Article/Paper
Pedagogy Article for Publication
This project will be your “long piece” or “scholarly piece” for the semester, so you can think of it as equivalent (sort of) to a seminar paper that you might do in another graduate course. However, rather than having you create a school-based genre, we’ve decided to offer you the opportunity to write for publication.
Granted, many of you may be working in disciplines where your primary scholarly publications will not be related to composition pedagogy. On the other hand, you’ll be graduating from a program that includes pedagogy as a core value, so this project might give you a publication (no guarantees, of course) that you could put on your vita.
Cheryl and I have come up with two different publication venues, and everyone in both classes can choose the venue they prefer. Below you’ll see descriptions of each venue. We’re not sure how we’ll divide up the commenting/editing of these projects — it probably depends on how many people choose each option. But it may be that Cheryl and I will divide up the work across the borders of our two classrooms, rather than each sticking to her own class.
Textbook Article Background (Joyce’s Idea):
I need to start my description by saying that I am interested in making some big changes to the textbook materials we use for the composition courses here at ISU. Currently the “reader” is primarily made up of published articles about writing. What I would like to do is to change this to be more of a collection of discussions about writing by members of our own community. At Western Michigan (where I was last year), we created this kind of text for our program, and although it was an idea still in its infancy, I very much liked the spirit of collaborative learning we were beginning to create.
Both 402 classes, I know, have already begun to have pretty intense discussions about what a writing program could/should/ought to be teaching. This week’s genre studies articles are an important part of this discussion. But let me (briefly) outline my own take on the future of the composition program here at ISU. In “generalized” writing courses, I believe that the goal should be to teach students the following:
(1) specific (but very, very flexible and adaptable) strategies for approaching, analyzing, defining, producing, evaluating, and disseminating texts. This includes an understanding of genre, and how specific writing situations shape & constrain writing production, and also an understanding of how to make powerful choices within these constraints (this includes discussion of rhetorical strategies, modal choices– visual, aural, print-based, etc., and production tools).
(2) a vocabulary that allows students to discuss (across sections of the course and out into the university and world) these strategies. Such a vocabulary can help them to describe their process to others and to ask important questions about how to proceed in new writing situations.
(3) Exposure to a range of NON-SCHOOL and school-based genres, with as much specificity as possible. This does not necessarily mean “how-tos” but could include (a) explicit analysis of a genre, (b) comparison of genres, or (c) author-narratives of genre exploration. Keep in mind that the idea behind this kind of learning is NOT to become perfect in a couple of different genres, but for students to understand and incorporate processes for understanding genres (note from my bolding that I think this is an important distinction).
(4) specific skills for finding and using information from a range of sources. This includes, but is definitely not limited to, academic kinds of investigation, along with academic and non-academic ways of using and citing source material. This does include (of course) the skills necessary to search for an investigate different genres.
In my mind, an appropriate text for an introductory (or even an advanced generalized writing course) includes material that helps with these four areas, and I would like to begin thinking about how to produce a text that would do this for our program. To that end, I would like to solicit articles for inclusion in a potential textbook — one focused on these goals.
Textbook Article ‘Specifics’:
The project I’m proposing for our 402 class is to produce articles that could be useful in our own version of a reader for Introductory Composition. As I learned from working on these kinds of articles at WMU, there are some key elements to the genre:
- Articles should be short 5-7 pages.
- They should be written for an audience of students but NOT in a condescending way.
- They shouldn’t be be specific writing projects or activities, because instructors in our new program will be doing all kinds of different things (we won’t all have the same syllabus or be working on the same kinds of writing).
- They have to be theoretically informed, but also written in language that students can access.
- The goal for these articles should be to create pieces that will spark class discussion about writing in interesting ways.
We do not necessarily have to produce articles that match up with the kinds of articles we produced at WMU — as I said, ours was a work-in-progress and some of our ideas may not have been so hot. So this project is actually kind of open. Potentially, you could produce any kind of article that could be useful in an genre studies/activity theory based writing program. Here is a link to the 2009 version of our WMU textbook, which might give you some ideas about article topics:
Writing Beyond the Rules: Juxtaposition, Disruption & Multiple Genres. Clicking on the link below will download the file (it’s large — 9mb — and so may take a few minutes).
www.jwalker.funnybluething.com/FYW/engl1050_reader_2009_2nd_edition.pdf
As you browse the reader, you’ll see that we created several sections:
Genres: These are articles that are on specific genres — I like the comic one by Shana Wolstein, “Frame to Frame: a Beginner’s Guide to Comics,” but my favorite article in that section is Eileen Weidbruck’s “Making Memoir.” Articles in this section include “how-t0s,” analysis of genres, suggestions for thinking about and practicing genre, and author-accounts of genre exploration.
