Notes on some key outcomes, frameworks, theories, pedagogies orientations, habits, etc...

Anson and Moore, Intro to Critical transitions: Writing and the question of transfer (2016)

Key enabling practices for writing transfer (based on Elon conference group and the Elon Statement of Writing Transfer) (pp 8-9):

Practices that promote writing transfer—and which are explored in multiple chapters in this collection and in research seminar participants’ other recent publications (e.g., Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing by Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak, 2014)—include:

• Constructing writing curricula and classes that focus on study of and practice with concepts that enable students to analyze expectations for writing and learning within specific contexts. These include rhetorically-based concepts (such as genre, purpose, and audience);

• Asking students to engage in activities that foster the development of metacognitive awareness, including asking good questions about writing situations and developing heuristics for analyzing unfamiliar writing situations; and

• Explicitly modeling transfer-focused thinking and the application of metacognitive” (“Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer”, 2016, p. 9)

Writing Transfer IS/ENTAILS (p. 8)
“application, remixing, or integration of previous knowledge, skills, strategies, and dispositions” (“Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer”, 2016, p. 8)

recognition that “affordances and constraints that impact use of prior knowledge, skills, strategies, and dispositions, and writing transfer successes and challenges cannot be understood outside of learners’ social-cultural spaces” (“Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer”, 2016, p. 8)

exploration of complexity (positive and negative impacts) of prior knowledge)

Individual identities and dispositions

Routinized AND transformative [~high v low/near v far transfer] efforts

Transformation of “rhetorical knowledge and rhetorical awareness into performance.”

Meta-awareness (especially in transferring/transforming across languages)

PRINCIPLES IN DEVELOPMENT

“• With explicit rhetorical education, students are more likely to transform rhetorical awareness into performance. • Helping students develop strategies and tools to think about how writing functions in communities can potentially prepare them to draw effectively on prior knowledge when they encounter writing in new settings, whether writing for a major, writing in a workplace, or writing for extracurricular activities.
• Some dispositions seem to better afford engaged rhetorical problem solving. We are only starting to explore what such dispositions might be, so pedagogy that promotes transfer needs to be attentive to dispositions research.” (“Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer”, 2016, p. 10)

“• Some physical and digital space designs afford learning and transfer better than others.
• The transfer of rhetorical knowledge and strategies between self-sponsored and academic writing can be encouraged by designing academic writing opportunities with authentic audiences and purposes and by asking students to engage in meta-cognition.” (“Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer”, 2016, p. 11)

From Chapter 2 of Yancey, K., Robertson, L., & Taczak, K. Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing (2014)

Different than that of the other approaches documented here, the course content is distinguished by two features. First, the TFT readings and assignments focus on writing-rich and writing-specific terms, concepts, and practices.” (Yancey et al., 2014, p. 56)

“Second, we include specific concepts and practices of reflection pointing students toward developing their own “theory of writing,” a theory intended to help students frame and reframe writing situations.” (Yancey et al., 2014, p. 57)

“Students’ development of their own “theory of writing” is a signature of the course, which engages students in a semester-long reflective process with the purpose of exploring the ways they develop, understand, use, and repurpose their knowledge and practice of writing. Thus, through a set of interlocking rhetorical concepts and practices, students in the TFT course learn content they are then able to transfer: (1) key rhetorical terms that aid in the understanding of writing as theory and practice; (2) the use of reflection as a tool for learning, thinking, and writing in the course and beyond; and (3) the development of a theory of writing that helps students create a framework of writing knowledge and practice they’ll take with them when the course is over.” (Yancey et al., 2014, p. 57)

“key terms and writing concepts, helps students describe and theorize writing; eleven such terms anchor the course. These terms, representing the core concepts about writing that students learn and practice in the course, are introduced in four sequential sets—(1) audience, genre, rhetorical situation, and reflection; (2) exigence, critical analysis, discourse community, and knowledge; (3) context, composing, and circulation; and (4) knowledge and reflection again—each set intended to support a specific writing assignment or course unit” (Yancey et al., 2014, p. 57)

57-58: Course Units

Unit 1: Students are introduced to key concepts/terms about writing while they learn to analyze and incorporate sources as evidence in their writing.

Unit 2: Students work with key concepts/terms about writing while they learn the importance of research and to conduct research, identify appropriate sources, and integrate sources into their writing.

