Teaching Academic Literacy: The Uses of Teacher-research in Developing A Writing Program

by Katherine L. Weese (Editor), Stephen L. Fox (Editor), Stuart Greene (Editor)

Overview

Teaching Academic Literacy provides a unique outlook on a first-year writing program's evolution by bringing together a group of related essays that analyze, from various angles, how theoretical concepts about writing actually operate in real students' writing. Based on the beginning writing program developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a course that asks students to consider what it means to be a literate member of a community, the essays in the collection explore how students become (and what impedes their progress in becoming) authorities in writing situations.

Key features of this volume include:
* demonstrations of how research into specific teaching problems (e.g., the problem of authority in beginning writers' work) can be conducted by examining student work through a variety of lenses such as task interpretation, collaboration, and conference, so that instructors can understand what factors influence students, and can then use what they have learned to reshape their teaching practices;
* adaptability of theory and research to develop a course that engages basic writers with challenging ideas;
* a model of how a large writing program can be administered, particularly in regards to the integration of research and curriculum development; and
* integration of literary and composition theories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135681746
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/01/1999
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	435 KB

About the Author

Katherine L. Weese, Stephen L. Fox, Stuart Greene

Table of Contents

Contents: B. Walvoord, Foreword. L. Flower, Preface. S.L. Fox, S. Greene, K.L. Weese, Introduction: The Value of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's First-Year Writing Curriculum. Part I: The Wisconsin Program.K.L. Weese, Learning From Students: An Approach to Teaching Beginning College Writers. S.L. Fox, Inviting Students to Join the Literacy Conversation: Toward a Collaborative Pedagogy for Academic Literacy. K.L. Weese, "Only Connect": Sequencing Assignments in the Beginning Writing Class. Part II: Classroom Research Studies.N. Preus, The Legacy of Schooling: Secondary School Composition and the Beginning College Writer. S. Greene, How Beginning Writing Students Interpret the Task of Writing an Academic Argument. M.C. Paretti, Intertextuality, Genre, and Beginning Writers: Mining Your Own Texts. J. French, The Dialogic Writing Conference: Negotiating and Predicting the Role of Author. S. Greene, E. Smith, Teaching Talk About Writing: Student Conflict in Acquiring a New Discourse of Authorship Through Collaborative Planning. D. Bartholomae, The Study of Error. D. Brandt, Afterword: A Nation of Authors. Appendices: Major Assignments Used in the UW-Madison Literacy Course. Prewriting Exercises and Writing Assignments to Aid Students in Composing the Formal Papers. Suggested Readings.

Editorial Reviews

"...explains in detail how to plan and implement an action-research project to improve the way we teach and learn to be literate. When we as practitioners become researchers, sharing and modeling how we learn, engaging students in thinking and learning about their thinking and learning, requiring that students make their own meaning and connections, we will all benefit."
—Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

From the Publisher