Article 1:
Title: Inquiry Paradigms and Writing
Author: Janet Emig
Publishing info: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 33, No 1 (Feb,. 1982) pp.64-75
Definitions of "TRANSFER"
High
Low
Surface level
Deep level
Forward-reaching
Backward-reaching
Theories:
"Socio-Cultural Theory"
"Activity Theory (CHAT)"
"Rhetorical Genre Theory"
"Vygotsky on Thought & Language"
"Learning Theories" - "Inquiries into writing, into composition, probably need to be informed by
at least four kinds of theories: 1. a theory of meaning; 2. if this is different, a theory of language,
3. a theory of learning, 4. a theory of research. Preferably, all of these should be consonant or
congenial. For meaning, every inquirer must commit herself to some response to the questions,
where does meaning reside? in the text? in the context? in the reader? or in the transaction
among the three? It is usefully, too, to know explicitly one's own learning theory? How do
learners learn? by trial and error? by error-less experiences? from parts to whole? from wholes
to part? by an elaborate orchestration of both? by tight syllabi and drill on discrete features
of discourse? by loose experiments with many modes in a self-selected ordering?" p.71
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
"Schemata"
"Socio-Cognitive" "Constructivist Theory" - A governing gaze: a steady way of perceiving actuality
 Our gaze is governed by our expectations, which are governed by our experiences and what we
make of them (our hypotheses)
 Everyone is one of three kinds:
o 1) positivistic, 2) phenomenological, 3) transactional/contructivist
o Positivistic: “conventional” empirical research – experiments or “pure research”
 Only cares about phenomenon, not context
 One-to-on correspondence can exist between a phenomenon and an
interpretation of it – one valid interpretations
o Phenomenological: focus on phenomenon also includes focus on the field
 To describe how the world is experienced means also describing the nature of
that world for the perceiver
 Believes many equally valid descriptions are true
 Case studies and ethnography (outline of p.65-69)
Research Findings
Implications for Teaching
"Threshold Concepts"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Pedagogy"
Implications for Students
"Lack of transfer"
"Impediments of transfer"
"Negative transfer"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Disposition"
"Threshold Concepts"
"Habits of Mind"
Writing
"Writing to Learn" - Students may learn and transfer knowledge using inquiry paradigms: "An
inquiry paradigm is an explanatory matrix for any systematic investigation of phenomena"p. 64...
"There is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between a given academic discipline and
a given inquiry paradigm. Within a single academic field or discipline, there can be several, even
many, inquiry paradigms active and working, as there can be several, even many, academic
disciplines deploying a single inquiry paradigm"p. 64... "To qualify as an inquiry paradigm, an
endeavor must be informed by 1. a governing gaze; 2. an acknowledged, or at least conscious,
set of assumptions; 3. a coherent theory or theories; 4. an allegiance to an explicit or at least a
tacit intellectual tradition; and 5. an adequate methodology including an indigenous loci
and consonant with all of the above." p.65
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
Genre
Article 2:
Title: Describing 16 Habits of Mind
Author: Arthur L. Costa & Bena Kallick
Definitions of "TRANSFER"
High
Low
Surface level
Deep level
Forward-reaching - Those with a creating, imagining and innovating habit of mind regularly use
foward-reaching transfer in which they project themselves into the future and endeavor to utilize a
learned concept in a future context: "Creative human beings try to conceive problem solutions
differently, examining alternative possibilities from many angles. They tend to project themselves
into different roles using analogies, starting with a vision and working backward, imagining they
are the objects being considered" p. 9
Backward-reaching
Theories:
"Socio-Cultural Theory" - This article focuses on "16 attributes of what human beings do when
they behave intelligently. We choose to refer to them as Habits of Mind. They are the
characteristics of what intelligent people do when they are confronted with problems, the
resolution to which are not immediately apparent. These behaviors are seldom performed in
isolation. Rather, clusters of such behaviors are drawn forth and employed in various
situations." p 2
Those with a "Thinking Interdependently habit of mind "realize that all of us together are more
powerful, intellectually and/or physically, than any one individual. Probably the foremost disposition in the
post industrial society is the heightened ability to think in concert with others; to find ourselves
increasingly more interdependent and sensitive to the needs of others. Problem solving has become so
complex that no one person can go it alone. No one has access to all the data needed to make critical
decisions; no one person can consider as many alternatives as several people can." p. 11
"Activity Theory (CHAT)"
"Rhetorical Genre Theory"
"Vygotsky on Thought & Language"
"Learning Theories" - Supporting students in developing the 16 Habits of Mind will help them
develop the disposition needed for learning to take place: "The goal of education therefore,
