Education Commons^™

"I Think There Is A Place For Small Programs:" Advocating, Implementing, And Sustaining Tpc Programs In Small Us Institutions, Martha Lynn Russell

English Theses & Dissertations

Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) programs in small institutions compose of over a third of all programs in the US, yet this space has been understudied by most scholars. To fill this gap, this dissertation presents findings from one-hour interviews with twenty-six TPC program directors in small US institutions with undergraduate populations of less than six thousand. The results of this dissertation include the ways that small institutions are advocating, implementing, and sustaining their TPC program in unique ways with implications for how any TPC programs regardless of size can learn from these findings.

Educator Professional Development As Rhetorical Situation, Bethany Leigh Creswell Wilson

English Theses & Dissertations

Teacher effectiveness is recognized as the most prominent in-school influencer of student learning, and professional development (PD) of in-service educators is seen as vital to improving teachers’ effectiveness throughout their careers. Professional development is often studied atheoretically and with a linear view in which PD providers deliver instruction and teachers receive and apply that instruction as it was delivered to them. By casting them as passive, blank-slate receivers and automatic appliers of the PD, this view obscures the complexities of teachers’ role in PD. Examining educator PD through the lens of rhetoric, and viewing the PD experience as a rhetorical …

Focused On Freedom: Exploring The Potential Of Grading Contracts To Support Writers In The Secondary English Language Arts Classroom, Margaret Mcgregor Fluharty

English Theses & Dissertations

Drawing on qualitative methods, I engaged in a practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) to investigate the use of contract grading to promote educational freedom (hooks, 2009; Love, 2020) in the post-secondary writing classroom. In addition, I explored the potential of this practice in the secondary English language arts setting.

To better understand the perspectives of both post-secondary writing instructors and secondary English teachers on the use of grading contracts, I conducted focus groups and engaged in artifact analysis (Billups, 2019). Results showed that post-secondary instructors who utilized grading contracts in their classroom saw changes primarily in their students’ engagement …

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 …

Centering Community College Students' Experiences: A Multiple Methods Study Of Multiple Measures For Writing Placement, Nicole L. Hancock

English Theses & Dissertations

Community colleges are trying to reform their placement procedures from use of a single placement test score to a system that collects multiple measures to be used either as a replacement solitary measure or in conjunction with other measures for more accurate placement into writing courses than what occurred with the placement test, which often resulted in disparate impact for students of color. In this study of multiple measures placement assessment for writing courses, I critique several large studies of community college multiple measures assessment for the lack of a community college perspective. The studies largely supported use of high …

Esl To Composition Transitions: Investigating The Differences In Disciplinary Values Among Two-Year College Faculty, Amy M. Flessert

English Theses & Dissertations

In this qualitative methods study, I draw on Paul Kei Matsuda’s 1999 article “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor” to examine if, more than 20 years after its publication, there is still a significant disciplinary division between ESL writing and first-year college composition. I surveyed writing instructors from both ESL and ENG at Mid-Atlantic Community College (MACC) regarding what they value as “good” writing. I also worked with three faculty members – one in ENG, one in ESL, and a third who teaches in both departments, serving, in this study and the department, as a “bridge” …

Natural History Of Discourse Of Missouri House Bill 1042: Bringing A Critical Perspective To Policy Engagement In Two-Year Contexts, Mary Casey Reid

English Theses & Dissertations

In this autoethnographically-infused natural history of discourse (NHD) (Silverstein and Urban, 1996; Slembrouck, 2001), I use methods from critical discourse studies (CDS) to trace 10 years of changes in “remediation” discourses within a corpus of texts associated with Missouri HB 1042, a piece of legislation passed in 2012 that requires higher education institutions to “replicate best practices in remediation” (CBHE, 2013). After providing national and state context related to HB 1042 and the discourses circulating within the HB 1042 corpus of texts, I describe what I call the “higher ed’s remediation problem” discourse, focusing on three discourse features that I …

A Nexus Of Literate Activity: The Design Of Writing Assignments In The Disciplines, Lauriellen Stankavich