Unit 3: Using the key concepts/terms about writing, students draw upon what they discovered and wrote about in the research phase (unit 2) for the development of strategically planned composition in multiple genres, or “Composition–in–three–genres.”

Unit 4: Writing a reflection-in-presentation, students work from substantial reflections and other writing activities completed throughout the course to articulate a theory of writing that integrates the key concepts and terms learned in the course with the practical experience gained in applying those concepts to their own writing.

REFLECTION: “The second component of the course, reflection, is introduced as a theory and a reiterative practice that students engage in before, during, and after their writing process” (Yancey et al., 2014, p. 58)

“the final component of the course is the theory of writing that students develop; its intent is to ensure students can theorize about and practice writing using key terms and concepts learned in the course, and to support their development as reflective writing practitioners who are able to abstract their theories and employ them in new contexts.” (Yancey et al., 2014, p. 58)

“students reflect on their theory of writing at ten different points—six different journal assignments ask them to think through one or two specific key terms they are learning at that point, and the short writing assignments that work toward one of the four major assignments also require students to define their theory at that moment.” (Yancey et al., 2014, p. 58)

Downs, D., & Wardle, E. "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning“First-Year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies” (2007)

“we propose a radically reimagined FYC as an Introduction to Writing Studies—a course about how to understand and think about writing in school and society” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 558)

“our field has not seriously considered radically reimagining the mission of the very course where misconceptions are born and/or reinforced; we have not yet imagined moving first-year composition from teaching “how to write in college” to teaching about writing—from acting as if writing is a basic, universal skill to acting as if writing studies is a discipline with content knowledge to which students should be introduced” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 553)

“The WPA Outcomes Statement adopted by the Council of Writing Program Administrators in April 2000 (http://wpacouncil.org/positions/outcomes. html) highlights four major outcomes for writing instruction: rhetorical knowledge; critical thinking, reading, and writing; processes; and knowledge of conventions.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 555)

“We are not arguing that transfer of writing knowledge cannot happen; rather, we are arguing that “far transfer” is difficult (Perkins and Salomon, “Teaching” and “Transfer”) and that most current incarnations of FYC do not teach for it as explicitly as is necessary.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 557)

“The range of theoretical and practical problems associated with teaching and transferring “universal educated discourse” (Russell, “Activity Theory”) or “general writing skills instruction” (Petraglia, “Introduction” and “Writing”) forces us to ask what FYC can actually do to prepare students for academic writing, particularly as it is currently constituted: taught in English departments mostly by adjuncts and graduate students and enrolling students from a variety of majors.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 557)

“If writing studies as a discipline is to have any authority over its own courses, our cornerstone course must resist conventional but inaccurate models of writing.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 557)

“writing is neither basic nor universal but content- and context-contingent and irreducibly complex.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 558)

“The course includes many of the same activities as current FYC courses: researching, reading, and writing arguments. However, the course content explores reading and writing: How does writing work? How do people use writing? What are problems related to writing and reading and how can they be solved? Students read writing research, conduct reading and writing auto-ethnographies, identify writing-related problems that interest them, write reviews of the existing literature on their chosen problems, and conduct their own primary research, which they report both orally and in writing.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 558)

“our iterations of the course were designed according to shared core beliefs and a desire to resist and alter students’ misconceptions about writing. The first of our shared beliefs corresponds with James Reither’s assertion that writing cannot be taught independent of content. ... When the course content is writing studies, writing instructors are concretely enabled to fill that expert reader role. This change directly contravenes the typical assumption that first-year writing can be about anything, that somehow the content is irrelevant to an instructor’s ability to respond to the writing.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 559)

“Second, the course is forthcoming about what writing instruction can and cannot accomplish; it does not purport to “teach students to write” in general nor does it purport to do all that is necessary to prepare students to write in college. Rather, it promises to help students understand some activities related to written scholarly inquiry by demonstrating the conversational and subjective nature of scholarly texts” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 559)

“Third, the course respects students by refusing to create double standards or different rules for student writers than for expert writers. For example, students learn to recognize the need for expert opinion and cite it where necessary, but they also learn to claim their own situational expertise and write from it as expert writers do.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 560)

“We do not prescribe an “ideal” set of readings here. However, the common denominators among our readings are these: 

• Material in readings is centered on issues with which students have first-hand experience—for example, problems students are prone to experience throughout the writing process, from conceptual questions of purpose, to procedural questions of drafting and revision, to issues surrounding critical reading. 

