Assignments across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing

6. Implications for Teachers, Tutors, and WAC Practitioners

DOI: 10.7330/9780874219401.c006 6 i m P l i cAt i o n s f o r t e Ac h e r s , t u to r s , A n D wAc P r Ac t i t i o n e r s This book has aimed to begin to address Chris Anson’s call for more large­scale research into writing across the curricu­ lum: research focused on “larger scale measures of belief and practice” (24) that will explore such questions as, “What does it mean to write in a particular academic discipline? How do the criteria for good writing differ among diverse disciplines? What sorts of instructional beliefs about writing do scholars in different academic disciplines hold?” (1988, 3). Other than a handful of researchers in the 1980s who conducted surveys or collected undergraduate assignments from faculty at a single institution or a small group of institutions (Bridgeman and Carlson 1984; Eblen 1983; Harris and Hult 1985; Horowitz 1986; Rose 1983), large­scale research into college writing that could serve as a complement to naturalistic studies has been lacking in the field of composition studies. Ethnographic, lon­ gitudinal studies—such as Marilyn Sternglass’s (1997) Time to Know Them, Herrington and Curtis’s (2000) Persons in Process, Lee Ann Caroll’s (2002) Rehearsing New Roles, Anne Beaufort’s (2007) College Writing and Beyond, and the studies conducted by Sommers and Saltz (2004) at Harvard and Fishman et al. (2005) at Stanford—are able to focus on the why and how behind the questions Anson raises, using information from classroom observation and interviews to find out why instructors assign certain genres of writing and how students interpret and respond to instructors’ assignments. It’s important to acknowl­ edge that large­scale research like mine can only focus on the 102 DAN mELzER what of college writing: what writing is assigned, and what these writing assignments can tell us about the rhetorical situations, genres, and discourse communities of college writing. Despite this inherent limit, my study aims to provide breadth to go with the depth found in naturalistic research: a panoramic shot of college writing in the United States, as represented by 100 institutions, 400 courses across disciplines, and 2,101 writ­ ing assignments. Gathering assignments from course websites allowed me, as a single researcher, to emulate the breadth of James Britton and his team’s research in their seminal study of 2,122 pieces of student writing from 65 British secondary schools, reported in The Development of Writing Abilities (Britton et al. 1975, 11–18). None of the courses in this research were fully online, but most of them provided rich data in the form of writing assignment descriptions and ancillary material, such as grading rubrics, learning outcomes, writing guides, etc. This book has addressed a number of research questions regarding writing across disciplines: • What purposes are students asked to write for in different disciplines? • What audiences are students asked to address? What role are they asked to play as writers? What role do instructors play as audience? • What genres are students asked to write in? How do these genres vary from discipline to discipline and instructor to instructor? What is the rhetorical context for these genres? • How do academic discourse communities differ? Is there a generalized definition of academic discourse that crosses disciplines? • How do assignments vary across types of institutions, between upper and lower division courses, and between courses asso­ ciated with a WAC program or initiative and those not con­ nected to WAC? This chapter summarizes the answers to these research ques­ tions. In addition to reviewing the major findings of the study, I discuss the implications of these findings for composition instructors, writing center tutors, and WAC theorists and prac­ titioners. These findings will also be of interest to high school Implications for Teachers, Tutors, and WAC Practitioners 103 writing teachers hoping to provide students a bridge to college writing, and college faculty and administrators who are cur­ rently involved in—or interested in starting—a WAC initiative at their institution. sUmmary o F th e m aj o r Fi n D i n g s There were some definite and significant patterns across the 2,101writing assignments in this research, patterns that some­ times supported prior research, sometimes worked against prior research, and sometimes revealed new information about writing across the college curriculum. I review these findings...