Education Commons^™

What Counts As Legitimate College Writing? An Exploration Of Knowledge Structures In Written Feedback, Miriam Moore

Journal of Response to Writing

Research in feedback literacy (Carless & Boud, 2018; Molloy, Boud, & Henderson, 2020; Yu & Liu, 2021; Zhang & Mao, 2023) explores student use of written feedback and barriers to feedback uptake; the role of faculty in designing contextually appropriate feedback has been termed teacher feedback literacy (Carless & Winstone, 2023). When feedback does not achieve desired results, faculty must evaluate their feedback practices; they may be unaware of underlying features that hinder feedback effectiveness. In this paper, a long-time instructor of first-year college composition (FYC) interrogates her own feedback practices using tools from the specialization dimension of Legitimation Code …

Silently Correcting Your Grammar: Responses To Feedback And Adult Learners' Rural Writing Ecosystems, Jessica Marie Kubiak

English Theses & Dissertations

Over a century ago, rhetoricians called on writing instructors in the U.S. to accept and even encourage language diversity among learners. Yet scholars of composition, rhetoric, and writing studies are still advocating for this via arguments for linguistic justice and translingualism, even referring to strict adherence to a single, mainstream standard for language use as a kind of violence. This disconnect between scholarship and practice is evident in the silences surrounding first-year composition language instruction. This dissertation charts that disciplinary disconnect and then describes how adult students at a rural, open-access community college experience first-year composition feedback, with special attention …

Defining And Transferring Digital Literacies: What Does This Mean For High School And College Educators?, Jocelyn Spoor

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis aims to create a digital literacies transfer framework through a discussion regarding current conversations on transfer and digital literacies in the English field, including synthesizing the two ideas to think about the transfer of digital literacies as a concept. This digital literacies framework is made up of five components: the functional skills, critical skills, and rhetorical skills found in digital literacies scholarship and the genre awareness and meta-cognitive ideas found in transfer literature. This digital literacies transfer framework is then used to analyze information gleaned from four college and five high school English educators. The key findings from …

Final Master's Portfolio, Heather Eubank

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

The following is my final portfolio for the Master of Arts in English with specialization in English Teaching program. An analytical reflective narrative introduces four projects exemplifying the range of theories and methods that have informed my work, the skills I have gained, and the growth I have demonstrated throughout my time at BGSU: a research proposal titled “The Effect of Decreasing Literary Texts in the High School English Language Arts Curriculum: Proposed Perceptions and Analysis of Student Engagement and Performance”; my statement of teaching philosophy and first-year composition course syllabus; an annotated bibliography of pedagogical research and literary criticism …

Labor-Based Grading Contracts In The Multilingual Fyc Classroom: Unpacking The Variables, Kara Kristina Larson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This descriptive, exploratory study’s purpose is to determine the effects of labor-based grading contracts on students whose historical exclusion results in their current day underrepresentation in higher education. A key component of this study is the emphasis on the student’s own perceptions and feelings about the use of labor-based grading contracts. Using a purposive sample of multilingual First-Year Composition (FYC) sections at an R1 university, I investigated the variables of labor-based grading contracts: demographics and written language characteristics, student motivation, ecological variables (i.e., perceptions of grading contracts), and academic performance measures. Research questions include: 1) How do labor-based grading contracts …

Building Bridges In First-Year Composition: Investigating The Support Of Threshold Concepts In Writing-Related Transfer Across The Curriculum, Elise Antoinette Green

English Theses & Dissertations

Drawing on a multiple-case, embedded design (Yin, 2018), I highlight the in-depth differences and similarities that exist across students’ experiences in first-year composition (FYC), looking specifically at whether learners used genre and rhetorical situation as threshold concepts to transfer writing-related knowledge and skills across the curriculum. I designed and conducted this research by drawing on theories of learning transfer (Perkins & Salomon, 1988; 1989; 1992; Salomon & Perkins, 1989), writing-related transfer (Moore, 2017; Nowacek, 2011; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014; Yancey et al., 2019), and threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2006). Across this study, I collected data as I facilitated …

Critical Language Awareness Pedagogy In First-Year Composition: A Design-Based Research Study, Megan Michelle Weaver

