Writing Program Administration Research Articles

Personalizing first-year writing course design and delivery: Navigating modality, shared curriculum, and contingent labor in a community of practice

This article describes five first-year writing instructors’ experiences with personalizing shared curriculum across three different course delivery formats (face-to-face, hybrid, online). The data is drawn from teaching journals that the co-authors, a non-tenure track, part-time Lecturer and a tenured Writing Program Administrator, and three Graduate Student Teaching Associates completed throughout Fall 2022. The findings illustrate both benefits and drawbacks related to shared curriculum: discussing and troubleshooting curriculum in a community of practice is highly valuable, but separating course delivery from course design is challenging. In our study, those challenges manifested as disconnects between course content and disciplinary identity, as well as personal feelings of failure. On the other hand, the need to personalize shared curriculum across multiple delivery formats proved productive, especially when instructors used asynchronous online materials as a starting point to develop hybrid and face-to-face lesson plans. Ultimately, we advocate for more conversations about how writing programs can support contingent faculty as they personalize shared curriculum through both course delivery and design, and we offer an example of a successful community of practice that revises shared curriculum in response to community members’ experiences with teaching in multiple modalities.

It Takes a Campus: Agility in the Development of Directed Self-Placement

Transitioning from a conventional placement model for first-year writing to a student self-placement (SSP) model requires many stakeholders to shift their perspectives on students, assessment, and the nature of the work of writing program administrators (WPAs). This article recounts the communicative and administrative agility involved in launching SSP while simultaneously researching its effects on student success. It also foregrounds the shifts in numerous roles--including those of instructors, students, and advisors, and even our own roles as WPA-researchers--that have been prompted by the transition to SSP. In particular, this article explores the connections between those roles and academic paternalism--an attitude that presumes to know what is best for students, that doubts students' abilities to make good placement decisions, and that treats conventional placement outcomes as the measure against which SSP should be judged. Adherence to academic paternalism and its investment in "expert" assessment of student writing ability emerges as an obstacle to realizing the full potential of SSP to support equitable placement practices.

(Re)Placing Personalis: A Study of Placement Reform and Self-Construction in Mission-Driven Contexts

Recent movements in higher education have opened many opportunities for writing program administrators to reform first-year writing placement procedures, including continued development and adaptation of Directed Self Placement (DSP) models alongside ongoing research into their potential to foster student agency and advance linguistic, racial, and social justice in the academy. Our study traces and compares the efforts of two writing program administrators to reform flawed placement processes at their two mission-driven liberal arts institutions—one, a small Lasallian university and Hispanic-serving Institution in Northern California; the other, a private research Jesuit university located in New York City. Using inter-institutional, grounded theory research, this study examines students' reflections on their placement choices to understand “substantive validity,” inquiring intentionally into ways that students self-locate with regard to their self-placement assessments and connecting to the mission-based language of personalis, what belongs to the person. Findings indicate that students use four rhetorical moves to personalize their placement: proliferating, riffing, importing, and qualifying. Specifically, the study calls into question current understandings of under-placement in DSP models, complicating DSP’s fundamentals of choice, guidance, and justice.

"Grandparents for the Next Generation"

Paul Kei Matsuda (1999) has written about the divide between U.S. composition and applied linguistics, which he attributes to an institutionalization of the division of labour between Applied Linguistics and composition in the early 1960’s. As such, when language concerns resurfaced in composition in the early-2000s, this division of labour led to a “lack of a community of knowledgeable peers who [could] ensure intellectual accountability” among compositionists (Matsuda 2013). Did this same divide occur in a Canadian context, or has the field of second language writing developed differently in Canada? The goal of this paper is to construct a history of L2 writing scholarship, reading for any collaboration with writing studies as both fields “grew up” together in Canada. To this end, the paper extends the work of Alister Cumming who narrates the evolution of L2 writing scholarship in Canada. Using data from Cumming’s “Studies of Second-Language Writing in Canada: Three Generations,” this paper reports findings from archival research that traces the publication history of key knowledge-workers (identified by Cumming) from the 80s to the 2000s. These findings tell a story about how L2 writing developed as a field in Canada and the ways it was influenced by fields like education and applied linguistics. Ultimately, these findings contribute to the broader narrative of how L2 writing has professionalized in Canadian higher education. By investigating the historic formation of L2 writing in Canada, scholars, writing instructors, and writing program administrators can draw on historic relations to create writing pedagogy that best meets the needs of an increasingly linguistically diverse writing classroom.

