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Articles Conference Reviews |
2008C24KistlerDepartmental WID in International Perspective: Changing Realities for Writing Across the Curriculum In this session, David Russell, Michael Carter, and Paul Anderson presented three different models for working in tandem with college and university departments to develop substantial and sustainable WID programs. Unlike programs that tend to evolve from or develop in response to top-down or bottom-up approaches, Russell recognized the departmental approaches to WID in all of the panel’s presentations as a shift from the two dominant configurations in U.S. programs (working primarily with individual faculty members or with central administration). Further, Russell recommended the departmental model as one that holds the potential to help WAC and WID programs in this country achieve clearer connections to curriculum and a wider sphere of faculty participation and commitment. Carter’s presentation focused on the departmental WID program developed at his home institution, North Carolina State University. The NC State writing faculty, recognizing their departmental model as a ground-breaking one, established five principles to use as a guide during the implementation process: 1) a departmental WID program should be driven by the disciplinary values of the departmental faculty; 2) the program should be faculty owned; 3) disciplinary faculty’s writing expertise should form a WID program’s foundation and writing should be fully integrated into the departments’ curricula; 4) departmental faculty should be held accountable for the writing they teach; and 5) disciplinary faculty should be provided with the needed support to manage writing effectively in a way that encourages learning. Carter stressed that adopting the departmental WID model significantly altered the role of the writing faculty in the delivery of writing instruction at his institution but in no way eliminated the need for writing faculty expertise. Writing specialists at NC State adopted the role of program facilitators, working with departmental faculty to recognize and explicitly outline their values, the essential ways of knowing that flow from those values and that define each particular discipline, and the ways of writing that embody those ways of knowing. The writing specialists also encouraged departments to re-conceive the role of writing as integral to the work of their disciplines rather than something that occurs outside of this work, and to recognize the role writing can play in evaluating the level of learning that has been reached and in providing evidence of that learning. Next, Anderson summarized the preliminary results from research he and his colleagues have been conducting based on data from the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement. This data suggests that while students may not feel all of the writing they do in college is always connected to learning, they do see a direct connection when the writing assignments are clearly designed to facilitate the accomplishing of specific intellectual tasks. Anderson pointed out that the kinds of writing assignments designed to help students complete these specific tasks are most naturally developed in departmental WID programs because these assignment are the ones that engage students in the ways of knowing that define the departments. Anderson then highlighted efforts being made at two very different institutions to engender greater departmental involvement in WID program elements: Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and his own Miami University of Ohio. Although these schools are vastly different in many significant ways, Anderson demonstrated that writing faculty at both institutions are working within their programmatic structures to identify opportunities for developing more department-based WID operations. For example, both institutions are taking the initiative to offer services to departmental faculty and working patiently and systematically with those who are ready to take advantage of what they have to offer. The significant contrast between the structures of the two schools illustrated Anderson’s contention that it is not only desirable but also possible to begin moving toward a departmental WID model no matter what configuration the WID program currently embodies. Russell’s presentation followed and described the WID program at Queen Mary University in London, a highly-ranked major comprehensive research university in the UK at which he worked as a WID consultant for one semester in 2006. Since students in the UK are not enrolled in a university generally but rather in a department specifically, there is no general education program at the university. With no general writing courses and no freshman composition, the significance of the WID program is magnified. Queen Mary’s WID program, named Thinking Writing, is housed in but functions separately from the writing center. The director and her assistants work primarily to form partnerships with departments in order to develop individualized courses, pedagogies and assessments that mesh with departmental requirements and philosophies. At Queen Mary, some departments have separate writing courses that are either introductions to writing in that field or are remedial courses for students who are lacking what are seen as the basic skills for producing the disciplinary types of writing. Other departments offer semi-integrated models in which students produce writing in courses taught by regular departmental faculty, but the writing assignments are seen as add-ons to the “real” work of the discipline. Finally, there are departments in which writing is fully acknowledged as integral to learning the work of the field and is entirely integrated into regular content courses. Russell’s detailed overview supplied yet another example that supported the contention that the departmental WID approach offers unique advantages that traditional top-down and bottom-up programs simply cannot provide. Taken together, the presentations by Carter, Anderson, and Russell presented a comprehensive and compelling case for adopting the departmental approach as a WID management philosophy. Despite the extensive investment of time and effort this model requires of writing specialists, the panelists made it clear that many schools are finding working with departments results in the development of more substantial and enriching writing assignments for students and greater advancement toward meeting the promise embodied in Writing-In-the-Disciplines philosophy. |