• Data-driven, research-focused readings seem more useful than highly theoretical pieces. The former tend to be both more readable and more concrete, making them more accessible and relevant to students.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 560)

“While we are sensitive to concerns about writing courses based on readings, research writing generally entails thoughtful responses to other writing.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 561)

“Class time spent on readings focuses more on students’ reactions to them than on the readings themselves; thus, our students write about issues raised by readings by responding to prompts such as, “How are your experiences with research writing like and unlike Shirlie’s as Kantz describes them?” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 561)

“We also assign literacy narratives or auto-ethnographies” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 561)

“The most noteworthy feature of the course is that students conduct primary research, however limited, on issues of interest to both themselves and the field of writing studies” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 562)

“The research project is tightly scaffolded. Students begin by conducting library research about the topics of their research questions and learn enough about primary research to suggest methods for studying their questions. They write formal research proposals that articulate their research questions and outline the methods they plan to use in their studies.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 562)

“We assign activities throughout the research project that help students become more proficient at writing with sources, including interpretive summaries in which students practice reading rhetorically and contributively by constructing arguments” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 563)

“Annotated bibliographies help students organize their library research and negotiate with instructors about issues such as number of sources, which we teach is contingent, like so much else, on the project in question.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 563)

“Developing a “community map” of opinion helps students envision research and argument as community inquiry” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 563)

“One conception of writing we strive to help students shift is imagining “writing” essentially as merely drafting a paper. The course design helps us show students that most scholarly researched writing in fact begins with becoming curious and establishing a question and moves through research.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 563)

“The final three weeks of our course are devoted to presentations and revision workshops. Students prepare ten-minute presentations of their research and participate on panels organized to create conversation among panelists.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 564)

“end-of-semester reflections, [reveal] increased self-awareness about writing, improved reading skills, and a new understanding of research writing as conversation.” (Downs and Wardle, 2007, p. 572)

** Heather Lindenman, Margaret Chapman, Jennifer Eidum, Lina Kuhn, and Li Li, "Beyond the 'Improvement Imperative': Writing to Change Oneself and the World in First Year Composition" (2024)

For almost 40 years, our university’s first year writing program has included a shared outcome: “Students will appreciate the capacity of writing to change oneself and the world.” This outcome, unlike our more typical composition goals concerning writing processes, rhetorical acumen, and critical research abilities, had never been assessed. Based on survey data collected from first year writing students (n=145) during the Spring 2020 semester, this article offers a student-generated construct of what “writing to change oneself and the world” meant to students at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What Types of Writing Do Students Identify as Changing Themselves or Others, and Why?

“assignments that ask the student to take a position on an issue: to persuade readers and/or advocate for a specific outcome (59)” (LIndenman et al., 2024, p. 60)

“research-related projects, where students gather and synthesize information from multiple sources (40)” (LIndenman et al., 2024, p. 60)

“personal projects, where students reflect on their writing, lives, goals, etc. (35)” (LIndenman et al., 2024, p. 60)

“analytical writing, where students analyze films, essays, or other texts (27)” (LIndenman et al., 2024, p. 60)

“students’ short-answer responses indicated enthusiasm regarding projects that offered at least some freedom in medium, approach, and/or topic” (LIndenman et al., 2024, p. 61)

“writing-adjacent reflection and learning that students reported, including emotional-interpersonal engagement, was made possible at least in part by the existence of our program’s idealistic, somewhat nebulous outcome, which held open space for types of learning that might not otherwise be supported, prioritized, or charted.” (LIndenman et al., 2024, p. 64)

“the ability to share meaningful work-in-progress with peers was a key way students reported writing functioning as an agent of change” (LIndenman et al., 2024, p. 64)

CWPA/NCTE/NWP Framework for Success in Post-Secondary Writing (executive summary, 2011, building on CWPA outcomes statement v1)

Habits of mind refers to ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical and that will support students’ success in a variety of fields and disciplines. The Framework identifies eight habits of mind essential for success in college writing:

• Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.
• Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
• Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
• Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.
• Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
• Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.
• Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
• Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.
• The Framework then explains how teachers can foster these habits of mind through writing, reading, and critical analysis experiences.  