should be to support others and ourselves in liberating, developing and habituating these Habits
of Mind more fully. Taken together, they are a force directing us toward increasingly authentic,
congruent, ethical behavior, the touchstones of integrity. They are the tools of disciplined choice
making. They are the primary vehicles in the lifelong journey toward integration. They are the
“right stuff” that makes human beings efficacious." p. 12
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
"Schemata"
"Socio-Cognitive"
"Constructivist Theory" - "Intelligent human beings learn from experience. When confronted
with a new and perplexing problem they will often draw forth experience from their past. They can
often be heard to say, "This reminds me of...." or "This is just like the time when I..." They explain
what they are doing now in terms of analogies with or references to previous experiences. They
call upon their store of knowledge and experience as sources of data to support, theories to
explain, or processes to solve each new challenge. Furthermore, they are able to abstract
meaning from one experience, carry it forth, and apply it in a new and novel situation." p. 7
Research Findings
Implications for Teaching
"Threshold Concepts"
"Metacognitive Awareness" - "The major components of metacognition are developing a plan
of action, maintaining that plan in mind over a period of time, then reflecting back on and
evaluating the plan upon its completion. Planning a strategy before embarking on a course of
action assists us in keeping track of the steps in the sequence of planned behavior at the
conscious awareness level for the duration of the activity. It facilitates making temporal and
comparative judgments, assessing the readiness for more or different activities, and monitoring
our interpretations, perceptions, decisions and behaviors. An example of this would be what
superior teachers do daily: developing a teaching strategy for a lesson, keeping that strategy in
mind throughout the instruction, then reflecting back upon the strategy to evaluate its
effectiveness in producing the desired student outcomes." p.5
"Pedagogy"
Implications for Students
"Lack of transfer" - Some students approach a problems "as if they never heard of it before,
even though they had the same type of problem just recently. It is as if each experience is
encapsulated and has no relationship to what has come before or what comes afterward. Their
thinking is what psychologists refer to as an "episodic grasp of reality" (Feuerstein 1980). That is,
each event in life is a separate and discrete event with no connections to what may have come
before or with no relation to what follows. Furthermore, their learning is so encapsulated that they
seem unable to draw forth from one event and apply it in another context." p. 7
"Impediments of transfer"
"Negative transfer"
"Metacognitive Awareness" - "Intelligent people plan for, reflect on, and evaluate the quality of
their own thinking skills and strategies. Metacognition means becoming increasingly aware of
one's actions and the effect of those actions on others and on the environment; forming internal
questions as one searches for information and meaning, developing mental maps or plans of
action, mentally rehearsing prior to performance, monitoring those plans as they are employed-being conscious of the need for midcourse correction if the plan is not meeting expectations,
reflecting on the plan upon completion of the implementation for the purpose of self-evaluation,
and editing mental pictures for improved performance." p.5
"Disposition" - "Flexible people can approach a problem from a new angle using a novel
approach {deBono (1970) refers to this as lateral thinking.} They consider alternative points of
view or deal with several sources of information simultaneously. Their minds are open to change
based on additional information and data or reasoning, which contradicts their beliefs. Flexible
people know that they have and can develop options and alternatives to consider." p.4
"Threshold Concepts"
"Habits of Mind" - "A "Habit of Mind” means having a disposition toward behaving intelligently
when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known" p.1
"Employing "Habits of Mind" requires a composite of many skills, attitudes cues, past experiences
and proclivities. It means that we value one pattern of thinking over another and therefore it
implies choice making about which pattern should be employed at this time. It includes sensitivity
to the contextual cues in a situation which signal this as an appropriate time and circumstance in
which the employment of this pattern would be useful. It requires a level of skillfulness to employ
and carry through the behaviors effectively over time. It suggests that as a result of each
experience in which these behaviors were employed, the effects of their use are reflected upon,
evaluated, modified and carried forth to future applications" p.1
16 Habits of Mind: 1. Persisting; 2. Managing Impusivity; 3. Listening to Others - With
Understanding and Empathy; 4. Thinking Flexibly; 5. Thinking about our Thinking
(Metacognition); 6. Striving for Accuracy and Precision 7. Questioning and Posing Problems; 8.
Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations";9 . Thinking and Communicating with Clarity and
Precision; 10. Gathering Data Through all Senses; 11. Creating, Imagining and Innovating; 12.
Responding with Wonderment and Awe; 13. Taking Responsible Risks; 14. Finding Humor; 15.
