Writing Toward a Scientific Identity: Shifting From Prescriptive to Reflective Writing in Undergraduate Biology

Otfinowski, Rafael; Silva-Opps, Marina

doi:10.2505/4/jcst15_045_02_19

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…This encouragement enables students to reconstruct what they have learned in a completely different form (Klein, 1999). Writing, which is a critical skill as well as an important tool for learning (Arnold et al, 2017), is generally presented in the form of grammar, syntax, and quotation in undergraduate programs, which strengthens the perception of students regarding writing as a prescriptive structure (Otfinowski & Silva Opps, 2015). However, writing-to-learn offers a unique structure far beyond these aspects .…”

Section: Writing-to-learn Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

I Wrote, I Was Evaluated, and I Learned an Alternative Teaching Process in Distance Education: Writing-to-Learn

Kayaalp¹,

Meral²,

Namlı³

2021

PERR

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Distance education has become an essential part of life on a global scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. This process has driven all education stakeholders, who focus on providing learning outcomes without any loss, to alternative teaching models. The aim of this study is to examine the extent of the effects of writing-to-learn activities integrated into the distance education process on learning. Conducted as an action research, this study consisted of 42 Year 4 undergraduate prospective teachers studying Social Studies Teaching. A variety of writing-to-learn activities and semi-structured interview forms were used as data collection tools. While writing-to-learn activities were evaluated with holistic rubric, the opinions of prospective teachers were analyzed by content analysis. As a result, it was concluded that writing-to-learn activities included in distance education made significant contributions to the development of students throughout the application process. The activities were found effective on learning since they involved students in the process and facilitated permanent learning. It is understood from the opinions of the prospective teachers that an enjoyable and quality learning can be achieved with such activities included in the study, even from a distance. Based on the results, it can be stated that the writing-to-learn model is an alternative learning approach that can be used in distance education.

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Section: Writing-to-learn Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

I Wrote, I Was Evaluated, and I Learned an Alternative Teaching Process in Distance Education: Writing-to-Learn

Kayaalp¹,

Meral²,

Namlı³

2021

PERR

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“…If we expand reflective writing to go beyond the person and beyond metacognition-and if we encourage a variety of applications for critical reflection-we produce deeper learning and more inclusive WI classes. Further, this expansion has the possibility to increase student engagement and sense of belonging as students feel seen for their experiences and existing knowledge (Otfinowski & Silva-Opps, 2015). This sense of belonging is both a central tenet of our university's strategic plan and a core value of our WAC program.…”

Section: A Reflection Continuum Toward a More Inclusive Wi Pedagogymentioning

confidence: 99%

WAC and Writing Centers: Finding Space to Work on Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Macauley

Childers²,

Jones³

2023

Adapting the Past to Reimagine Possible Futures: Celebrating and Critiquing WAC at 50

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The Fifteenth International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, which was postponed until August 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, provided an opportunity to celebrate 50 years of WAC. As noted in this collection's call for submissions, "The Fifteenth International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference offers a space for us to come together as a community to consider the complex and complicated histories of WAC and the potential evolutions of the field." The conference was a time to collectively reflect on the past so that we could envision WAC's future. It did bring us together, on Whova rather than in Fort Collins, Colorado, but what visions of the future did this conference imagine? How much change-as people, an organization, a discipline, a world community-have we enacted or innovated since Barbara Walvoord hosted the first WAC seminar at Central College during the 1969-1970 academic year? This is a crucial question especially as WAC seeks to sustain itself in meaningful ways that impact not only our college campuses but our communities, and higher education at large.As we (the editors) attended conference sessions-gathering in a virtual community, but never once meeting in person-and as we read through subsequent submissions to this edited collection, we began to recognize that the impact of the last few years has brought these lofty goals of the conference into question. At least, the pandemic has demonstrated how truly complex and complicated WAC work is. Al Harahap noted as much during the final plenary on envisioning the future of WAC, during which he offered this disclaimer: "What we are charged 4 4Kelly, Falconer, González, and Dahlman to talk about, the future of WAC, is a huge cross to bear" (Harahap, Navarro, & Russell, 2021). His words deserve our thoughtful attention as higher education continues to experience challenges related to student enrollment, institutional closures, budget cuts sparked by a global pandemic, and major shifts to the ways in which writing is taught across the curriculum globally. These realities create an increased exigency to amplify the field by forwarding tropes toward a better future for WAC and leading a movement that exemplifies greater access, equity, inclusion, and justice.COVID-19 initiated a massive and consequential pause and shift that reverberated around the world-not just in our individual homes and daily practices, but in our collective organizations and academic institutions. We also note that due to the pandemic's global impact, the international WAC community experienced a pause and shift in many different ways and in various educational situations. Anecdotally, WAC coordinators were called on to help think through the sudden gymnastics faculty were asked to perform: What did we know about using discussion boards to assess disciplinary content? How do we manage the writing in our classes now that we're fully virtual, or HyFlex, or hybrid? How do we accommodate or account for students without access to the internet or who don't have a space to work...