Using virtual design sprints to promote inclusive collaboration in composition programs

Writing researchers, teachers, and writing program administrators face significant challenges in promoting inclusive collaboration that brings together diverse perspectives without overburdening vulnerable stakeholders. This article reports on a case study in which a virtual design sprint was used to facilitate inclusive collaboration for a human-centered design project focused on redesigning a graduate teaching assistant mentoring program. The virtual design sprint was conducted over one week by a transdisciplinary team, including writing program administrators and graduate teaching assistant mentors and mentees. By providing a highly structured approach to intensive collaboration, the virtual design sprint enabled efficient integration of diverse perspectives while minimizing demands on participants. Furthermore, it helped the design team produce promising solutions aligned with their experiences and needs. Findings suggest virtual design sprints offer an effective method for inclusive collaboration that can be adapted to promote inclusivity through a wide range of writing program, writing instruction, and writing research activities. The structured collaborative process allows teams to rapidly develop empathy, ideate, prototype, and test solutions using human-centered design methods and develop solutions that are beneficial for diverse program stakeholders.

Engaging Assessment Counterstories through a Cultural Rhetorics Framework

Cultural rhetorics—as orientation, methodology, and practice—has made meaningful contributions to writing pedagogy (Brooks-Gillies et al.; Cedillo and Bratta; Baker-Bell; Cedillo et al.; Cobos et al.; Condon and Young; Powell). Despite these contributions, classroom teachers and writing program administrators can struggle to conceptualize assessment beyond bureaucratic practice and their role in assessment beyond standing in loco for the institution. To more fully realize the potential of cultural rhetorics in our classrooms and programs, the field needs assessment models that seek to uncover the counterstories of writing and meaning-making. Our work, at the intersections of queer rhetorics and writing assessment, provides a theoretical framework called Queer Validity Inquiry (QVI) that disrupts stock stories of success—a success that is always available to some at the expense of others. Through four diffractive lenses—failure, affectivity, identity, and materiality—QVI prompts us to determine what questions about student writers and their writing intrigue us, why we care about them, and whose interests are being served by those questions.

Podcasting for peace: Resettled refugee youths' self‐sponsored counter‐storytelling practices

TESOL JournalEarly View e737 CLASSROOM EXPLORATIONS Podcasting for peace: Resettled refugee youths' self-sponsored counter-storytelling practices Megan Heise, Corresponding Author Megan Heise [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0001-6546-0671 Indiana University of PennsylvaniaSearch for more papers by this authorAsifa Hassan, Asifa Hassan Youth UnMutedSearch for more papers by this author Megan Heise, Corresponding Author Megan Heise [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0001-6546-0671 Indiana University of PennsylvaniaSearch for more papers by this authorAsifa Hassan, Asifa Hassan Youth UnMutedSearch for more papers by this author First published: 15 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.737Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL REFERENCES Barabas, C. D. (2022). Implementing peer podcasting in an EFL literature course. TESOL Journal, 14(2), e686. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.686 Choi, J., & Yi, Y. (2016). Teachers' integration of multimodality into classroom practices for English language learners. TESOL Journal, 7(2), 304– 327. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.204 Halaczkiewicz, M. D. (2020). Harnessing writing in the wild: Practical applications of affinity spaces for English language instruction. TESOL Journal, 11(1), e00453. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.453 Lindenman, H., & Rosinski, P. (2020). Writing outside of class: The untapped potential of students' non-academic writing. Writing Program Administration, 44(1), 17– 44. https://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/asset_manager/get_file/555792?ver=3 Martin-Beltrán, M., Montoya-Ávila, A., & García, A. A. (2020). Becoming advocates: Positioning immigrant youth to share, connect, and apply their stories as tools for social change. TESOL Journal, 11(4), e567. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.567 Martinez, A. Y. (2020, March). Counterstory: The rhetoric and writing of critical race theory. Paper presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication of the National Council of Teachers of English, online. Montero, M. K., & Al Zouhouri, A. (2022). Fear not the trauma story: A trauma-informed perspective to supporting war-affected refugees in schools and classrooms. In L. J. Pentón Herrera (Ed.), English and students with limited or interrupted formal education: Global perspectives on teacher preparation and classroom practices (pp. 83– 100). Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86963-2_6 Pentón Herrera, L. J., & Martínez-Alba, G. (2021). Social-emotional learning in the English language classroom: Fostering growth, self-care, and independence. Alexandria, VA: TESOL Press. Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23– 44. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800103 Yi, Y., & Angay-Crowder, T. (2016). Multimodal pedagogies for teacher education in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 50, 988– 998. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44984730 Yi, Y., & Angay-Crowder, T. (2018). Self-sponsored writing. In J. I. Liontas, TESOL International Association, & M. DelliCarpini (Eds.), The TESOL encyclopedia of English language teaching (pp. 1– 6). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0521 Youth UnMuted. (2020). Now you hear us. [Podcast]. Youth UnMuted. https://www.youthunmuted.org/now-you-hear-us-podcast Zapata, G. P., & Prieto Rosas, V. (2020). Structural and contingent inequalities: The impact of COVID 19 on migrant and refugee populations in South America. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 39(S1), 16– 22. https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.13181 Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issuee737 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Two-Year College Writing Program Administration: Where Do We Go from Here?

