Polyvalent Practices and Heteropraxis as Heuristic: A Survey of Doctoral Examination Processes in Rhetoric and Composition

Abstract

While scholarship in rhetoric and composition has deliberated its disciplinary identity, we do not yet have a current account of how pluralistic approaches to curriculum at the doctoral level professionalize graduate students as teachers, researchers, and future faculty. This article describes a survey distributed to program directors in the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition in September 2020. Doctoral examinations in the field differ widely in format and function to fit local needs, a heteropraxis of graduate curriculum that this article frames as a set of heuristic questions for PhD program administrators to use.