Thinking Interdependently; 16. Learning Continuously
Writing
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
Genre
Article 3:
Title: The Idea of Expertise: An Exploration of Cognitive and Social Dimension of Writing
Author: Michael Carter
Publishing info: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 41, No 3 (October 1990) pp.265-286
Definitions of "TRANSFER"
High - "The "high road" to transfer entails the teaching of abstract principles that govern
performance in a particular context. This kind of transfer demands that the learner
decontextualize the principles for application in a different context, which for most learners
requires prompting" p. 271
Low - "The "low road" to transfer requires that the learner practice a skill in a variety of similar
contexts to the point of near automaticity. Then, when faced with a similar but otherwise
unfamiliar context, many learners will respond by generalizing from previous experience to
the new experience" p. 270-271
Surface level
Deep level
Forward-reaching
Backward-reaching
Theories:
"Socio-Cultural Theory"
"Activity Theory (CHAT)"
"Rhetorical Genre Theory"
"Vygotsky on Thought & Language"
"Learning Theories"
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
"Schemata"
"Socio-Cognitive" - Cognitive rhetoric "proposes a concept of composition that stresses general
knowledge" p. 265; " cognitive theories of composition should stress relatively general knowledge,
defining expertise in writing as the ability to bring to a writing task certain rich, well developed,
general strategies that guide the process and increase the chances for success" p. 266
Social rhetoric is "based on social theories of knowledge, suggests a concept that stresses local
knowledge" p. 265; "local refers to the claim that knowledge is constituted by a community and
that writing is a function of a discourse community. Among social theorists, then, the preferred
research methodology is ethnography because it allows the researcher to focus on writing within
a particular community and to make claims primarily about that community. Social theorists define
an expert writer as one who has attained the local knowledge that enables her to write as a
member of a discourse community." p. 266
Carter proposes a pluralistic theory: "neither the general nor the local perspective alone provides
a complete picture of the complexity of writing. And indeed, recent calls for unifying elements of
cognitive and social rhetorics suggest that some composition theorists recognize the limitations of
each. But the problem is how to build a unity without sacrificing the integrity and value of both
rhetorics." p. 266
"Constructivist Theory"
Research Findings
"This research showed that mastery at chess was less a function of any general strategies or
abilities than it was a function of specific knowledge of the game achieved only after many years
of experience. Similar studies of expertise in other areas-such as physics, mathematics,
computer programming, and medicine-strengthened this conclusion: expertise is founded on local
knowledge; experts are successful in their fields because they bring to their performance domainspecific knowledge attained through much experience within that domain. As expert-novice
research undercut the assumption that expertise is determined by general knowledge, so other
research undercut the other assumptions of generalism. Work in artificial intelligence
demonstrated that general heuristics were much less effective when applied to problems in
specific domains than "expert systems," programs that relied on domain-specific "knowledge."
And further research on transfer of knowledge offered largely negative results: the mastery of
knowledge in one domain has little significant effect on performance in another domain (Brooks
and Dansereau 131-34; Mayer 344-45; Perkins and Salomon 18-19). All of this pointed to an
overwhelming case for the value of local knowledge in expertise." p. 269
Implications for Teaching
"Threshold Concepts"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Pedagogy" - "research shows that transfer of learning, the ability to generalize from
performance in one specific context to performance in another context, is possible but only under
special conditions, "such as cuing, practicing, generating abstract rules, socially developing
explanations and principles, conjuring up analogies . . . " (Perkins and Salomon 22). Such
conditions may not be typical of everyday life or the laboratory, but they are appropriate to the
classroom." p. 270
"One teaching goal, then, is to aid our students in the acquisition of general knowledge about
writing. The other goal is to help our students to acquire appropriate local knowledge, to become
a part of a writing community as defined by certain domain-specific knowledge. Writers who
possess this local expertise can work fluently in a domain without having to rely on general
strategies. In an academic setting, these domains have been established by departments and
specializations within departments. From the perspective of the goal of local expertise, growth in
writing means that writing becomes increasingly domain-specific over the four years of an
undergraduate career as students become members of the community of knowledge within their
academic majors. Because of the constraints of the academic environment, this task requires a
somewhat flexible idea of local expertise. It is doubtful that students could attain the local
knowledge that would enable them, as undergraduates, to enter as experts the scholarly or
professional conversation of their chosen fields. In the case of scholarship, that is what graduate
schools are for; in the professions, this requires on-the-job experience or further professional
training. However, students can build enough local knowledge to become proficient in writing as
advanced undergraduates in their fields. One of our goals as teachers of composition is to help