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“…Students’ self-assessed ability to communicate like a scientist—to speak with and to write to others within one’s discipline using a collectively accepted vocabulary and style—was shown to be a key indicator of future retention as a researcher within a given discipline ( Cameron et al, 2020 ). Writing-based approaches have successfully been used to foster development of scientific identity in undergraduate students in the life sciences ( Otfinowski and Silva-Opps, 2015 ). Further, engaging in the process of writing, peer review, and publishing results in not only increased self-perceptions of students’ competence, but also in the opportunity for external recognition of these students as valid practitioners of science ( Fankhauser et al, 2021 ; Mattison et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More development is needed in these areas ( McDowell et al, 2022 ), as it stands to reason that one cannot see oneself as a competent practitioner of science within a field without understanding how knowledge is created, evaluated, and disseminated in that field. Demystifying authorship and publication processes was shown to improve student learning outcomes and foster a greater sense of scientific identity among students at the secondary (high school) ( Rodriguez et al, 2022 ), undergraduate ( Otfinowski and Silva-Opps, 2015 ), and graduate ( Sletto et al, 2020 ) levels. The application of writing-based approaches that incorporate authentic authorship experiences, such as preprinting and peer review, are therefore likely to be important in developing scientific identities in undergraduate students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fostering student authorship skills in synthetic biology

Roberts,

Farny

2024

Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.

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Women and racial minorities are underrepresented in the synthetic biology community. Developing a scholarly identity by engaging in a scientific community through writing and communication is an important component for STEM retention, particularly for underrepresented individuals. Several excellent pedagogical tools have been developed to teach scientific literacy and to measure competency in reading and interpreting scientific literature. However, fewer tools exist to measure learning gains with respect to writing, or that teach the more abstract processes of peer review and scientific publishing, which are essential for developing scholarly identity and publication currency. Here we describe our approach to teaching scientific writing and publishing to undergraduate students within a synthetic biology course. Using gold standard practices in project-based learning, we created a writing project in which students became experts in a specific application area of synthetic biology with relevance to an important global problem or challenge. To measure learning gains associated with our learning outcomes, we adapted and expanded the Student Attitudes, Abilities, and Beliefs (SAAB) concept inventory to include additional questions about the process of scientific writing, authorship, and peer review. Our results suggest the project-based approach was effective in achieving the learning objectives with respect to writing and peer reviewed publication, and resulted in high student satisfaction and student self-reported learning gains. We propose that these educational practices could contribute directly to the development of scientific identity of undergraduate students as synthetic biologists, and will be useful in creating a more diverse synthetic biology research enterprise.

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Writing Toward a Scientific Identity: Shifting From Prescriptive to Reflective Writing in Undergraduate Biology

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

I Wrote, I Was Evaluated, and I Learned an Alternative Teaching Process in Distance Education: Writing-to-Learn

I Wrote, I Was Evaluated, and I Learned an Alternative Teaching Process in Distance Education: Writing-to-Learn

WAC and Writing Centers: Finding Space to Work on Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Fostering student authorship skills in synthetic biology

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