English Theses & Dissertations

In this design-based research (DBR) study, I collaborated with two first-year composition (FYC) instructors in designing and implementing Critical Language Awareness (CLA) pedagogy to promote students’ linguistic consciousness while strengthening and enhancing their postsecondary writing skills. I designed and implemented this study by drawing on a critical theory of language, informed by literature on language ideologies (Silverstein, 1979; Irvine & Gal, 2000; Kroskrity, 2010) and raciolinguistics (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Alim, 2016), and a critical theory of pedagogy, informed by literature on critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970, 1973; Giroux, 2011) and critical race pedagogy (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lynn, 1999). After …

Draft: First-Year Composition Eportfolio Project As High Impact Practice, Jenni Keys

Workshops & Institutes

Abstract: The ePortfolio project will be the culminating formal writing assignment in a two-term course that completes students' first-year composition university requirement. This project fulfills three areas of ePortfolios as a high impact practice:

• Inquiry: Students seek and perceive connections between the course learning outcomes and the experiences in their first-year composition course in relation to their development as writers
• Reflection: Students identify and repeatedly reflect on their personal journeys as writers, answering the questions “what have I learned?” and “how have I grown?”; students consider those answers within the context of their continued experiences as university and life-long learners. …

Publishing For Transfer: Notes Toward An Editorial Pedagogy For The Transfer-Based Writing Program, Marcos A. Hernandez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Scholarly journals dedicated to publishing first-year writing have cropped up at a number of four-year universities in the U.S. over the last two decades. Invariably established and run by the university’s writing program, these highly localized journals are meant to showcase the exemplary research and writing that students are doing in their introductory writing courses. Yet, while these publishing projects are nobly undertaken for students, the publications themselves are seldom edited by students. Here arises a golden opportunity for the transfer-based writing program to promote transfer of knowledge and practice in writing beyond the FYC course. This project argues that …

Unraveling Identity Signifier Literacy: A Case Study Of First-Year Composition Students' Communication Practices, Bailey Mcalister

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Identity signifier literacy is defined as one’s ability to accurately read – via personal interactions or via visual, verbal, written, or digital communication – the signifiers others display in direct and indirect ways and interpret these signifiers to gain understanding of others’ identities. In this study, 22 first-year composition students were surveyed about their communication practices in order to see how their identity signifier literacies influence and are influenced by digital environments and composition. These results are meant to improve first-year composition pedagogy by making connections between students’ informal composition practices and their academic composition courses.

A Conversational Approach: Using Writing Center Pedagogy In Commenting For Transfer In The Classroom, Elizabeth Busekrus

Journal of Response to Writing

While some studies suggest that teachers’ written comments help students transfer writing skills across contexts (Wardle, 2007), the literature on feedback’s role in the transfer process has yet to be fully explored. Research has indicated that feedback that is intentional, specific, and reflective benefits students’ writing growth and the transfer process. To rethink this process of providing feedback, this article discusses how writing center principles can be applied to commenting for transfer in first-year composition and writing-intensive courses. Writing centers offer an individualized, student-centered, conversational approach to learning. Universities have incorporated the writing center into the classroom through writing fellows …

Beyond Strunk & White: Using Comics To Teach Students To Write Analytically, Lisa Smith

Humanities and Teacher Education Division Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents my approach to teaching analytical writing in a first-year composition class using Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon, providing practical, constructive advice on how to use comics to improve students' analytical writing skills. Assignment sheet included at end.

Being Retained: Perspective Of The Online First-Year Composition Student, Catrina Marie Mitchum

English Theses & Dissertations

Keeping students in college classrooms can be a struggle, but keeping them in an online classroom is an even more difficult feat. While the field of retention research has expanded its focus beyond traditional four-year students to include a variety of non-traditional student situations, including online, it has yet to focus efforts on online first-year composition at the community college. The first-year of college has been shown to be the most critical in student retention at the institutional level, which puts first-year composition in a potentially influential position. The fact that fewer students are retained in online courses than face-to-face …

Student Performance With And Attitudes Toward Electronic Distributed Assessment In First-Year Composition Classes, Annette Arrigucci

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In Fall 2008, UTEP's composition department implemented a pilot program to test a redesign of English 1312, their second-semester freshman composition course. In addition to a redesigned curriculum, a system of electronic distributed assessment was implemented in ten sections of English 1312. Instead of the traditional format of a class where instructors grade all student assignments, a group of teaching assistants graded student writing anonymously using standardized grading rubrics. The system, which has been used at Texas Tech University since 2002, was put in place at UTEP in order to enhance efficiency and consistency in the teaching of this course. …