From this chapter, I gathered that it’s important to consider linguistic justice as hooks notes that “recent discussions of diversity and multiculturalism tend to downplay or ignore the question of language” (hooks, 1994, p. 173). 

My positive response to this piece is that I was able to connect the Thich Nhat Hanh quote included in Inoue’s “Antiracist Writing Assessment Technologies” that reads: “sit close to the one you love, hold his or her hand, and ask, ‘do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer? Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly’ (80). Imagine this kind of assessment practice in your classrooms with your students. Assessment might be a problem-posing process that continually attends to questions such as: Do I understand you enough? Am I making you suffer? Please help me to read your languaging properly” (Inoue, 2019, p. 363).

Thinking of the application of hooks' claims about language, I feel labor-based grading contracts help to promote linguistic justice. Connecting hooks to Asao Inoue's work, it becomes apparent how labor-based grading can be a way to alleviate the pain we place on students in using/teaching standard English and encouraging it in our classes by using Inoue’s labor-based grading resources, one of the other suggested readings for this task.

One critique I had related to reading Teaching to Transgress was that the whole book was suggested as a reading, which is around 200 more pages than I currently have time to read :(

I use Vygotsky’s constructivism in a class by recognizing the ZPD and, as the MKO, providing support (scaffolding activities) to move them through the ZPD. In a BTW course, it’s essential to allow students the chance to be the MKO and help peers move through the ZPD and respect the nature of collaborative work. Especially in the online learning course where learners are non-traditional adult students and have been working professionals.  

Orey, Michael. (2010). Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology. 

The Global Text Project. EDP 540 Learning Theories and Instructional Strategies. Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://textbookequity.org/Textbooks/Orey_Emergin_Perspectives_Learning.pdf

One critique I have about this reading is that its explanation of integration and integrative interdisciplinary thinking was a bit confusing to me, particularly with references to partial and full interdisciplinarity on pages 23 and 24. However, the Topic 2 video helps with my understanding of integration.

One application to my teaching approach is to acknowledge how BTW is interdisciplinary and how this type of learning is integrated into the curriculum for learners who come from STEM and other fields that aren’t English.

2) Labor log template (version 13) 

I'm familiar with the wording of Inoue's grading contracts, but I'd never actually seen one of his labor logs, so I was interested to see what it included (type of work, location, engagement, mood, time, etc.). I've read critiques of this specific practice before and how though it honors student labor, it can be a little too much and might need to be modified to work well, especially for students who might already feel overwhelmed (Kryger & Zimmerman, 2020).

As for the first reading ("Stories"), I was interested to hear more about Inoue's anecdotal experience relating to contract grading as I've begun to implement it more seriously in my FYC classes this semester. This piece does a good job of illustrating how "White habits of language" sustain inequitable ecologies of assessment. Additionally, what I will carry forward from this reading into my own practice is some advice that Inoue includes from Peter Elbow, which is to actually like your students' writing. I'll include one series of bullet points that Inoue quotes from Elbow at length: 

Inoue explains that in order to build students' confidence with writing and languaging, they have to like themselves and their writing, which is very difficult if they aren't encouraged. 

There is a lot packed into this reading, but the number one takeaway for me right now is that students deserve to have their language valued as it is. Yes, we can teach students skills and we can help students practice evaluating their own writing, but the first thing that we should do is to encourage our students without needing them to sound like us. 

Positive: This document is organized very effectively, with cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral learning objectives according to UNESCO's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each goal also includes suggested corresponding topics and examples of learning approaches and methods. Additionally, the final section provides further suggestions and guiding principles for implementation of the SDGs with examples from different countries. 

Critique: I feel like I've never heard of these before and I'm not sure why.

Application: I feel these objectives would be very helpful for imagining project-based learning approaches in the context of ENGL 307 or 308 and maybe beyond.

I believe I can apply this information into a better understanding of the students and toward the creation of a course that approaches BTW and technical writing in ways that students from any discipline will find useful.

The rubric discussion and examples tie in with what the Language Awareness CLC has focused on this year. In my view, the rubrics could be revised, and careful attention paid to word choice and how students might interpret them, especially if the students are international students. Words like “unobtrusive,” “awkwardly,” and “weaves” may make it difficult for students to fully understand what is expected and how they ae being assessed. That being said, I appreciate that the concluding paragraph acknowledges some issues with the rubrics and rubrics in general. I continually revise my rubrics and work to make them clear to students.

Reading this article gives me confidence that I am offering feedback in appropriate ways and that varying methods of feedback and reflecting and revising often are important for not only my growth as a teacher but students’ success.

Although hooks does not state this explicitly, I can see one obvious need for body acknowledgement in teaching: the denial of the body perpetuates ableist thinking, or the notion that bodies can be a non-factor for every person. I appreciate that in coming to terms with the body, accepting it, and inviting passion into pedagogy, the teacher becomes more than a disembodied brain: the awakened spirit is whole, and thus wholehearted, to paraphrase hooks. Hooks offers another metaphor for the way in which body is described: that the human is an animal, compelled to body forth, just as a bird is compelled to migrate, for example. Hooks alludes to complaints about past behavior—favoritism, mostly, and gruff behavior toward a student to whom she was attracted. I don’t have the reverence for hooks (and I have known too many narcissistic activist types) to not pause at this flawed, and troubling behavior— there was a lot going on here to be sure, which she does not fully interrogate, and upon which I will not speculate? Still, I appreciate the Thomas Merton quote, that the “fruit of education is in the activation of that utmost center” - the inner life that education might awaken. 

Putting that pessimism aside, I believe that our efforts to provide utility and meaningful applicable contact time with the genres of business writing, to prepare our learners for the real world scenarios that lie ahead should be tempered with these kinds of examinations of the ethical implications of the work we are doing in business and technical communications. 

