Linda Adler-Kassner

Elizabeth Wardle

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.

Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies

Naming What We Know

Steve Parks

THE BEST OF THE INDEPENDENT RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION JOURNALS 2010 represents the result of a nationwide conversation—beginning with journal editors, but expanding to teachers, scholars and workers across the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition—to select essays that showcase the innovative and transformative work now being published in the field’s independent journals. Representing both print and digital journals in the field, the essays featured here explore issues ranging from classroom practice to writing in global and digital contexts, from writing workshops to community activism. Together, the essays provide readers with a rich understanding of the present and future direction of the field.

The Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals 2010

Robert Crooks

Ann Watters

This volume is part of a series of 18 monographs on service learning and the academic disciplines. These essays highlight some of the benefits and problems of service-learning in the college composition curriculum and present further areas for study. Following the Introduction, "Service-Learning and Composition at the Crossroads," by Linda Adler-Kassner, Robert Crooks, and Ann Watters, and an Introduction, "Service-Learning: Help for Higher Education in a New Millennium?" by Lillian Bridwell-Bowles, the essays are: "Writing across the Curriculum and Community Service Learning: Correspondences, Cautions, and Futures" (Tom Deans); "Community Service Writing: Problems, Challenges, Questions" (Nora Bacon); "Community Service and Critical Teaching" (Bruce Herzberg); "Rhetoric Made Real: Civic Discourse and Writing beyond the Curriculum" (Paul Heilker); "Democratic Conversations: Civic Literacy and Service-Learning in the American Grains" (David D. Cooper and Laura Julier); "Partners in Inquiry: A Logic for Community Outreach" (Linda Flower); "Service-Learning: Bridging the Gap between the Real World and the Composition Classroom" (Wade Dorman and Susann Fox Dorman); "Systems Thinking, Symbiosis, and Service: The Road to Authority for Basic Writers" (Rosemary L. Arca); "Combining the Classroom and the Community: Service-Learning in Composition at Arizona State University" (Gay W. Brack and Leanna R. Hall); "The Write for Your Life Project: Learning To Serve by Serving To Learn" (Patricia Lambert Stock and Janet Swenson); and "On Reflection: The Role of Logs and Journals in Service-Learning Courses" (Chris M. Anson). Appended are a 39-item annotated bibliography and a list of program descriptions by institution. (All papers contain references.) (SM)

Concepts and Models for Service-learning in Composition

Writing the Community

Susanmarie Harrington

This is an empirical study of basic writing in the contemporary academy from the perspective of students as two urban institutions, and from basic writing courses and programs from a variety of colleges and universities. The authors examine perceptions of in-school writing and how basic writing programs have been created and maintained b drawing on basic writing syllabi and program information from a variety of colleges and universities. They look at ways the institution of basic writing an make better pedagogical and political use of students' entering perceptions of their courses, and students' past experiences.

Public Conversations about Writing and Literacies

Basic Writing as a Political Act

Bob Broad

Barry Alford

Jane Detweiler

Heidi Estrem

Maureen McBride

Eric Stalions

Scott Weeden

Educators strive to create “assessment cultures” in which they integrate evaluation into teaching and learning and match assessment methods with best instructional practice. But how do teachers and administrators discover and negotiate the values that underlie their evaluations? Bob Broad’s 2003 volume, What We Really Value, introduced dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) as a method for eliciting locally-informed, context-sensitive criteria for writing assessments. The impact of DCM on assessment practice is beginning to emerge as more and more writing departments and programs adopt, adapt, or experiment with DCM approaches. For the authors of Organic Writing Assessment, the DCM experience provided not only an authentic assessment of their own programs, but a nuanced language through which they can converse in the always vexing, potentially divisive realm of assessment theory and practice. Of equal interest are the adaptations these writers invented for Broad’s original process, to make DCM even more responsive to local needs and exigencies. Organic Writing Assessment represents an important step in the evolution of writing assessment in higher education. This volume documents the second generation of an assessment model that is regarded as scrupulously consistent with current theory; it shows DCM’s flexibility, and presents an informed discussion of its limits and its potentials.

Dynamic Criteria Mapping in Action

Organic Writing Assessment

Linda Adler-Kassner

About

Books

Join the club