Rhetorical Modes, Materiality & Writing Strategies: Articles in this section include a whole bunch of stuff — general article on undestanding concepts, stuff on grammar or specific writing strategies, etc. This was kind of a catch-all category, which might not have been the best choice, as the articles in this section feel a bit haphazard to me. But as you browse through you’ll see the range of stuff you might consider writing about.
Terms & Ideas: This section includes most “big picture” articles that are designed to help students understand terms and concepts that are useful when exploring genres-in-action.
Authors interested in submitting Textbook articles should email me (reenste@gmail.com) with proposal ideas, or make an appointment to discuss the issue with me. There will be class time (both in my class and I’ll come to Cheryl’s class to) to ask questions about project ideas as well. SO I know this all seems a bit vague still, but it kind of has to be that way to give you room to come up with great ideas. I’m open to ALL KINDS of suggestions and ideas!
Looking forward to working (hopefull) with some of you!
Joyce
PraxisWiki Article Background (Cheryl’s idea)
I need to start my description by saying that the PraxisWiki was originally Joyce’s idea, as in: Joyce used to be the Praxis section editor for the online, peer-reviewed journal, Kairos, for which she created the PraxisWiki with her then-co-editor, Colleen Reilly, several years ago. It’s an important part of the journal (which, for full disclosure, I happen to be the editor of) because it’s specifically targeted to an audience of writing teachers who have interesting and useful things to say about their teaching practices but may not have the need, desire, or incentive to publish a 25-page scholarly article in some print journal or a media-rich webtext in the Praxis (non-wiki-based) section of Kairos. In other words, PraxisWiki is perfect for you! Plus, if you get published in Kairos, it will look great on your CV!
So, the thing(s) you need to know about Kairos as a publication venue is that its long title is Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. The rule of thumb I tell authors when submitting to the journal (when they’re wondering whether it’s an appropriate topic for the readership/audience of Kairos) is to make sure that your article touches on at least two out of the three disciplines in the subtitle. Articles for Kairos almost always touch on technology, since that’s what makes the journal unique, but it is possible to create an article about the teaching of rhetoric, for instance, that doesn’t directly address technology, and it still may be of interest to Kairos readers. So you have some flexibility.
There are several sections of Kairos, and each has a different aim. (To read about all of them, go to the submissions section.) And the Praxis section has two aims:
- to publish “full-length,” scholarly (and usually media-rich) webtexts in the Praxis part. Here’s an example of a recent, full-length Praxis article: Productive Mess: First-Year Composition Takes the University’s Agonism Online. This is NOT what you will be creating for this assignment. It’s just for comparison purposes.
- to publish shorter, theoretically informed, written narratives of teaching practice in the PraxisWiki part. Here’s the main table of contents for the PraxisWiki.
PraxisWiki Article Specifics
The project I’m proposing for our 402 class is to produce articles that could be useful to other teachers (outside of ISU) of writing classes. Based on my experience reading and editing these kinds of articles for Kairos, there are some key elements to the genre:
- Articles should be short: 3-5 single-spaced pages.
- They should be written for an audience of university-level writing teachers.
- They should engage specific writing projects or activities, but should engage them flexibly so that instructors in other programs (who have different syllabi or different goals for their writing classes) can see themselves within the possibilities of the assignment.
- They have to be theoretically informed, but also written in language that writing teachers who don’t read the same theory we read can access.
This project is fairly open in that the PraxisWiki section is relatively new to the journal and so you might follow some examples in the table of contents, but you might also create your own kind of article for submission. (And you don’t have to submit it; that’s not a requirement for this class, although I or Joyce may encourage you to.) You’ll notice, for instance, that many of the PraxisWiki articles present a narrative of a particular in-class activity relating to some technology and have few references, if any. I want you to expand on this genre that shows your theoretical scaffold for teaching whatever project you discuss.
Authors interested in submitting PraxisWiki articles should email me (cball@ilstu.edu) with proposal ideas, or make an appointment to discuss the issue with me. There will be class time (both in my class and I’ll come to Joyce’s class to) to ask questions about project ideas as well. I know this all seems a bit vague still, but it kind of has to be that way to give you room to come up with great ideas. Like Joyce, I’m open to ALL KINDS of suggestions and ideas!
Sincerely,
Cheryl.