 

Connecting this article to the BTW courses, I understand that it will be important to have students synthesize information from the disciplines that they are connected to and to critically engage with different perspectives on a particular issue. I see the importance of having students work within a framework and make connections to how another field of study may deliver another view. This article offers some good points about interdisciplinary studies, but I would like to have some examples and even some specific connections to teaching.

This article was OK but, like other things I’ve read that come from the Plain Language Movement, it tends to idealize simple, straight-forward discourse at the expense of other rhetorically important attributes of effective – hence, inclusive and empowering -- communication. The focus is on brevity and conciseness, using “readability metrics,” ignores vital elements of the before/after example they provide on pp 47-48. 

They don’t mention that the revised public-facing document is written in dialogue form, asking questions of the readers; that it uses personable – not just “plain” – language that includes personal pronouns, inflected phrases that one can ‘hear’ as if in a conversation, by using punctuation marks such as quotes (new “smart” water meters) and exclamation points. It ignores the use of bold font and other formatting features that appear in the “after” version of the document. Clearly, the writers who revised this document made rhetorical choices that this author doesn’t attend to (enough) but which I feel matter immensely in making it more readable, more user-friendly.

I also worry that the emphasis on brevity can send to students the message that shorter is better, which is often not the case in many professional genres. I frequently find myself asking students to elaborate thinly phrased explanations, which encourages them to add on and not cut down. 

Yes, in an editing unit I often do in my BTW sections, I ask for them to consider ways to cut down wordy sentences by identifying common features of verbosity; however, I pair that with sentences that need to be “built up” with discerning details in order for them to work equally effectively. One example where elaboration trumps concision (that we are probably all familiar with) is the new section in “Students’ Guide to Foundations Writing” where the Student Learning Outcomes are “translated” into “conversational terms” so that students can understand them. Most of those translations gain their clarity and student-friendliness by using more, not fewer, words.

 

I appreciate that Hyland mentions the following scholars’ contributions, and even though they are older sources, the message is still relevant. He writes, “Swales (1990) has made clear, however, that we need to see community and genre TOGETHER to offer a framework of how meanings are socially constructed in writing. This draws on Faigley’s (1986: 535) claim that writing ‘can be understood only from the perspective of a society rather than a single individual” (547). In our first-year composition courses, there are a couple of assignments that ask students to investigate a community and identify what that group values and how they communicate. This aligns with Swales and Faigley’s claims that a part of the writing process is understanding a community’s values.

 

 

The four teaching practices needs analysis, grammar and writing, consciousness-raising, and mixed genre portfolios provide guidance on how to avoid prescriptivism when teaching genre.

Also, I find the several examples of how writers in various fields write, including the pronouns, verbs, and word choices they use frequently useful.  In a BTW class, students could examine and compare various texts from different disciplines and analyze the values.  I do not have any critiques of this article and would consider all the above teaching practices in the BTW courses to help students make informed writing choices based on an awareness of who will read their work and meeting the expectations of that community.

The article was useful, overall, but the expectation to take in all of the world's variety and ethical understanding is overwhelming.

Step 2: Structure the content to guide the reader through it

Step 3: Write the content in plain language

Step 4: Use information design to help readers see and understand

Step 5: Work with the target user groups to test the design and content

could be used to work with a variety of content in a writing class. From an instructional design perspective, this would be very useful in defining learning outcomes, for example, since these are supposed to be written in a jargon-free way and from the student perspective. It could also be used to revise learning activities, especially since asking for the kind of testing described in step 5 lends itself very well for the context of teaching and learning. 

I'd like to use this framework, along my other instructional design-derived tools, to work on the curriculum and the content of my BTW courses.

I wish the writer developed her thoughts on the ethics of plain language a bit more just because I believe that this aspect of plain language use/theory/methodology, is an integral reason for why it's worthwhile to use it. I think it's probably due to a fact that this would make a conversation about this method (using plain language) not as value neutral and thus "scientific" as it needs to be in order to be part of BTW philosophy/theory.

 

The first half of the article focuses on critiquing three articles, using seven heuristics to guide their analysis, and overall, examining inclusivity.  In the second half of the article, they provide examples of how to incorporate participatory design into a technical communication curriculum. “We endorse participatory design activity between designers and disabled users as a viable proposition for conceptualizing accessible and useable products, processes, and spaces because participatory design research is not about, or on behalf of, disabled users; it is disabled users taking the front seat on the drafting board with professional designers to employ their distinct know-how about disability which originates from their bodily differences and diverse contexts of purpose and use”  (252). This part of the article discusses academic values, which don’t fully include those with disabilities; they are more like “invited guests.” The example of how to include a participatory approach gives me several ideas of how to design activities that would add another layer to the current Accessibility Report Project. For example, students engage in primary research such as interviewing someone who has a disability or someone at the SALT Center or DRC; this would not only add credibility to their report, but the students would develop an awareness of inclusionary practices. As the authors state, “The adoption of disabled-centered participatory action research for our pedagogy will not only prepare our students for a more just and equity-oriented practice but also lessen ableist attitudes in the academy and in their future workplaces” (262). This idea ties in with one of our goals—acknowledging and respecting others’ perspectives. I don’t have any criticisms of this article.

I like how his WID model situates writing in disciplinary contexts where knowledge is dynamic, not static, as writing should be. So much of my job as a writing teacher is trying to de-mythologizing writing (especially academic writing), which is very challenging because of the standardized way students have been programmed to think of and do it. WID has proven to be a terrific ally in this regard – but not exactly in terms of the formula presented by Carter. 