English Theses & Dissertations

Writing plays a critical role in higher education as students are inducted into disciplinary practices through different genres, methodological repertoires and argumentation strategies. In Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiatives, the instructor serves as an embodied reservoir of disciplinary knowledge and an arbiter of literate practices but most crucially employs the mediating capacities of the writing assignment as a potent pedagogical nexus. In this practice space, the instructor acts as designer of the pedagogical experience—the course as a whole and writing assignments in particular. This study used interviews, survey, and the collection of syllabi and other instructional artifacts to examine …

Addressing Public Perceptions About Cell-Based Meat And Cellular Agriculture Through Metaphors, Yvette Emma Hubbard

English Theses & Dissertations

Today’s food movement places organic, holistic, and natural foods as priority. The idea aims for better human health, a farm-to-table community, and environmental sustainability. Soon a new meat alternative will become part of the ongoing food movement. What is it? Cell-based protein. It is a protein alternative to livestock protein. It is real protein from a real breathing animal. Cell-based beef for example is grown in a lab with cells from a living cow that does not have to die or be slaughtered. It is destined to become the new protein architecture on the horizon. Parts of this paper are …

“Finding A Balance”: User, Reader, And Learner Functions In First-Year Composition Textbook Engagement, Travis Vincent Holt

English Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative, multiple participant case study investigates the phenomenon of student textbook engagement in a First-Year Composition course at a private, evangelical four-year university. Shifting away from a dominant history where textbooks served as the primary object of study (Besser et al., 1999; Carr, Carr, & Schultz, 2005; Colby, 2013; Connors, 1987; Edwards, 1984; Faigley, 1992; Gale & Gale, 1999; Hawhee, 1999; Issitt, 2004; Miles, 2000; Ohmann, 1979; Rendleman, 2009, 2011; Welch, 1987), I answered calls (Colby, 2013; Harris, 2012; Rendleman, 2009, 2011) to examine engagement with textbooks in context. Additionally, scholars have dominated discussions of textbooks; thus, the student …

Fragmentation In The Dual Enrollment Experience: The Importance Of Students’ Self-Perceptions In Dual Enrollment First-Year Composition Students, Sarah Crystal Johnson

English Theses & Dissertations

Dual enrollment has become an embedded aspect of our writing programs yet is still an under-researched area within rhetoric and composition. One reason for this research gap is that many DE students experience their FYC courses on secondary campuses, liminal spaces that are more difficult to access for research. DE students within these spaces experience daily tensions between the collegiate expectations of FYC curriculum and the secondary social contexts in which their DE FYC courses are taught. These unique contextual experiences impact their perceptions of themselves as writers. This research is an attempt to step into this DE research gap …

Reading With Social, Digital Annotation: Encouraging Engaged Critical Reading In A Challenging Age, Miranda L. Egger

English Theses & Dissertations

This design-based research study examines the pedagogical role of social, digital annotation in teaching reading as rhetorical invention, particularly the kind of invention necessary for thoughtful democratic participation in the contemporary discursive era, often described as troubled. In this dissertation study, I deployed a classroom-based intervention meant to challenge how educators in rhetoric and composition/writing studies might directly address the acute and exigent discursive struggle in the first-year composition classroom. This study ultimately finds that social, digital annotation invites significant shifts in students’ reading habits, in that Hypothes.is-based annotations yielded a far more complex, multifaceted set of reading skills, behaviors, …

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 …

Concept Maps As Sites Of Rhetorical Invention: Teaching The Creative Act Of Synthesis As A Cognitive Process, Amy Lee Marie Locklear

English Theses & Dissertations

Synthesis is one of the most cognitively demanding practices novice writers must undertake, and research demonstrates that first-year students’ synthesis writing practices result in more knowledge telling rather than knowledge creation and transforming. Pedagogies used to teach synthesis often focus on developing text-building strategies but lack explicit instruction on the more cognitively demanding conceptualizing behavior. To explore alternative pedagogies and heuristics, this study looks beyond composition scholarship to incorporate studies in neuroeducation and rhetoric to define synthesis as an ongoing, generative act of cognitive invention, effectively shifting pedagogical focus from text-centered product to student-centered cognitive processes that inform development of …

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 …

Global Language Variation In Online Writing Instructional Spaces: English As A Lingua Franca Among Global Participants In A Massive Open Online Course, Angela May Dadak