These experiences aim to develop students’

• Rhetorical knowledge – the ability to analyze and act on understandings of audiences, purposes, and contexts in creating and comprehending texts;
• Critical thinking – the ability to analyze a situation or text and make thoughtful decisions based on that analysis, through writing, reading, and research;
• Writing processes – multiple strategies to approach and undertake writing and research;
• Knowledge of conventions – the formal and informal guidelines that define what is considered to be correct and appropriate, or incorrect and inappropriate, in a piece of writing; and
• Abilities to compose in multiple environments – from using traditional pen and paper to electronic technologies.

WPA Statement on the Five Knowledge Domains of First-Year Composition (4.0), Approved March 4, 2026

Domain 1: Rhetorical Knowledge Students should analyze contexts, genres, and audiences as they develop purposes and goals for their writing and produce texts using the full range of their linguistic, cultural, and semiotic repertoires. The texts that students consume and produce, both in and out of academia, may be alphanumeric combined with multimodal formats, thus creating epistemic conditions that include various digital and visual rhetorics. Students need support to understand their composing processes as embodied and connected to the ways that different people navigate texts and contexts and to consider the ethical and material stakes of these processes. 

Domain 2: Conventions and Language Students understand that all people bring diverse linguistic histories and practices to various contexts, each offering valuable perspectives. No dialect or language is inherently superior; value is shaped by communities and power dynamics. Instruction that privileges Standard English risks reinforcing inequities and overlooking students’ linguistic assets. Conventions and language are not universal—they evolve with cultural and disciplinary contexts. Students understand how conventions are constructed and negotiated, and why power circulates through language. Students are equipped to analyze, adapt, and advocate for their linguistic identities. 

Domain 3: Critical Reading and Thinking Students develop strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and analyze a text, including reading to understand what a text says, what a text does, and what a text means. Students need support to develop critical reading practices through standalone reading instruction and integrated reading and writing instruction. Students come to first-year composition with a wide range of reading practices. These reading practices emerge from their lived experience and education histories and shape how they uptake critical reading and thinking in first-year composition. 

Domain 4: Material Conditions and Technologies Composing is always subject to the material conditions of the rhetorical context; such material conditions might include time and space, knowledge, previous writing experiences, and access to production and distribution technologies. Students should critically attend to and reflect on material and ethical considerations in choosing and using information and technologies, acknowledging that they are not always in control of, or able to access the material conditions of any given rhetorical context.

Domain 5: Composing Processes Students develop a variety of strategies to create a wide range of texts. The strategies composers use are seldom linear but rather iterative and recursive, often consisting of interlocking individual and collaborative activities that lead to a completed (for-now) project. Such recursive activities include critical thinking, planning, creating, revising, and (re)creating, based on composers’ rhetorical situations, interactions with feedback and other composers, and the material affordances that shape their composing. Reflection and metacognition help composers adapt as a project unfolds as well as to deepen writing knowledge and transfer.

Cross-Cutting Domains

Accessibility and Disability. Students should learn about and reflect on the diverse ways they and other readers or audiences engage with conventional print-based and multimodal texts. While accessibility can include consideration of what language styles, conventions, and uses might support a reader’s uptake of a text, it must also center the embodied needs of disabled composers and readers. 

Generative Artificial Intelligence. Generally, specific kinds of digital technologies are not elevated to a learning outcome or domain. However, this cross domain for GenAI is predicated upon how writing programs are developing responses in different ways. The continuation of these cross-domains depends on the trajectory of the discipline’s interventions. Students understand GenAI as a class of artificial intelligence systems that can create new content, such as text, images, audio, and video. Students familiarize themselves with GenAI’s many forms, such as chat interfaces, features embedded in software, and AI agents. Students become aware of this technology's contributions to existing social inequalities, as well as its material impact on the environment, labor, creativity, human agency, and students’ learning. At the discretion of program and university leadership, students critically reflect on what GenAI platforms do and do not add to learning composing processes, research methods, and other writerly activities.

Genre. Students understand that genre is a social action. That is, they understand that genres are purposeful responses by writers to recurring situations within contexts and communities, not simply categories of texts and their typical features. Genres help writers identify the conventions of a given text, whether it is primarily alphanumeric or multimodal, as well as the expectations for audiences who are familiar with these texts. Analyzing genres helps writers to understand unfamiliar texts.