I’ve often said to students things like “It’s not so much a matter of ‘writing’ like an engineer or a physical therapist or a software developer, you need to ‘think’ like one.” In some assignments that I call simulated practicums (which Sean Rys pulls off better than I do) I challenge my students to actually ‘inhabit’ the subject position they are writing from – not in a literal sense, but in a simulated “fake-it-til-you-make-it” sense. This isn’t just a pop-psychology ploy; it’s a form of mimesis, a key rhetorical practice taught by the ancient Sophists. 

Throughout the article, Carter takes pedagogical positions that resonated with me. For one example, he writes that “the goal is not simply to write a research paper for the sake of learning to manage research from sources, but to use the process of doing and writing research to shape a disciplinary way of knowing.” This statement nicely captures a write-to-learn approach to WID. Although the article is very teacher-centered, what with its end-goal on drafting lengthy discipline-specific learning outcomes to satisfy accreditation agencies, this student-centered pedagogical moment hit the spot.

The theoretical framework of the model, and some key concepts, didn’t resonate all that much with me. Much of my 2014 dissertation critiques concepts that pop up in this article such as the privileging of “conceptual knowledge” and the meta-ization (something that happens when you attach the prefix “meta-“ to a word) of common practices and categories. Just like with the other scholars he cites – Miller, Connor, Russell, Bazerman -- we get the popular narrative about how something akin to instrumental rationalism (here “declarative knowledge”) took over higher education and resulted in the “demise of rhetoric” (386). Ultimately a complex system of “meta”-genres and “meta”-disciplines comes to the rescue, seemingly descending from Plato’s “metaphysical” realm of eidos, Western philosophy’s “heaven.” Rhetoric's centrality is re-established, but it's the result of the triumph of episteme over techne.

His drawing on Russell and “North American genre theory” (408) as a way to resurrect rhetoric and nostalgically return to “the education system of the old college [that] encouraged a language-rich teaching and learning environment” where recitations “dominated” classrooms and fed into the “intensely competitive declamations and debates outside class”(409) today might be considered a systemically classist or racist idealization. Several prominent (white) rhetoricians of this time period (1990s-2000s) advocated this kind of glorious return to olden days’ practices as a way of advancing the discipline of rhetoric; they didn’t conceive this vision as systemically “white” – hence ostensibly racist and classist -- but more of a renaissance of classical rhetoric. They were armed with an ideology that stratified knowledge work into “higher” and “lower” regions -- a classical mindset -- with their designated “meta”-regions being the highest. The bad guy in this article, “declarative knowledge,” is way down in the nether regions. This kind of dichotomous thinking permeates Carter’s article; however, that was the paradigm in technical communication scholarship (and in writing studies generally) at that time.

 

1.       Behaviorism – Teacher-centered pedagogy; lectures, discrete/explicit teaching, modeling, and demonstration, “traditional”

2.       Constructivism – Student-centered pedagogy; based on Piaget’s studies that students come ready to learn and the instructor must act as a facilitator of activities, “progressive”

3.       Social Constructivism – Student and teacher blended; based on Vygotsky’s work that learning is not just social but also built through collaboration between teacher and student

4.       Liberationism – Critical approach that places a student’s voice at the center; developed by Paolo Freire, seems to encourage student choice and student-guided self-discovery

I think I am a social constructivist. However, as I’ve gotten more comfortable with teaching the past few years, I find myself applying more liberationist techniques in my pedagogy. For instance, I’ve worked to develop more activities that give students choices and options. My teaching in ENGL101/102 tends to emphasize developing skills which I believe are equally important to writing; some examples are problem-solving activities in various group sizes, major project collaboration options, and freedom to choose topics. 

I have learned to trust my students over time, discovering that when students are given the freedom to make independent decisions and employ creativity in their own ways, projects tend to flourish to degrees unexpected. With that said, there are always students who crumble under creative freedom, and I can personally relate to being one of those undergraduates who really enjoyed a tight-knit systematic, sometimes predictable approach. For those students, I also make sure to employ moments of modeling and demonstration, which I believe are equally valuable. 

One big lesson I learned this semester was about handling student writing in Chat GPT. Subconsciously, I went into the SP2023 semester thinking that if I didn’t talk about it, and just said “no” that they wouldn’t write in Chat GPT. Unfortunately, I received three essays that were direct copy-and-paste results from the AI, and not a single essay met any of my rubric guidelines. I think a technical or business writing course (in-person) would be ideal for an AI-inspired curriculum because of the focus on explicit genre forms.

Regardless, the next course I teach in-person will be AI-centered. I want students to learn to celebrate the humanity that only they can bring into their writing; I want them to think critically about what they think makes writing “good” and what goodness they enact through sharing their ideas. It may be useful to teach GPT as a research tool, and after submitting a major writing project, students could do a class activity where they attempt to rewrite their work with AI to see how a) it can make plenty of objective errors, b) fail to perform interesting analysis, c) fail to create college-level writing in explicit genre forms, and d) produce rather predictable and repetitive sentence structures. They could also reflect on benefits of working with AI systems like Chat GPT. I think the current academic integrity issue could be improved by embracing transparency and pointing out current flaws in the systems.

In a liberationist approach, I’d like to have some student-led socratic seminars on topics such as technological accessibility, the benefits and downfalls of AI, and the surveillance and data-theft issues going on with AI use (which often function to irrevocably hurt minorities and underrepresented groups on the internet). In a 101/102 course, I could see the students playing around with more traditional and multi-genre based forms, depending on what they find suits them; i.e., back to the blue-books, whiteboards, oratory, and kinetic/dance forms. It would be interesting to see how students approach traditional writing/speaking methods with a creative fervor.