them acquire the local knowledge that will enable them to perform as effectively as possible in
their academic major and will lead them to increased local knowledge in their fields after they
graduate." p. 281
"The continuum suggests that people learn to write by moving from knowledge that is relatively
general to knowledge that is relatively local, which indicates that one way to conceive of a series
of composition classes is as a movement from general to local knowledge. This movement could
be accomplished by structuring a series of writing classes according to the level of generality of
the kinds of writing done from class to class. For example, earlier writing classes could focus on a
wide variety of writing-as diverse as a job application, a personal essay, a letter to the editor, an
essay exam-in order to encourage students to learn strategies that are beneficial for many kinds
of writing. In each writing task the students would be entering a particular domain of discourse,
and in each task instruction would proceed according to the guidelines offered by cognitive
apprenticeship, first by providing a "scaffolding" so that students could begin working in each
domain by focusing on both the knowledge peculiar to that domain and the general strategies that
carry over from other domains, and then by encouraging individual and collaborative work so that
students could have the opportunity for reflecting on and articulating what they learned. In a later
writing class the focus of teaching could become more local by concentrating on writing just in the
academic setting, using the same approach as before but treating the variety of academic and
professional writing. Still later classes could become increasingly local, shifting attention to a
particular field of writing-such as business and management, arts, technologies, social sciences,
humanities-and perhaps even later to a specific kind of writing-such as industrial management,
literary criticism, and physics. As instruction becomes more local, there is less emphasis on
formal scaffolding techniques and more emphasis on providing students opportunities for writing
experience and on helping students to understand the relationship between writing and the
academic or professional culture. And, of course, such opportunities will come in writing classes
and in classes within the disciplines. After graduation, students will continue to learn about a
writing domain by accumulating enough experience so that they will be able to write fluently in
that domain. But the instruction and experience that they have obtained in college will enable
them to apply effective general strategies outside their particular domains and to acquire the local
knowledge of other domains." p. 284
Implications for Students
"Lack of transfer"
"Impediments of transfer"
"Negative transfer"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Disposition"
"Threshold Concepts" - "Perkins and Salomon suggests that general knowledge is indeed
necessary for a full theory of expertise. First, it has been shown that experts turn to relatively
general strategies when they are faced with unusual problems in their field, problems that "do not
yield to the most straightforward approaches." This does not mean that these general strategies
act as a substitute for local knowledge. "On the contrary, the general heuristics operate in a
highly contextualized way, accessing, {sicl and wielding sophisticated domain knowledge" (20).
Second, there is also evidence that general strategies are valuable for learning. When students
are taught such strategies in a way that emphasizes both their contextual use and their control
through self-monitoring procedures, the students exhibit a dramatic improvement in their
performance within a particular context (Perkins and Salomon 20-21). This evidence suggests
that there are strategies of intermediate generality that, when learned and applied within a broad
knowledge domain, can affect performance in that domain (Perkins and Salomon 17). In addition,
general-process stategies are useful in helping learners to acquire local knowledge. Novices,
because they are new to a knowledge domain, must rely on certain global strategies to act on
whatever limited knowledge they possess about the domain. But these general strategies allow
the novice to gain more and more specific knowledge of, and thus greater effectiveness in, the
domain." p. 270
"Thus, the value of general knowledge may be summed up this way: it provides novices some
guidance in performing in unfamiliar domains; it provides the means for accumulating local
knowledge within a domain; it provides strategies for performing in related domains; and it
provides general strategies for solving atypical problems in a specific domain" p.271.
"Habits of Mind"
Writing
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
Genre
Article 4:
Title:Teaching Critical Genre Awareness
Author: Amy Devitt
Definitions of "TRANSFER"
High
Low
Surface level
Deep level
Forward-reaching
Backward-reaching
Theories:
"Socio-Cultural Theory"
"Activity Theory (CHAT)"
"Rhetorical Genre Theory" - "Genres are social and rhetorical actions: they develop their
languages and forms out of rhetorical aims and contexts shared by groups of users. • The spread
of a genre creates shared aims and social structures. • As new users acquire genres, that
process reinforces existing aims and structures. • Existing genres reinforce institutional and
cultural norms and ideologies. • To change genres, individually or historically, is to change shared
aims, structures, and norms." p. 342
This understanding of genre lead to the following points: "If genres are rhetorical actions, then
learners can gain rhetorical understanding by gaining access to the language and forms of
genres. • If genres are social actions, then accessing genre forms can give learners insight into
