages?
Dr. Rebecca S. Nowacek [email protected] University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire March 29, 2013 TEACHING FOR TRANSFER:
WORKING INDIVDUALLY AND PROGRAMMATICALLY
A few beginning assumptions:
ü “Low-road” transfer happens automatically, often unconsciously:
students draw on well-developed knowledge and the new context has
much in common with prior contexts. “High-road” transfer is a more
conscious process of making connections between significantly different
contexts, sometimes by repurposing strategies and knowledge. For
purposes of this activity, we are focused on how to scaffold high-road
transfer—or what I might call acts of “successful integration.”
ü Instructors can work either as “agents” (making connections for and
explaining connections to students) or “handlers” (designing activities
that will encourage and support students in the messy process of making
those connections for themselves). For purposes of this activity, we are
focused on instructors in the capacity as handlers.
Two questions for discussion:
(1) What types of activities might an instructor-as-handler design to help students
see and sell connections between previous (or concurrent) coursework and your
course?
(2) What types of activities might an instructor-as-handler design to help students
see and sell connections between your course and their future courses?