One positive of this approach, is that it privileges the process rather than the product. Students get to focus on achieving course goals instead of the grade they will receive at the end of each project. Additionally, some students work hard on a project but remain at the C level, while some put less effort into scraping an “A.” I think labor-based grading would help to level the playing field, ensuring that all students put sufficient effort into assignments (as students and the instructor define it). Another benefit is that it frees the instructor to help more students learn and understand concepts rather than spending excessive amount of time grading papers and determining whether a final product is an A or A+ etc. 

Some of the critiques that I have of contact grading are articulated in this paragraph:  

(a)   Is it true, for example, that producing a certain amount of writing entails the same degree of labor for all students? Surely, some students could produce five typed pages in two hours, while another student might take seven hours to do the same task. In fact, this disparity is likely–especially at institutions that now admit students with widely-divergent levels of preparedness. How does contract grading account for this disparity?

(b)   How can an instructor enact “labor-based grading” when there is no reliable metric to indicate how much labor any particular student put into an assignment?

(c)   Does this incentivize students to try less hard than they would otherwise? (source “Contract-Grading” and the War Against Academic Excellence — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (jamesgmartin.center)

I want to try labor-based grading but begin with one assignment rather than all the grading for a course. This will benefit me as much as the students, allowing me to be more attentive to students and the process by which they produce an assignment.

 According to the article, assessing writing is a process that involves evaluating student work for formative or summative purposes. It occurs at various stages throughout a course and teachers take on different roles to provide feedback. One of the main purposes of writing assessment is to offer feedback for student development. 

The article further states that good assessment practices start with clear learning goals and assignment descriptions. Teachers should design writing assignments with learning goals and assessment methods in mind and offer feedback early in the writing process. It is crucial to maintain open communication with students about expectations and assessment methods. Balancing the amount of feedback and allowing students to maintain control over their work promotes a healthy learning environment.

I agree with most of the points made in this article. I believe I also implement most of the suggestions made in the article in my teaching.

 I agree with the article that too much feedback can be confusing, daunting and counterproductive to the student. Although many people would argue against using a rubric, I like to use a rubric for assessing student writing, but I do not confine myself to the rubric while assessing. There is a reason why I do this. I know equality does not always ensure equity. I have also found that some students, especially those students who are not very familiar with the US academic norms yet and /or students who are from different cultures can produce high quality drafts without conforming to the rubric.  So I also allow for and/or am accepting of norms of non-dominant varieties of English in my student writing as long as it is comprehensible. Of course, I also teach my students about the privilege and importance of using the norms of Standard English varieties in academic writing as as well teaching them about the risks of using the norms of non-dominant/non-Standard varieties.

 

One critique I have of hooks’ chapter is that some of it didn’t age as well as other parts did.  For example, hooks speaks of “confessional narratives” as being something that both students and vulnerable, risk-taking professors should engage in.  hooks says, “When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess” (21).  Indeed, teachers should share too. However, hooks frames “sharing” as “confessions,” which for me elicits some very negative connotations, specifically calling forth ideas of shame, wrongdoing, and admission of guilt.  In today’s classrooms, when people share, the better practice is to consider the sharing of ideas without judgement.  This would be especially true in the safe-space classrooms that hooks envisions.

 

Nevertheless, the judgment-free sharing behind those “confessional narratives” is still something I want to realize in my own classroom, and this is something which is still a work in progress for me.  Despite striving for a safe-space classroom myself, I still find myself often holding back when students are sharing.  I often share less than I could or even want to.  This is in part due to long-standing worries about letting go of “authority” in the classroom, which of course ought not be there in the first place.  When I find myself holding back, not being vulnerable, not striving for self-actualization, and guarding and editing my thoughts as I say them to students, I need to remind myself of exactly what I never want to do in the classroom: fall victim to what hooks describes for many instructors who operate “by the exercise of power and authority within their mini-kingdom, the classroom” (17).  One example where I can apply this is during an icebreaker activity that we do every day in class, wherein I normally stand to the side while students talk and participate, and I merely listen.  That said, my goal for the rest of the semester is to engage in this activity right alongside my students as they share and engage.

A positive: “Instead of acting as an editor, suggest options or open-ended alternatives the student can choose for their revision path”. This idea confirms the correctness of a change I have made in my assessment practices. Previously in my first year of teaching I used to heavily edit student papers, mostly earlier drafts, but found out that this is causing students to lose control of their own papers. Since then I have abandoned this practice and adopted the strategy of suggesting open-ended alternatives. 

A critique: I agree with all of the things suggested in the article. If I have to critique it somewhere, I’ll say that a sentence in it needs to be explained, maybe with a few more sentences and/or one or two examples. The sentence is “it is also important to remember that rubric writing (especially in writing classrooms) is more art than science”. I am interested in the idea and want to know more about why the author thinks so. 

One application to my teaching materials or approach: I will use the idea of asking students to talk about their process of writing, or ask them questions about their work, before giving my feedback. Normally I explain my feedback and then ask them questions, which I think is then impacted by the feedback I have just given them. Instead, I need to make them talk first, so that I can gain better insights into their process and then we can talk more about what they say, as well as about my feedback.

I’m not really sure what to make of the section on commenting. When I give feedback now, I focus on global first. I think of global as the things that make the paper work and local as more line-level items. I’d rather focus on global first because that’s what I think should come first when it comes to revising. If there is an issue with the argument, I want them to put their focus there and figure out how to make their argument stronger or work the way they want it to work before they start correcting their grammar or language use. This made me feel like global perhaps wasn’t the place to start. And perhaps I’m misunderstanding it, especially when it says that global is often used to justify the grade. 