and agency within groups’ aims and structures. • If genres reinforce existing structures and
ideologies, then gaining consciousness of genres can help learners reduce the reinforcement and
propagation of existing norms and ideologies. • If changing genres changes existing norms and
ideologies, then learners who change genres can change a group’s aims, structures, and
norms." p. 343
"Vygotsky on Thought & Language"
"Learning Theories"
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
"Schemata"
"Socio-Cognitive"
"Constructivist Theory"
Research Findings
"What I intend to achieve through these experiences is to start the process of enlightening
students about genres. As they move from familiar to unfamiliar, back to familiar contexts and on
to less familiar contexts, they have the chance to discover how contexts shape genres. As they
move from analyzing to writing within to critiquing to writing with changes, they have the chance
to discover how genres shape them and how they might shape genres. The results can be writers
with expanded genre repertoires, including more potential antecedent genres, and writers with
expanded genre awareness, including heightened sensitivity when they encounter new genres in
the future. Like all curricula, of course, this one slips in practice as it encounters real students with
real intentions and reactions. It works for some better than others. I have not done the research
required to claim effectiveness for this curriculum." p. 349
Implications for Teaching
"Threshold Concepts"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Pedagogy" - "Genre teaching can also be enlightening and freeing, if genres are taught as part
of a larger critical awareness. I argue in this chapter for a genre pedagogy that recognizes the
limitations of explicit genre teaching and exploits the ideological nature of genre to enable
students’ critical understanding. Genres will impact students as they read, write, and move about
their worlds. Teaching critical genre awareness will help students perceive that impact and make
deliberate generic choices.".... "I suggest that critical genre awareness, rather than multiple
genres of engagement, can help students maintain a critical stance and their own agency in the
face of disciplinary discourses, academic writing, and other realms of literacy. I see critical genre
awareness as a means to problem posing for students, not just as a way to encompass other
genres, even potential genres of engagement. The genre awareness I argue for is a type of
rhetorical awareness, and others have posited that rhetorical awareness can lead to critical
awareness and to more deliberate action." p.337
"To teach a particular genre is to teach that genre’s context. On the good side, that means we
teach genres as rhetorical, with conventions that have rhetorical purpose and that can be used to
achieve rhetorical aims in rhetorical situations. The result is a much richer teaching of writing than
teaching, say, the arhetorical forms of a five-paragraph theme. Rather than teaching a three-part
thesis, where to place that thesis, or how to add a transition at the beginning of each paragraph,
for example, teachers can teach even the five-paragraph theme as rhetorically situated, with
purposes of demonstrating understanding of a subject, audiences who value direct statements
and logical connections, and an ethos that gains credibility through reasoning and distance."p.338
"We all must teach using genres, in the texts we have students read and in the assignments we
have students write. Whether we use genres consciously in the classroom or not, the genres we
assign promote particular worldviews just as the topics we have them read about do. The first and
most important genre pedagogy, then, is the teacher’s genre awareness: the teacher being
conscious of the genre decisions he or she makes and what those decisions will teach
students." p, 339
"All three pedagogical uses of genre theory— explicitly teaching particular genres, teaching
antecedent genres, and teaching critical genre awareness—can work together to develop a
theoretically sound genre pedagogy that can contribute to our writing assignments or structure
our writing courses." p.342
Implications for Students
"Lack of transfer"
"Impediments of transfer" - "Each of these pedagogical responses has potential pitfalls. For a
start, as discussed in the previous section, Freedman and others have questioned whether
learners could in fact gain full access to the languages and forms of genres. If even experienced
users can never fully articulate generic traits, how can teachers help students learn more than a
small portion of the languages and forms of a genre? Genre pedagogies need to continue to
explain why less than full articulation is sufficient to their aims of giving access to particular
genres. The second response, moving from seeing generic form to understanding generic
purpose within social contexts, requires cognitive abilities that may be beyond children until a
certain level of development has been reached. Genre curricula at different levels, of course, will
necessarily address the cognitive abilities at Devitt 344 those levels. The third response requires
other cognitive abilities, and some quite reasonably question whether such consciousness is at all
possible. Can teachers, much less learners, step outside their own ideological frames to see
those within which genres exist? Even if they can, that step outside must be maintained in order
to resist the existing ideologies. Finally, genres can be quite resistant to change, as institutions
and cultures can resist change. The ability of individuals to subvert an existing genre even
temporarily, in a single text, depends on others understanding and accepting that change so that
communication has not broken down. Even if individuals manage change in an individual text,
that change may have little impact on existing structures and norms if others do not take it up." p.