This article traces the complexities of two-year college (TYC) writing program administration and offers suggestions for more research about TYC writing program administration and in collaboration with TYC writing program administrators.

CLA and WPA: A justice-oriented approach to writing program administration

Using critical language awareness (CLA) as a framework for writing program administration (WPA), two writing program directors reflect on the history of their program in light of changing trends in the fields of composition and TESOL. By describing how CLA has informed program policies and practices ranging from the micro to the macro, we illustrate how CLA can help writing program administrators make their commitment to linguistic justice concrete and practicable. We consider the effects of CLA on teachers and learners in terms of (1) the language we use to describe our program (a values statement and other public-facing documents), (2) the guidelines we provide for language instruction across our curriculum, (3) our approaches to placement for multilingual writers, and (4) hiring and working conditions for faculty. We conclude with some theoretical and practical questions facing CLA-inspired WPA work going forward.

Contributors

Other| January 01 2023 Contributors Pedagogy (2023) 23 (1): 209–212. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-10413537 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Contributors. Pedagogy 1 January 2023; 23 (1): 209–212. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-10413537 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search Hannah Armstrong graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Southern Indiana in 2018.Anna Barattin teaches American literature, world literature, and undergraduate writing classes at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Both her teaching and her scholarship focus on geocentrism, spatial literacy, and language variation. She worked as an editing contributor for the literary journals Studies in Literary Imagination and The Eudora Welty Review.Barclay Barrios is professor of English and the associate dean of undergraduate studies for the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. His work focuses on queer theory, writing program administration, pedagogy, and computers and composition. He is the author of the freshman composition textbooks Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers (2010), now in its fifth edition, and Intelligence (2021).Martin Bickman is professor of English and President's Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he teaches courses in pedagogy... Issue Section: Contributors You do not currently have access to this content.

Comfort, Contingency, and Writing Center Work: An Essay in Three Illusions

In this hybrid essay, I engage creatively with the illusory nature of contingent work, presenting three episodes from my personal experiences as a contingent writing program administrator (WPA) during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, I interrogate these experiences by building on past critiques of “comfortable” writing centers, applying Sara Ahmed’s work on the affectiveness of (dis)comfort in order to examine comfort and its uneasy relationship with labor. For whom is the writing center expected to labor to provide comfort? Whose comfort, and moreover whose safety, is jeopardized or made invisible in the process? In answering these questions, this essay proposes that writing center work during the pandemic offers three valuable insights into contingency: first, how contingency is a state that generates semantic shifts around its workers, such as the slippery meaning of “comfort”; second, how contingency reproduces itself aesthetically in “comfortable” writing center spaces; and finally, how writing center professionals might work to resist the exhaustive demands of contingency within writing center work.

Confronting the Ideologies of Assimilation and Neutrality in Writing Program Assessment through Antiracist Dynamic Criteria Mapping

This article contributes to conversations about antiracist writing program assessment, with particular attention to the evaluation of first-year writing samples. In an effort to confront the racist ideologies of assimilation and neutrality, I employed a modified version of dynamic criteria mapping (DCM) that involved surveying students, conducting instructor focus groups, and analyzing writing prompts. The triangulated results informed the development of an assessment tool that was used to examine 89 writing samples. The goal of this assessment was not to produce a set of standards that mirror community values but rather to describe what was happening in the writing program and then use that information to facilitate critical reflection on the ways in which classroom practices align with or depart from the programmatic goal of delivering socially just writing instruction. By sharing my own experiences, I hope to help other writing program administrators (WPAs) develop processes for enacting antiracist writing assessment in their own contexts. I also reflect on the ways my procedure did—and did not—achieve its antiracist goals.