English Theses & Dissertations

Two vectors of the internationalization of US higher education—online courses and student diversity—intersect at a point where a broad mix of culturally and linguistically diverse students enroll in online courses, including writing courses. This study applies an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) lens to examine language in an online writing environment in order to understand how the participants use their linguistic resources to communicate in English across varieties and around the world. This study employs discourse analysis to two discussion forums from a US-based composition MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). More than three quarters of the MOOC participants came …

Students At A Crossroads: Ta Development Across Pedagogical And Curricular Contexts, Cassandra Ann Book

English Theses & Dissertations

A longstanding question in rhetoric and composition has been how to best educate composition graduate Teaching Assistants (TAs). Although many assume that writing centers are useful spaces for TAs to practice pedagogy and learn about writing processes in preparation for classroom teaching, recent scholarship complicates the claim that transfer from writing centers and/or practicums into composition classrooms is straightforward. Moreover, no study fully considers how the role of the writing center and teaching writing in English MA programs intersects with students’ development as teachers, writers, and scholars. This project brings together several strands of scholarship—the transferability of writing center experience …

Crafting A Pedagogical Identity: A Multiple-Method Examination Of An English Department’S Writing Pedagogy, Nathan Alan Serfling

English Theses & Dissertations

This study developed after a program review of my current English department. The review pointed to a lack of coherence within our required writing curriculum. To learn more about my colleagues’ practices and values in writing instruction and to discover similarities and strengths that might guide our curricular revisions, I devised a multiple method, descriptive study of my colleagues’ pedagogies. I initially distributed surveys and used four key pedagogical taxonomies from writing studies scholarship (current-traditional rhetoric, expressivism, cultural studies and critical pedagogy, and rhetoric and argumentation) to analyze the survey data. Finding these taxonomies to be inadequate frameworks for understanding …

Collaboration And Community In Undergraduate Writing Synchronous Video Courses (Svcs), Kimberly Fahle

English Theses & Dissertations

From the 2013 Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI), OWI Principle 11 suggests, “Online writing teachers and their institutions should develop personalized and interpersonal online communities to foster student success.” Previous discussions of synchronous modalities have suggested interpersonal benefits of this mode could aid in creating these communities and could minimize the isolation and transactional distance students can experience in asynchronous instruction, which in turn can impact their persistence and learning. However, with little research on this modality, it is difficult to corroborate this assumption or design synchronous courses to best exploit these …

Rhetorics Of Functionally Applicative Game Design: Designing And Testing The Project Management Game Scrummage, Matthew Carson Beale

English Theses & Dissertations

In this project, I designed and tested Scrummage, a tabletop game to teach the scrum project management system to undergraduate students. The project grew from the gaps in both academic literature and pedagogical tools for project management and collaboration in the technical communication classroom. Although the field of technical communication places significance on project management, research shows that many employers find the project management skills and knowledge of recent graduates to be under-developed. Situated in the fields of game design, game studies, project management, and technical communication, this project asks how we as educators can improve the project management learning …

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 …

Innovation Adoption And Diffusion In Synchronous Tutoring Owls: A Cross-Contextual Case Study Using Diffusion Of Innovations Theory, Cynthia Marie Pengilly

English Theses & Dissertations

Synchronous online tutoring shares many attributes with face-to-face tutoring such as real-time, document collaboration, and conversational cues provided by audio and video, yet writing center professionals know seemingly little about synchronous tutoring OWLs due to the lack of formal publications about synchronous online tutoring coupled with the prevailing paradigm that seeks to transfer face-to-face tutoring practices to online synchronous tutoring, which overshadows the innovation processes taking place in synchronous OWLs. The purpose of this study was to document emergent practices in the use of two different synchronous tutoring technologies and the processes by which those practices were adopted and implemented …

Eportfolios, Google Drive, And Cognitive Process Theory, Sarah Elizabeth Carl

English Theses & Dissertations

ePortfolios have gained popularity in higher education to document learning, assessing, and career showcasing. This thesis discusses how ePortfolios can be used in first-year writing classrooms to show writing processes using Google Drive, a non-ePortfolio platform and its connection to Linda Flower and John Hayes’ cognitive process theory. The thesis shows how a professor could use Google Drive as an ePortfolio platform through assignments.