343- 344
"Negative transfer"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Disposition"
"Threshold Concepts"
"Habits of Mind"
Writing
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
Genre - Genre knowledge ultimately requires one to be in the context that the genre will be used
in: "Removed from the contexts in which people acquire new genres—that is, learning analysis
papers in writing classes rather than in history or philosophy classes or, to use Freedman’s
examples, learning business genres in technical writing courses rather than in actual
workplaces—the removed genres that are learned seem too easily reduced from the rhetorical to
the formulaic." p.340
Article 5:
Title: Knowing Where You Are:Genre
Author: Bazerman
Publishing info: A Rhetoric of Literate Action
Definitions of "TRANSFER"
High
Low
Surface level
Deep level
Forward-reaching
Backward-reaching
Theories:
"Socio-Cultural Theory"
"Activity Theory (CHAT)" - "Activity systems are historically emerged networks of people and
artifacts (such as buildings, machines, and products, as well as texts and files) that carry out
typified kinds of work and other activities over extended periods, and that have developed ways
of coordinating the work and attention of participants in ways that become familiar to all
participants. That is, to operate successfully within each you have to become aware of their
historically emerged way of doing what they do, and to coordinate your actions with those roles,
procedures, regulations, and formats that direct activity within each" p. 25
"When you are writing or reading a text, it helps to know where that text fits in which activity
system. Such knowledge helps you identify the likely reader or writer, the typical motives and
actions at play, the constraints and resources, the stances and expectations." p. 27
"Rhetorical Genre Theory" - Rhetorical Genre Studies scholars examine genre as typified social
action, as ways of acting based on recurrent social situations; Bazerman defines genre as
a "psycho-social recognition category" p.35
Bazerman explores the history of rhetorical genres: "Because the letter contains so many
markers of its sociality, allowing the reader mentally to locate him or herself in the social
interaction, it early on became one of the primary genres of writing. Starting with the explicit
sociality of letters, many other written genres were able to find shape and meaning, until they
became recognizable and recognized as distinctive forms—such as business reports, scientific
journals, newspapers and magazines, and even financial instruments such as letters of credit,
checks, and paper currency. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first rhetoric of writing
concerned the writing of letters, the medieval ars dictaminis (Murphy, 1985). As a genre, or an
increasingly distinctive set of genres, the letter asserts its place in the social world and helps
formulate the sociality for many written documents (Bazerman, 1999b.) Other early genres of
writing relied on familiarity with well-known faceto-face oral performances, the memories of which
were evoked by the written text. Special occasions, such as famous speeches, and everyday
social events, such as the telling of tales, found their way onto the page, to be recreated by the
reader. New texts could then be written drawing on the social understanding that accompanied
such texts, both to prepare or script oral performance and to become new sorts of socio-literacy
events, to be enacted during reading.... Other uses for writing developed as part of wellstructured activities, such as economic, legal, or governmental transactions. These provided
strong contexts for the interpretation of texts and gave rise to regularized repetitive situations
calling for similar utterances, producing familiar, recognizable genres that evoked relevant
aspects of the entire activity system.... During the European Renaissance printing and increased
commerce created greater opportunities for sharing texts with more people across greater social
and geographical boundaries. New forms of social, political, cultural, and economic organization
proliferated and many new genres arose, speaking to particular needs and audiences, as well as
creating markets for their own circulation. These genres were parts of the proliferation of the
activities, relationships, and states of consciousness of modernity that the genres themselves in
part made possible and brought into being. Now citizens of all nations live in highly complicated
literate worlds of many genres located within many activity and institutional systems that are
national and global in scope—which is why ever higher levels of education are required to
participate effectively in the institutions and practices of the contemporary world. As we
experience the literate world, we come to recognize, almost as second nature, large numbers of
genres and the situations that they carry with them." p. 20-22
In short, "Genres are ways of doing things—and as such embody what is to be done and carry
traces of the time and place in which such things are done, as well as the motives and actions
carried out in those locales." Therefore, genre usage is a social activity. p. 24
"Each genre is embedded in a system of activity that we recognize and locate ourselves in, but
each time we engage with a genre as writer or reader is also a particular moment in our lives, the
lives of the respondents we meet over the text, and activity the systems we meet within. In this
way the genre is attached to things that are both more extensive and more specific than we may
understand the textual form in itself to be. Further, as we locate ourselves in the genred
transaction that resides within the larger system, creating the space for a local moment, we are
able to enter into the scene imaginatively, flexibly, creatively, and spontaneously, embodying
ourselves in that imagined socially-recognizable space." p. 25
"Vygotsky on Thought & Language"
"Learning Theories"
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
"Schemata"
"Socio-Cognitive"
"Constructivist Theory"
Research Findings
Implications for Teaching
"Threshold Concepts"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Pedagogy"
Implications for Students
"Lack of transfer"
"Impediments of transfer" - The receiver can at times impede transfer from occurring: "we
cannot always get our desired readers to read what we have written, nor with the desired level of
attention, nor with the spirit and attitude we hope for. They may not want to come into the room
we create, or at least through the door we hoped, and they may not remain long enough to
understand in detail what we want to show them. On the other hand, they may stay around too
long, poking into corners and under rugs we don’t care to have them looking into." p. 35-36
"Negative transfer"
"Metacognitive Awareness"
"Disposition"
"Threshold Concepts"
"Habits of Mind"
Writing
"Writing to Learn" - "the documents we write add particular meanings, representations, and
actions to carry the activities along. Through filling virtual spaces of interaction by our written