Rubrics are not something that I’m currently using, but I like the idea of sitting down and articulating what an A, B, C, etc. paper looks like and having that available to my students as they are starting to put together an assignment. I think I will start doing this with my assignments. I currently have a list of expectations at the end in a “Putting it all together” section that I don’t know is the most effective way to do it. 

 

“Disciplines represent the organization of knowledge” (15). 

The quote from Howard Gardner discusses how students just see disciplines as subjects. But I would like the chapter to spend more time discussing this. How does the difference between a subject and a discipline fit into the definition of what a discipline is? 

The correlation between a discipline within a university or other academic setting and the militaristic discipline is very interesting. Augsburg says “studying a particular discipline involves rigorous, regimented, methodological education and training” (16) which is interesting, the idea that you have to be a disciplined person to study within a discipline, but does that mean you cannot take part in a discipline of knowledge without being very serious about it? Can you dabble in different disciplines?

I like the idea that interdisciplinary study gives a more complex or comprehensive view/method of understanding. I’m not wholly sure how to integrate this into my classroom. I’ve had to do a certain amount of interdisciplinary research for myself during grad school because I wasn’t getting the perspective that I wanted, so I wonder if I could bring in sources about the same topic from different disciplines and discuss the different ways that they approach the topic. 

I use Vygotsky’s constructivism in a class by recognizing the ZPD and, as the MKO, providing support (scaffolding activities) to move them through the ZPD. In a BTW course, it’s essential to allow students the chance to be the MKO and help peers move through the ZPD and respect the nature of collaborative work. Especially in the online learning course where learners are non-traditional adult students and have been working professionals.  

Orey, Michael. (2010). Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology. 

The Global Text Project. EDP 540 Learning Theories and Instructional Strategies. Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://textbookequity.org/Textbooks/Orey_Emergin_Perspectives_Learning.pdf

For the second reading selection, I read "What is Interdisciplinary Some Essential Definitions" and initially thought the reading could be helpful for students. The positives are the brief definitions shared, such as "Interdisciplinary refers to the general phenomenon of combining or integrating disciplinary perspectives" (Augsburg, 2016, p. 19). Integrating this definition in class could help students understand the synergy that can develop when more than one discipline shares knowledge to create learning networks. This is one shared perspective, and the article offers many interpretations I found could be helpful for learners. 

As for my critique, I found the "links between academic and military disciplines" lacking. While both military and academia will involve rigorous, disciplined, organized education and training, the article never dives into how so. So my students would most likely not understand how the two are connected without my explanation. And really, I cannot understand precisely how Augsburg understood the link without further clarifications.   

I'd most likely use the article to help learners understand how connecting with other interdisciplinary fields could benefit them professionally to learn from one another.

According to Augsburg, interdisciplinarity is nothing but a way of integrating knowledge and methods from multiple disciplines. The author also claims that the aim of interdisciplinarity is to solve complex problems, issues, or questions that cannot be fully understood or solved using the perspectives of a single discipline. According to Ausburg, interdisciplinarity is a collaborative and integrative approach seeking to create new knowledge by crossing the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Although the concept is not unknown to me, I like the chapter because it presents the concept of interdisciplinarity in an accessible way and discusses its importance and how it can utilized in academic and professional settings in an easy and convincing manner. I agree with the author over the role of interdisciplinary studies in the solving of complex problems in our academic setting. The chapter would be a good read to anyone interested in this topic. However, I also think the author tends to dumb down the concept by including and citing the dictionary definitions of the concepts of discipline, interdisciplinary, etc. so many times, which was not necessary. 

 

At one point, the reading mentions the burden of excessive feedback, and this is something I struggle with. I have created some rubrics to ease the amount of feedback I give, but I still manage to write a lot of extra comments at the end. While reading this I grew curious and looked through some feedback I had gotten during grad school, and I did find some lengthy feedback that I couldn’t believe the instructor took time to do. As a student then, I couldn’t tell you if I read the whole thing because of other obligations. So, going back to where I am now, I am currently trying to ease up the amount of feedback I give. I’ve spoken with other teachers who do tend to give the most feedback early on, and gradually decrease as the class ends, and this is a technique I am learning to apply (assuming the students’ writing improves over time).

 

The reading also mentions how “Some teachers have students help collaboratively design rubrics for the grading of writing.” I would love to try this at some point this year to see if my rubrics may be easier to follow. However, I am not sure how to go about this.

However, when looking back upon when I taught creative writing, I told students up front, “There would not be a benefit to me grading your short stories and poems. Simply do the work and you will receive full credit.” In other words, it was contract/labor based. Why? Because I perceived creative writing as more fluid, with greater margin for error. Thus, reading Inoue, I had to challenge my preconceived notions about the differences between composition and creative writing. I found it was a significant blunder to assume students had more experience and familiarity with composition (despite it being statistically more likely) than poetry and fiction. We anticipate students “should” know their way around a rhetorical analysis more than a sonnet, and they are graded/rewarded for implementing previous instruction. Labor-based grading allows for obstacles of knowledge gaps to be lowered, highlighting the importance of this coursework, this discussion, this revision more than carried over knowledge. We’ve all had that student who shows up three times a semester but writes nuanced, beautiful, and 🤬 compelling work. Is it fair for this student to pass having missed x amount of instruction time and discussion? Labor-based grading has helped solve this problem for me.     

I now greatly appreciate the concept of labor-based grading – a compassionate and equitable foundation for classroom instruction. I plan to implement labor-based grading in upcoming semesters.       

