SUPPORTING TEACHER-WRITERS ENGAGEMENT WITH TROUBLESOME KNOWLEDGE: EVIDENCE OF TRANSFER IN WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Writing Across the Curriculum has typically been discussed in terms of curricular or pedagogical transformation. While it helped to transform teaching from lecture-centered classrooms into more student-centered pedagogies, less is known about how those transformations happen and what impact those transformations have on teachers. More recently, teaching for transfer and threshold concepts have become pervasive WAC pedagogies that aim for transformation. But what does it take to truly change how we think about something? Through two detailed case studies, this project explores the experiences of two faculty participants in two WAC-focused professional development programs that aim to impact how faculty think about teaching, writing, and teaching writing. ECU’s WAC Academy and Advanced WAC Academy were created with ideas from the National Writing Project and teaching for transfer. Using multiple rounds of coding in conjunction with rhetorical analysis, I examine various textual artifacts from Pearl (nursing) and Conor (criminal justice), two earlycareer instructors who participated in the same professional development events in different years. I follow them as they engage new ideas through thinking activities that were intended to disrupt entrenched ways of knowing that come with disciplinary expertise, to see how their doing, thinking, and writing in this particular WAC PD impacted how they approach the teaching of writing. After offering threshold concepts for WAC that emerged from the cases, I argue that WAC PD may benefit from a more networked approach, and that WAC PD, overall, should engage faculty with more troublesome constructs in order to promote more meaningful learning experiences.