genres we create meanings that influence others. Our texts become social facts in their worlds,
creating acts out of language. Rhetoric is the art of understanding how that creation of meaning
works, so we a can make meanings that work better for human action." p.41
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
Genre - Bazerman focusing on how a reader will be affected by genre usage. When we receive
a text of some sort, we immediately begin classifying it: "we start to form expectations of what it
will contain, the kind of people it is from, what kind of relationship the writer has to us, what kind
of stance the writer will take, how the parts should be arranged, where we should look for specific
material, and most importantly why we would or would not be interested in it and what we would
do with it. In short, we start to frame personal meaningfulness for our personal purposes and
interactions. We also form expectations and hypotheses about the document based on when and
where it comes to us and our knowledge about the senders and our relationship to us. ... Large
areas of our social knowledge are activated to work in tandem with what we find in the text to help
us identify what the text is about and what kind of attention we might give it. Thus we enter into a
mental conception of a social space for interaction within which we start to build relevant
meanings, evaluations, and stances. In recognizing the genre, we locate an orientation toward
the text and the details we will find inscribed within it." p. 29
Bazerman notes that a writer may use public forms of genre, private forms, and even create
variants that may be entirely idiosyncratic or esoteric depending on the activity system and
context: "There is no limit to the number of genres, nor can we say the term refers to document
types of any generality, size, or level of public recognizability. The process of genre recognition
occurs any time any person at any level of awareness makes some differentiation or
particularization of texts on the basis of kind. Of course, it would be foolish in writing a document
to a wide audience to rely on all the readers being familiar with an esoteric or personally
idiosyncratic genre. On the other hand, if personal knowledge of that genre helps you frame a
solution to a rhetorical problem that can be understood or interpreted in a more general way, then
that unusual genre knowledge has served you well." p. 31
"Through experience we learn about types of utterances that occur within certain types of
circumstances, so that we become attuned to recognize them. Through experience we learn
much about how those utterances go, how we might understand them, what makes them
succeed and fail, and what their consequences might be. ...This detailed strategic knowledge can
be at any level of the rhetorical and linguistic realization—from what typeface looks authoritative
and what phrases provide a sense of spontaneous authenticity, to what kind of details establish
the depth of knowledge of the applicant. We not only know the genre, we know what we can say
through the genre, and how the genre can be made to work. Even more with experience working
with the genre we become familiar with the variation of situations in which it can be used and the
ways the genre can serve to transform or evolve any particular situation. If we know something
about the organizations our friend is seeking work at, we can modify the letter to fit the particular
hiring processes of the company, the corporate culture, their current needs, and what they look
for in job candidates; we can particularize the presentation to fit the situation." p.32
Article 6:
Title: Activating the Uptake of Prior Knowledge
Through Metacognitive Awareness: An Exploratory Study of Writing Transfer
in Documentation and Source Use in Professional Writing Courses
Author: Josephine Walwema & Dana Lynn Driscoll
Definitions of "TRANSFER"
High
Low
Surface level
Deep level - "Research in the transfer of learning suggests that transfer is a complex process
involving prior knowledge (Robertson, Taczak, & Yancey, 2012); student dispositions (Driscoll &
Wells, 2012); students’ interaction and understanding of genre (Reiff & Bawarshi, 2011);
metacognition (Gorzelsky et. al., 2015); and many other features (Haskell, 2001)." p.22
Forward-reaching
Backward-reaching - "Roberston, Taczak and Yancey (2012) described three principles that can
be used to understand how students engage with prior knowledge: 1) “drawing on” upon prior
knowledge and using it in nearly identical ways to previous experience; 2) “reworking” prior
knowledge as they encounter new challenges and 3) “creating new knowledge and practices”
when they fail to address a new task successfully." p.22
Theories:
"Socio-Cultural Theory"
"Activity Theory (CHAT)"
"Rhetorical Genre Theory"
"Vygotsky on Thought & Language" - "...building on what [students] already know (a form of
scaffolding conceptualized by Vygotsky (1978)." p.40
"Learning Theories"
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum"
"Schemata"
"Socio-Cognitive"
"Constructivist Theory"
Research Findings
"Our goal in this study was to explore whether the pedagogical techniques intended to activate
students’ prior knowledge about documentation and build upon that knowledge (described below)
would produce a measurable result in students’ written performance and in their reflective
writing." p.25... "We found no statistically significant difference between students’ written
performance in the control classroom with our treatment classrooms" p.32... "Although we did not
see significant differences in students’ written performance, we did see differences approaching
statistical significance in comparing features of students’ reflective writing in the control and
treatment groups...Qualitatively, we found students in the treatment group engaged in more depth
and discussion of their prior knowledge." p.33... "Out of 34 reflections, 23 students described their
prior knowledge of documentation, indicating it was relevant to the present task. ..They
demonstrate metacognitive awareness of self and of one’s strategies for integrating prior
knowledge." p.34
"This study has reaffirmed that we must introduce concepts of technical and scientific
communication incrementally. Starting with documentation gives students opportunities to
process the new information by building on what they already know (a form of scaffolding
conceptualized by Vygotsky (1978). But it also asks us to envision broadly the activation of prior
knowledge, the role of metacognition, and their relationship to written performance." p.40
Implications for Teaching
"Threshold Concepts"
"Metacognitive Awareness" - Teachers must solicit prior knowledge to activate
metacognitive awareness - "Prior knowledge comes from a variety of different sources such as
other college courses, primary and secondary education, workplace experiences, internships,
personal writing, and writing in the community" p.22,23
"Pedagogy" - "Developing a literacy of documentation and citation of sources can enable our
students see the role of social construction in articulating knowledge in a professional setting.