“Wild, wild west” or program administration? Traversing politics as writing administrators

• Politics in writing program administration. • Analysis of teaching writing post-pandemic. • Stress and frustration in writing programs. • Budget impacts on writing programs. Using Douglas Hesse's (2002) work on political areas as a framework, this article analyzes the lessons learned about the nuances of shifting political junctures in writing program administration during the pandemic crisis, especially as the use of technology has altered pedagogical and political dynamics. Specifically, this article examines Hesse's (2002) four areas as the basis of introspection: the department, the institution, the profession, and the public; finally, this article concludes with digital suggestions on moving forward through this tumultuous time. Stories from technical writing and composition faculty are used as anecdotes for the lessons learned on perceptions of the additional stressors of writing administration politicking. Ultimately, the faculty stories that traversed the pandemic showed that we must take further advantage of online writing instruction (in all its various forms) and maintain the OWI Principles if we are to manage academic politicking at these various institutional levels.

Student Inclusion through Theoretical Reframing

In the wake of COVID-19, educators are reconsidering not only conventional methods but also those comparatively recent to pedagogy. However, a change in pedagogical strategy can risk being little more than reactive if its philosophical grounding is unvetted. This piece reconsiders the distributed knowledge framework and its potential for writing program administration and writing instruction. The professional communication discipline has used this framework with a frequent result: privileging expertise at the exclusion of other knowledges. This piece chronicles a writing program administrator’s pre-pandemic use of distributed knowledge, and how pandemic surprises led to a revision of the lens. The post-pandemic frame differently addresses the knowledges at play in a learning community. It works to include more students by including more of each student.

Inquiry-Based Learning in the Context of a Common Read Program Encourages Desired Learning Outcomes in First-Year Writing Courses

ABSTRACT This action research case study on a Common Read Program (CRP) includes analysis of learning management system-mediated student writing and research writing connected to a Common Read selection in First-Year Writing courses. A priori codes drawn from the literature on desired learning goals and outcomes for CRPs and Writing Program Administrators (WPA) outcomes are applied to student writing with the purpose of investigating whether or not inquiry-based learning opportunities yield desired CRP curricular outcomes. Results address the paucity of empirically-supported pedagogical approaches to CRPs and illustrate examples of how to elicit desired outcomes through a set of inquiry-based assignments. Finally, the paper shares researcher reflections on needs connected to successful integration of Common Read selections.

Some Results of Using Culture-referenced Prompts for Pre and Post-test Writing Examinations at an HBCU

Some Results of Using Culture-referenced Prompts for Pre and Post-test Writing Examinations at an HBCU Nathaniel Norment Jr. (bio) Culture is the totality of [Black] people's thought and practice by which they celebrate themselves, recreate themselves, and introduce themselves to history, and [to] humanity. —Maulana Karenga A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots. —Marcus Garvey [O]ne could argue that the kind and degree of writing ability assessed by a specific prompt may be determined by the nature of that prompt, particularly by its cognitive, linguistic, and rhetorical demands and by the nature of the social [cultural] context in which the prompt places the writer. —Karen L. Greenberg What you learn at an HBCU is you do not have to fit into somebody's limited perspective on what it means to be young, gifted, and [B]lack. —Kamala Harris HBCUs are unique sites of inquiry and poised to be at the forefront of conversations about race and writing because of our institutional contexts and the student populations with whom we work each day. —Karen Keaton Jackson, Hope Jackson, and Dawn N. Hicks Tafari [End Page 252] Introduction A recent book edited by Staci M. Perryman-Clark and Collin Lamont Craig, Black Perspectives in Writing Program Administration: From the Margins to the Center, focuses on Black students, Black faculty, Black Writing Program Administrators, and Black experiences in higher education. They present a framework that incorporates three principles that represent a Black perspective in Writing Program Administration (WPA) work: (1) African-centered pedagogical materials are placed at the center of the curriculum; (2) programmatic assessment measures are designed with Black student success in mind; and (3) successful writing programs understand that they can implement African-centered pedagogy and antiracist writing assessment practices and still support all students. Several chapters in the book point to the advantages of centering the teaching of writing to African American students from an African-centered point of view. Writing curricula must provide African American students with content that facilitates critical thinking skills and enhance their written language skills in all types of writing. Furthermore, the goal of assessing African American students should be to accurately test the stylistic devices, syntactic, knowledge, and organizational structures that may be linguistically and culturally specific for African American students. For example, in 1969, I made site visits to Clark Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, and Morehouse to review their writing curricula and learn their strategies and pedagogy for teaching writing to Black students. That same year, I was hired by Mina Shaughnessy to teach English in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) Program at The City College of New York (CCNY). Thereafter, the CCNY's SEEK English Program developed curricula that incorporated readings such as poetry from the likes of Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, and Amiri Baraka; Richard Wright's Black Boy, Zora Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God; James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain. Back then, many faculty members at PWIs did not have the experience of teaching writing to Black students. From my own experiences working at Morehouse, however, I believe that HBCUs had, and continue to have, a long-established history of improving the writing skills of Black students. Many colleges and universities have some system to assess and place their students into writing courses at the entry level. Others have instituted Direct Self Placement (DSP), which permits students to select the course they think they need to improve their writing. Placement and pre-tests measure students' readiness for writing instruction within a composition curricular sequence. Writing-placement systems are established to protect the academic level of the course, support retention into the second year, and maintain and enrich faculty conversation about writing instruction. In 2018, all first-time freshmen and transfer students [End Page 253] at Morehouse College took an English placement or pre-test examination. Based on their test results, students are placed into English 101 and English 102, a two-semester freshman composition writing sequence. Writing and analytical skills are enhanced through extensive work in expository, argumentative, and documented essays. Course activities require...