The primary idea that stuck out the most to me (as cliché and tired as it may sound) is that we cannot give what we do not give ourselves. Granted, there is a fine line between self-accountability and self-flagellation. There is a great balancing act. To aid in this, it’s imperative we seek and do our utmost to maintain our “health” – psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical - for vivacious pedagogical practice. I also appreciated how the text solidified the certainty that suffering is unavoidable. It is a part of life and can provide meaning. This reminded me of Victor Frankl’s Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything and of what an old friend described to me as: courageous acceptance. We, as educators practicing self-compassion, courageously accept to pass this empathy onwards to our students and fellow faculty. We can, in fact, give to ourselves what we give to others.  

Also, connecting this reading to Neff’s TED Talk, I loved the salient distinction between self-esteem and self-compassion. Self-esteem is so binary, whereas self-esteem holds more fluidity, covering a multitude of so-called “sins.” I thoroughly enjoyed Neff’s quote, “Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly. Embracing ourselves as we are: flaws and all.”

In short, the big takeaway from the reading and TED Talk is this: self-criticism (though a powerful driver) is ultimately not the best nor most sustainable method of motivation. And, conversely, compassionate pedagogy proves a helpful, sustainable model. It’s always been my goal to create a safe and equitable pedagogical environment – self-compassion proves a solid foundation. 

 

One critique of UNESCO’s vision for ESD is that since we have a diverse student population, whether within STEM or within any general education population, we are likely to encounter some students who do not subscribe to the various SDGs and who do not want an education centered around the SDGs.  This is probably rare, but it is a reality.  As an example, I have recently encountered a small group of students in one of my ENG 102 classes this semester who are openly – what I would call – anti-SDGs.  I have been teaching at UA since 2021, and this is the first semester wherein I have encountered students who feel this way (or who are vocal about it anyway).  In my 102 classes, we watch several different documentaries that align with the various SDGs (“no poverty,” “gender equality,” “climate action,” “life below water,” “life on land,” etc.).  For example, one week we will watch a documentary on climate change, and another week we will watch a documentary on LGBTQAI+ rights.  I offer about five documentaries for each topic of discussion, and the students vote via a Slido poll on one documentary that we will watch in class for that topic/theme.  After we watch the documentary, students have an opportunity to discuss the film, conduct a rhetorical analysis of the content, and explore project topics related to the documentary.  I also offer a Padlet for students to anonymously offer their thoughts about the film as a discussion-starter.  This is where I have – for the first time since I started with UA – seen some students who appear to be very intolerant of the principles outlined in the SDGs.  For example, one student commented anonymously on our Padlet that the documentary on climate change was “overdramatic fake news.”  For the documentary we watched on LGBTQAI+ rights, one of the students commented on our Padlet, “A man is a man.  A woman is a woman.  Biology is biology, and there is no such thing as transgender.”  For every documentary we watched, which again feature themes and topics outlined in the various SDGs, one or two students responded with comments similar to the above.  My classes have about twenty-four students each, and this occurred only in one ENG 102 section, so this is a small percentage of students overall.  Nevertheless, I have to admit I was startled and taken aback by comments like these.  This was new for me to encounter since the time I first began teaching at UA, but it is a reminder that our student population is indeed diverse, with all kinds of individuals from all kinds of backgrounds and mindsets.  It was not an easy task in class for me to acknowledge those comments while attempting to also acknowledge the opinions and thoughts of students who are mindful and tolerant of the aspirations set forth in the SDGs.  I did not enjoy being a teacher on those days.

 

To apply some of this to my teaching, I am going to stand firm in continuing to frame my curriculum in SDGs-centered philosophies.  However, I am rethinking my use of anonymous Padlets.  I may instead require students to include their names on Padlet posts.  Unfortunately, this may discourage some students from sharing as openly, but it will also likely minimize ignorant and intolerant comments, which seem to arise when people are shrouded in anonymity.  I am still thinking this through, but I am hopeful that I can find a way to encourage open communication in the classroom while also discouraging intolerance, nastiness, and hatefulness.  A work in progress…

 

One critique I can provide (and it is not a critique of the article itself, but a critique of the very conundrum described above) is that we still don’t have a particularly useful understanding of the best way to teach writing, whether in FYC or BTW.  Russell (2007) says the “central question” is this: “Which approaches work better to teach students to successfully perform professional tasks that require communication?” (pg. 268).  He goes on to answer his own query: “Unfortunately, we have little research to answer this complex question” (pg. 268).  It remains somewhat of a mystery, then, as to how to best teach and prepare our students.  It is also a mystery as to why some of our student writers enter our classes already better prepared than others.  And in my personal experience, our students’ skillsets seem to be significantly established by the time we ever see them enter our college classes; one or two students in each one of my classes enters the class already an excellent writer and leaves an excellent writer.  The rest have varying degrees of skill level, and instructors strive to get them writing a little bit better than when they arrived.  How and when writers got to their skill level in the first place is what I find most intriguing.  Were those skillsets solidified by junior high or high school?  Again, in my experience, I see skillsets largely solidified by the time students reach college, and my goal, then, is to try to enhance those skillsets as much as possible in the short span of a semester.  Realistically, that might just be a small bump up from where the student starts.  Also, to switch perspectives to my job as a business writer, my experience is that many professional writers also show very slow and small improvements over time.  Most of the professional writers I see started out either as great writers who continue to be great writers, or okay writers who get marginally better with years of practice and hands-on application.  Nevertheless, I am hopeful for what I may find in BTW courses, namely that much of the writing is business and task-specific, smaller in scope, and more specialized, which may be more straightforward to teach from a practical standpoint.  So while I am realistically optimistic about my role in helping students with “learning to write,” I am also unabashedly confident in my role in helping students with “writing to learn” (Russell, 2007, pg. 249).