Further, the practice serves a social function of building ethos as a disciplinary insider. This kind
of literacy is especially pertinent when students practice technical writing in the workplace" p.25
Implications for Students
"Lack of transfer" - "The specific status of writing instruction and writing in the disciplines
support for faculty at our university where there is no formal WAC/WID program may also be one
of the reasons for the written performance results. Writing instruction is mandated by the general
education curriculum but is not supported in any sustained manner. One of the co-authors is
engaged in a longitudinal study of writing at OU; her preliminary findings suggest students in most
majors receive little to no instruction in writing and little opportunity to write after leaving FYW,
especially in the sophomore year (Driscoll, in preparation). The first opportunity to write after FYW
often surfaces in junior level or senior level writing intensive courses (such as the one in this
study). This means that students in our study likely left FYW, engaged in little to no writing and
then, one to two years later, came into their business writing course. The challenge of transferring
and adapting knowledge broadly must be one that is done across many courses and contexts,
not in limited and isolated ways." p. 39
"Impediments of transfer" - Transfer will most likely be inhibited if a student is a boundary
guarder: "a boundary guarder, or students who draw upon genre knowledge wholesale,
regardless of the new rhetorical situation."p.23
"Negative transfer"
"Metacognitive Awareness" - "In order for transfer to occur, learners need to (1) recognize
similarity between two contexts— a monumental task; (2) identify what knowledge or skills have
worked in the past that may be applied to a new opportunistic context; (3) exercise judgment on
the applicability of said context using metacognitive awareness; and (4) adapt and apply the
concept to the new context as necessary (Bergmann & Zepernick, 2007; Perkins & Salomon,
2012; Haskell, 2001)." p.22
"Metacognition shows up often in students’ reflective practice, although the depth and specificity
of such metacognitive practices vary widely (Gorzelsky, et. al., 2015). ... Prior knowledge and
metacognitive awareness about documentation, then, seem critical for successful writing transfer
into professional writing courses." p. 23
"Disposition" -Transfer is most likely to occur if students have the following disposition: "boundary
crosser, or students who question high school genre knowledge and “break this knowledge down
into useful strategies and repurpose it” (p. 314);" p.23
"Threshold Concepts"
"Habits of Mind"
Writing
"Writing to Learn"
"Writing Across the Curriculum" - "Because they were specifically prompted in the reflection,
nearly all students in the study reported they would use material from the assignment in future
contexts. Students in both conditions recognized the role of prior knowledge in the current task
and reflected on not just the content learned from this assignment but also the skills acquired to
write and design documents like reports and memos. They also indicated these professional
ways of writing constitute their past and future writing activities. They saw in writing a means to
encode meanings... Students were also able to articulate the general strategies they might use
for future tasks...This realization, we think, has led this student to adjust his or her writing
approach. It also positions such a student to activate the situational knowledge needed to
address a future task. These particular reflections revealed that students would likely apply this
knowledge in future writing tasks both within and beyond the academy." p. 37-38
Genre - "...Knowledge about documentation strategies and use of sources are, in effect, a subset
of genre knowledge..." p.22 "Documentation and source use are one of the more challenging
aspects of learning to write for students of all levels" p.23 "Developing a literacy of documentation
and citation of sources can enable our students see the role of social construction in articulating
knowledge in a professional setting. Further, the practice serves a social function of building
ethos as a disciplinary insider. This kind of literacy is especially pertinent when students practice
technical writing in the workplace" p.25