Digging In and Branching Out: Collaborative Processes of Building, Embedding, and Evolving Online Interactive Learning Modules for Library Instruction

This case study reflects on a long-term collaborative partnership between librarians and writing program administrators to plan, build, implement, and significantly revise two course-specific online learning modules. Of particular interest are contrasts between phase-delineated instructional systems design frameworks, such as ADDIE, and the often recursive, unpredictable, and messy paths of project development in practice. In describing the evolving uses of the modules within an ecosystem of programmatic library instruction, this study also demonstrates the utility of flexible, iterative, and organic approaches in evaluating, revising, and repurposing instructional design projects to meet unforeseen challenges and opportunities in an academic libraries context.

Developing Critical Readers in the Age of Literacy Acceleration

Research Article| April 01 2021 Developing Critical Readers in the Age of Literacy Acceleration Joanne Baird Giordano; Joanne Baird Giordano Joanne Baird Giordano previous collaborative work on two-year college readers and writers has been published in edited collections and in Teaching English in the Two-Year College, College Composition and Communication, Pedagogy, and College English. Their work has received the 2010 Mark Reynolds Teaching English in the Two-Year College Best Article Award and the 2017 Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Outstanding Scholarship award. Giordano teaches at Salt Lake Community College; Hassel is professor of English at North Dakota State University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Holly Hassel Holly Hassel Holly Hassel's previous collaborative work on two-year college readers and writers has been published in edited collections and in Teaching English in the Two-Year College, College Composition and Communication, Pedagogy, and College English. Their work has received the 2010 Mark Reynolds Teaching English in the Two-Year College Best Article Award and the 2017 Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Outstanding Scholarship award. Giordano teaches at Salt Lake Community College; Hassel is professor of English at North Dakota State University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2021) 21 (2): 241–258. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-8811432 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Joanne Baird Giordano, Holly Hassel; Developing Critical Readers in the Age of Literacy Acceleration. Pedagogy 1 April 2021; 21 (2): 241–258. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-8811432 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search critical reading, two-year colleges, information literacy, first-year writing Copyright © 2021 by Duke University Press2021 Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review: Landmark Essays on Writing Program Administration

Book Review: Landmark Essays on Writing Program Administration

Rereading the Reading Problem in English Studies

Book Review| October 01 2020 Rereading the Reading Problem in English Studies Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom. Edited by Sullivan, Patrick; Tinberg, Howard B.; Blau, Sheridan D.National Council of Teachers of English, 2017, 386 pages. Nick Sanders Nick Sanders Nick Sanders is a doctoral student in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University in Lansing. His research explores antiracist interventions in writing program administration and teacher training. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2020) 20 (3): 563–568. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-8544671 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Nick Sanders; Rereading the Reading Problem in English Studies. Pedagogy 1 October 2020; 20 (3): 563–568. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-8544671 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 by Duke University Press2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Review You do not currently have access to this content.