"Tales of Neglect and Sadism": Disciplinarity and the Figuring of the Graduate Student in Composition

Taylor, Marcy; Holberg, Jennifer L.

doi:10.2307/358483

Cited by 12 publications

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“…2. We have argued here and elsewhere (Taylor and Holberg 1999;Holberg and Taylor 2006) for more emphasis on teaching as a required element in graduate education; this seminar on teaching literature is exactly the kind of course that all PhD programs in English should offer to complement coursework and practical training in teaching composition. In addition to the texts used in the UIUC course, described in their essay in this issue, see also Schilb 2001 andShowalter 2001.…”

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confidence: 96%

Editors' Introduction: To What End?

Holberg¹,

Taylor

2008

Pedagogy

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In this issue, you will have the opportunity to read an unusual piece in our Reviews section. Written by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Pedagogy Collective, it is a coauthored, multivoiced text that rehearses descriptions of a set of key terms taken from the authors' reading of professional writings on teaching. 1 The collective was formed during a required course for graduate students seeking to teach a literature course in the English department. As they describe it, "The major goal for this course was to introduce students to the critical debates in literature pedagogy." As such, students were asked to synthesize their learning through writing a critical book review and a teaching philosophy with an annotated bibliography. Using excerpts from the students' teaching philosophies, the review essay in this issue was organized to expose and elaborate those "critical debates in literature pedagogy." Reading this essay from the UIUC Pedagogy Collective reminds us of how difficult it is to construct a philosophy of teaching. While on the job market, most of us have to write something like a teaching philosophy or create an introduction to a teaching portfolio. At the very least, we are asked in interviews such questions as, "Explain your approach to teaching the introductory survey." How do we construct such overarching philosophy statements without sounding naive, overly idealistic, or abstract? If we embrace an antifoundationalist pedagogical stance (and even if we don't), how do we employ the stance we take? When we turn to theorists (say, to Paolo Freire or Gerald Graff, two whom the collective mentions), do we really believe (that is, enact) the principles they espouse?

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confidence: 96%

Editors' Introduction: To What End?

Holberg¹,

Taylor

2008

Pedagogy

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“…As decades of scholarship on graduate assistant preparation makes clear, the introductory seminar in rhetoric, composition and writing studies (RC&WS) is often a contested space (Dobrin, 2005;Grouling, 2015;Pemberton, 1993;Pytlik & Liggett, 2002;Reid et al, 2012;Taylor & Holberg, 1999). Such seminars ensure that new teachers of college-level writing have sufficient knowledge of the histories and theories that inform the discipline, but many graduate students in English have never themselves taken introductory writing-let alone a course on writing theory-and some begrudge having to take coursework that is not strictly connected to their scholarly concentrations in literary studies, creative writing, or other subdisciplines in English.…”

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confidence: 99%

Breaking into Print

Kinney

2022

Prompt

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This assignment aims to help nascent scholars break into print and develop scholarly connections between their own areas of interest and the subfield of rhetoric, composition, and writing studies (RC&WS). Drawing on advice from Ballif et al. (2008), students in my graduate seminar write a publication quality book review of a recently published monograph in RC&WS. After a series of priming activities, students engage in a structured peer review that follows guidelines I developed as book review editor at Composition Studies.

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“…In addition, GTA self-efficacy, which involves "beliefs in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments" [10], has also been the subject of research [11][12]. Additional research has been done in training GTAs to teach writing in composition courses [13][14][15] and exploring the special needs of Chinese GTAs teaching composition to native English-speaking students [16]. Rodrigue [17] traced the evolution of training GTAs to teach writing in the disciplines via established Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs, beginning in the 1970s when WAC administrators saw an opportunity to counter faculty resistance to disciplinary writing initiatives by recruiting GTAs to teach writing recitation sessions connected to faculty-taught lecture courses [18].…”

Section: Evolution Of Gtas and Writing In Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extending WID to Train Mechanical Engineering GTAs to Evaluate Student Writing

Barr¹

2016 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Beyond first-year composition, the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum provides few opportunities for students to develop technical writing skills. One underutilized path for students to strengthen those skills is the required sequence of laboratory courses, where students write reports that are evaluated by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), many of whom speak English as a second language. Historically, engineering GTAs have not been trained in formative assessment techniques to help students improve their technical writing skills. This paper details a comprehensive study of a GTA training program implemented in a large mechanical engineering department. Situated within the field of Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines, the program was developed to meet the unique needs of the department's GTAs and address perceived deficiencies in undergraduate student writing by teaching best practices in writing evaluation. Two methods were used to assess the efficacy of this program: 1) Qualitative methods such as interviews and an open-ended survey were used to gain the perspective of the GTAs and their students on a variety of issues; and 2) A summative assessment compared Senior Capstone Design final reports completed prior to the program's implementation to reports completed three years later to gauge improvement in clarity and concision. This research is relevant to engineering programs seeking to improve the communication skills of their undergraduate students. The program used limited staff/faculty resources to extend the knowledge and skills of its GTAs and reach all its undergraduate students through existing required courses.

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"Tales of Neglect and Sadism": Disciplinarity and the Figuring of the Graduate Student in Composition

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Editors' Introduction: To What End?

Editors' Introduction: To What End?

Breaking into Print

Extending WID to Train Mechanical Engineering GTAs to Evaluate Student Writing

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