I like the article, but it is also important to know that we need to incorporate multiple approaches into our writing curricula because one single approach such as text-oriented approach, e.g. genre-based pedagogy is not sufficient. This is why writing curricula nowadays incorporate not only text-oriented approaches but also writer-oriented approaches and reader-oriented approaches. Our PDCs are good examples of it. This is why  I do not confine myself to it  but rather I apply elements from all the approaches I noted above in my teaching although I am a big fan of genre-based pedagogy.   

The article “Engaging Plain Language in the Technical Communication Classroom" by Kira Dreher deals with the fact that it is important to teach the principles of plain language in in courses including technical communication courses. Dreher argues that teaching plain language principles plain language is important because it could enhance students’ ability to understand content as well as enhancing their ability to convey this content effectively. The writer also argues that planning language could make our writing more accessible to diverse audiences including those who are underprivileged.

The writer also claims that plain language is useful because it can minimize confusion and misinterpretation of messages and other types of texts and that it can promote successful communication. The author also maintains that there is a growing demand for accessible information in many fields and industries and that plain language can help address this demand.  

The author also discusses some strategies for teaching plain language in addition to highlighting that it is important to demonstrate real world examples. The author emphasizes the importance of collaboration between students and those working in industries so that the former can gain practical experience. Finally, the author advises the educators to be updated on the developments in plain language research so that they can teach it effectively.  

The author encourages collaboration between students and professionals to gain practical experience and foster an appreciation for plain language. Additionally, Dreher suggests that technical communication educators should stay updated on plain language trends and tools to maintain relevancy in their teaching.

In conclusion, the article asserts that incorporating plain language principles in technical communication courses can significantly improve students' communication skills and better prepare them for professional careers. By focusing on plain language, educators can equip students with valuable tools to effectively convey complex information to diverse audiences, ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and accessible world.

The article would be informative and useful to people who do not have a background in technical communication. However, while this article argues that plain language can enhance communication by enhancing clarity and minimize linguistic discrimination by enhancing accessibility, it does not address the fact that the use of too much plain language can limit students’ creativity. Nor does the article deal adequately with the requirements and terminology that are peculiar to specific fields. A discussion would minimize the confusion of readers like us. 

Hyland says, “But despite these problems, the concept of DISCOURSE COMMUNITY, understood as a group who have texts and practices in common, is important as a way of joining writers, texts and readers together” (549), and I wonder how I can emphasize that in my teaching not just in potential BTW courses, but also in my foundations writing courses. I discuss discourse communities when I’m teaching, but I don’t know how much I emphasize that these are places where students can belong. Writing can be very lonely. It’s an isolated activity for many people, but discourse communities make it seem a little less so and might make the whole writing process a little more interesting or worth it, especially if students are encouraged to feel like they are part of some sort of community of people who are all using the same type of language to take part in a greater conversation. Hyland argues that “Genre teaching means taking the world outside the writing classroom into account by going beyond grammar and vocabulary to prepare students for their future experiences using the most detailed needs analysis that time allows” (556). And I think that making sure that students realize that what they are doing has importance outside of the classroom or real world applications can help foster their enjoyment of writing as well as give them purpose. 

A side note (something that just made me laugh): Hyland uses “informant” to refer to, I assume, real-life people they have spoken to in pursuit of this article. It feels out of place here and more akin to something that involves spies and/or espionage. Or, I suppose, journalism. 

Hyland discusses portfolio writing. Do students create portfolios in the BTW courses? 

I think that the discussion of ethics is really interesting, especially when using the late to class, help an old woman across the street example, but I couldn’t help but wonder why, in all of that discussion of student time, student money, is he helping the woman because she’s a woman and he’s a man, etc, why there was no option to send an email to students. This was published in 2012 and 2017, a time in which it was becoming increasingly normal to have smartphones and have email on a smartphone, so why does it not come into play that a professor running late could email the students as a courtesy to simply say “I’m running late.” That would be cognizant of their time, right? I’m confused why thirty seconds cannot be taken to send a polite email. 

I like the idea of having students draft up their own set of ethics for the classroom. It would be interesting to apply that to both a BTW classroom and a foundations writing classroom, putting the shared ethics of that classroom into the hands of the students who are in it. Classroom discussions can bring up a lot of different feelings depending on the material, so it would be interesting to do this in a semester where you know some hard topics are going to come up. I taught a class where we were reading On the Come Up by Angie Thomas, a novel that exists in the same universe as The Hate U Give and deals with police brutality. I had black students who had either had bad police experiences themselves or had family who’d had them, and then I had a white student who had a cop father. It led to a very tense conversation, but I think that having a community decided set of ethics for discussions in that classroom might have helped the conversation. 

 Interdisciplinarity, it seems to me, offers a way as the article suggested of “complementing” a discipline by drawing on others. An interdisciplinarity approach would allow, for example, for incorporating  creative writing into Mathematics, Writing Studies, and Technical Communication and business. This, to me, enhances those disciplines because it offers new ways of being and of understanding those disciplines.  

Personally, I don’t see a downside to interdisciplinarity as an approach. I see it as a positive pedagogical tool. It allows students to make connections across disciplines, thus fostering the WAC approaches many universities try to encourage. As an instructor, it allows me to As Bazerman points out, to “draw on the resources of many disciplines.” For instance, I’ve used creative writing in my Writing and Technical Communication classes; in one of the papers I’m working on for publication, I’m trying to incorporate anthropology into a literary analysis. Overall interdisciplinarity helps to redefine and expand disciplinary borders. 