Leveraging Digital Communities Of Practice: How Asynchronous Digital Collaboration Afforded A Complex Reading/Writing Dialogue For Secondary School Students, Susanne Lee Nobles

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines a case study of a research unit taught to secondary school students with the inclusion of an asynchronous digital collaboration with college students. Over consecutive school years, two classes of high school seniors and two classes of college students, despite being geographically separated by more than 90 miles, worked together in multiple reading and writing exchanges within an online community as they read a primary text and as the secondary school students wrote research papers. This study seeks to understand the effects of this unit on the secondary school students’ thinking, reading, and writing skills, focusing specifically …

Pedagogy At Play: Gamification And Gameful Design In The 21st-Century Writing Classroom, Danielle Roney Roach

English Theses & Dissertations

The language used to discuss play in current academic spaces tends to center around formal games (and computer games in particular in the 21st century classroom). Scholarly conversations tend to distort the actual practices that occur in classrooms and subsequently limit the scope of any investigation of the pedagogical function and outcomes of those practices. This project explores the use of play and games in the classrooms of nine composition instructors. From these stories, this project begins to map out a taxonomy in order to begin building toward a pedagogy of play for 21st century writing classrooms. Using a multiperspectival …

Community, Identity, And Transition: Student Veterans And Academic Writing At The Two-Year College, Mark Edward Blaauw-Hara

English Theses & Dissertations

Higher education is experiencing an almost unprecedented influx of student veterans. However, research is sparse on their transition to college, and, in particular, their experiences with college writing. Additionally, current scholarship focuses mainly on veterans at four-year schools. This dissertation describes six student veterans’ transitions to academic writing at the community college. Based on a case-study approach, the study seeks to identify key themes in student veterans’ experiences with learning and writing in the military and compare them to their experiences learning and writing in college. In addition to locating areas of disconnect, the study highlights typical strengths student veterans …

Multimodal Composing Across Disciplines: Examining Community College Professors’ Perceptions Of Twenty-First Century Literacy Practices, Elizabeth Bensen

English Theses & Dissertations

Providing a close examination of how professors approach twenty-first century literacy practices and production of multimodal texts, this project focuses on community college professors’ perceptions and expectations of students’ composing abilities pertaining to academic discourse across disciplines. Participants included 24 professors from a variety of disciplines at a large community college. The project examined survey responses, assignment guidelines, course syllabi, course outcomes, and video interviews of five of the 24 participants. Video interviews provided greater insight into participants’ perceptions and expectations. Additionally, research questions targeted course and assignment design, course outcomes, and assessment practices. Data findings suggest that despite access …

Microblogging As A Facilitator Of Online Community In Graduate Education, Vincent Anthony Rhodes

English Theses & Dissertations

Part-time and distance-learning students can experience a sense of isolation from their peers and the university. Concern about this isolation and resulting student attrition has increased in the midst of explosive growth in online course enrollments. One possible solution: building a stronger sense of community within the online graduate classroom using microblogging technology such as Twitter. Unfortunately, scholars across disciplines define community in different ways with some rejecting the concept altogether in favor of other theoretical constructs. And, few scholars have examined the notion of online classroom community from an English Studies perspective exploring the rhetorical exigencies that underpin this …

"That Doesn't Sound Like Me:" Student Perceptions Of Semiotic Resources In Written-Aural Remediation Practices, Jennifer Johnson Buckner

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines students' composing practices when working with unfamiliar modalities, attending to students' messy material and cognitive negotiations prior to their production of a polished multimodal project. Working from a conceptual vocabulary from composition studies and semiotics, I frame composing as an act of semiotic remediation, attending to students' repurposing and understanding of written and aural materials in composition and their impact on their learning. Specifically, this research uses a grounded theory methodology to examine the attitudes, experiences, and composing practices of first-year writing students enrolled in a composition II course at a private, liberal arts institution in the …

Stuck In The Last Ice Age: Tracing The Role Of Document Design In The Teaching Materials Of Writing Courses, Erin Duffy Pastore

English Theses & Dissertations

Teaching materials play vital roles in writing classrooms, yet they are understudied genres in English Studies. Teaching materials are inherently visual genres; the document design choices made by teachers illuminate values held about writing and writing classrooms. They are understudied genres, in part, because of the feminized position of composition. A professional writing investigation of the document design of teaching materials offers opportunities to rectify this. I developed a technofeminine genre tracing methodology focused on exploring the visual convention choices made by teachers and how these visual conventions are interpreted by students across the three levels of activity: the activity-driven …