 

 

 

One critique I have in response to the reading and to my own thoughts above is that while clear and concise language is a good goal to aspire to in writing, “the fraught concepts of ‘plain’ and ‘clear’” themselves (pg. 45) can be troublesome in that they are hard to define and widely varied, as Dreher acknowledges (2021).  For example, my government agency aspires to write at the 6th grade level.  However, as a composition instructor, I am pretty certain that I don’t want my college students to write at the 6th grade level.  Thus, I worry about what Dreher (2021) and others have called the dumbing-down of writing (pg. 59).  I certainly see a place for plain language in business writing, especially as it pertains to public-facing communication.  However, for some texts our students write and for many of the non-public facing communication I see and write for my day-job (like legal decisions and complex investigation reports), using 6th grade language is not practical or effective.  Thus, I think the ultimate goal is to see our students gain the capacity to write in plain language or more complex structures.  

For practical application in my classroom, I hope to show my students many kinds of writing styles, ranging from plain to more complex.  Ideally, they will have access to both plain and non-plain language as needed, which will fit whatever rhetorical situation they may find themselves in.

Despite its dated references the article raises an interesting perspective that I had not thought of – seeing BTW courses as a form of Writing in the Disciplines. I suppose that in fact BTW courses are WID. Maybe the difference between BTW and other WID courses is that they are specific in a way that other WID courses are not; for instance, Writing in Literature appeals to only students who study literature, while BTW appeals to a wider cross section of students – engineering, agriculture, nursing etc. One element of Rusell’s argument that I appreciated is that he seems to continue the conversation on interdisciplinarity that we read in topic 2. For example, he writes, “Both sets of teachers can learn from the research and practice (pedagogical and otherwise) of their counterparts to add value to professional education.” I believe that this is one of the beneficial components of interdisciplinarity. Faculty members across disciplines can learn from each other and consequently enhance their individual respective disciplines. 

Of course, positioning BTW as a WID course risks overlooking some of the unique qualities of BTW, ( now PTC) courses. Overall, I think the approach offered in this article is useful for my teaching. It reminds me to draw on writing to learn and writing to communicate strategies, from WID, to inform my BTW/PTC teaching.

 One aspect of plain language that I hadn’t thought about before was that it can be seen as part of the social justice movement. Having read this, I can see the connections between plain language and social justice. If people, end users and customers are able to comprehend rather than be frustrated by documents governmental agencies or our students produce, this makes them more knowledgeable and this in itself is empowering. This means that those who have a greater vocabulary are not privileged. 

I believe that teaching students in Technical Communication plain language strategies aligns with the definitions of perspective taking offered in the video for this week. Becoming aware of and using plain strategies helps students develop empathy for their end users, as they have to essentially take on the perspective of that user to determine how they, as writers/rhetors can make their writing more concise, more visual, etc. and more accessible to their intended audiences. 

I really don’t see a downside to using plain language. I suppose it may make writing feel more formulaic. I have used many plain language exercises in my Technical Communication classes. I’ve sometimes used poorly written memos and had students redesign them incorporating plain language strategies.

 

 

 

Although the reading provides insightful information, I wasn’t sure if I noticed a specific way of going about teaching courses like BTW. The article does mention how we should familiarize ourselves with professional fields with similar writing conventions. I think challenges that I might face are diving into fields that I am not very well versed in, like engineering. However, I would definitely use and share my own practices with business writing that I have used in the past. I would be curious to see how it lines up with what is expected in a BTW course. I can also already see how it would be easy to tie rhetoric into certain aspects of business writing which can help students build off their previous 101/102 courses.

(After rereading my last line – the irony is not lost on me).  

The section that stood out the most to me is the following quote, “Learning to write in a discipline is not merely a cognitive accomplishment (individual or collaborative) but a socializing process in a discipline or profession and, further, a process of taking on the identity, set of values, and, often, political stances of those who write in a particular discipline.”

In short, learning to write in a discipline… is a socializing process. This has a holistic, evolutionary feel, an emphasis on immersion (think integration or, even, indoctrination). Writers learn to walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk dependent on their discipline. It reminded me that classroom experience is a significant pre-career “socialization.” In-class activities, lectures, texts, etc. all generate this socializing environment. So, teaching proves an opportunity to cultivate a kind of educational biosphere – intentional, poignant, discipline-specific. 

This feels slightly ironic considering Michael Carter’s reference to David R. Russell in Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing in the Disciplines, “professors typically learn to write…not by any direct instruction but by a process of slow acculturation through various apprenticeship discourses…unable to see that writing itself is specific to the discipline.” This felt true to my writing journey – I steeped – in everything – the biosphere. Thus, learning to write was less direct, step-by-step, and more of an aggregate bloom. However, I do wonder if more professors have an inner meta discourse acknowledging writing is specific to discipline than Russell believes.

All of this to say, I was reminded learning to write is more of a holistic “socializing” process (back to identity and value evolution) than direct nitpicking instructor-led alteration (put a comma here).                

I greatly appreciated the definitions - they helped me compartmentalize the key nuances between interdisciplinary understanding/studies/research, integrative learning, and other terms that easily bleed into each other. The running theme of interdisciplinary study reminded me of the importance of gen-ed core classes – my gen-ed history currently informing my own pedagogy. For example, when teaching on genre, I often reference McLuhan’s The Medium is The Message – a concept I learned in a media studies class. Obviously, I believe this cross-pollination enriches discourse and the learning experience. I appreciate it when a student raises their hand and says this text/conversation reminds me of some media/art/historical concept. The synapses connect and cement, highlighting the importance of a holistic education. After COVID, I was thrown into marketing – the California universities on lock down and not searching for recently graduated, fresh-faced MFA instructors. My background in English served me well, but marketing proved an entirely different world: new genres and technical terms. In retrospect, I wish I had taken a business writing course to aid in a smoother transition. The interdisciplinary coupling of business and writing creates a strong, marketable overlap. Given the volatile current market our students are headed into, I am excited at the prospect of facilitating a business writing course.