Mixed Messages

Efforts to promote disciplinary literacy can help students integrate knowledge with ways of doing and being within disciplinary settings. Yet, effectively facilitating disciplinary literacy, even within an upper-level undergraduate physics course like the one studied here, is surprisingly hard. Thi...

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Main Author: Rick Fisher
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Indiana University Office of Scholarly Publishing 2023-04-01
Series:Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Subjects:
Online Access:https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/josotl/article/view/32483
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author Rick Fisher
author_facet Rick Fisher
author_sort Rick Fisher
collection DOAJ
description Efforts to promote disciplinary literacy can help students integrate knowledge with ways of doing and being within disciplinary settings. Yet, effectively facilitating disciplinary literacy, even within an upper-level undergraduate physics course like the one studied here, is surprisingly hard. This article qualitatively analyzes an instructor’s responses to student lab reports and finds that his comments to students focused on issues of correctness, often at the expense of larger rhetorical concerns of the text. Analysis also suggests that the instructor was thinking about many rhetorical aspects beyond surface-level errors as he read. Together, these findings suggest that efforts to promote disciplinary literacy, especially related to writing instruction, benefit from recognizing the layered contexts of activity in which writing and responding to lab reports take place. These findings hold value for secondary and post-secondary literacy instruction; in broad terms, this study may serve as a cautionary tale by illuminating the overlapping and competing value systems involved in disciplinary literacy efforts
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spelling doaj.art-b0bcc628f167406787c6c6d0bcc35a542023-04-16T02:36:55ZengIndiana University Office of Scholarly PublishingJournal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning1527-93162023-04-01231Mixed MessagesRick Fisher Efforts to promote disciplinary literacy can help students integrate knowledge with ways of doing and being within disciplinary settings. Yet, effectively facilitating disciplinary literacy, even within an upper-level undergraduate physics course like the one studied here, is surprisingly hard. This article qualitatively analyzes an instructor’s responses to student lab reports and finds that his comments to students focused on issues of correctness, often at the expense of larger rhetorical concerns of the text. Analysis also suggests that the instructor was thinking about many rhetorical aspects beyond surface-level errors as he read. Together, these findings suggest that efforts to promote disciplinary literacy, especially related to writing instruction, benefit from recognizing the layered contexts of activity in which writing and responding to lab reports take place. These findings hold value for secondary and post-secondary literacy instruction; in broad terms, this study may serve as a cautionary tale by illuminating the overlapping and competing value systems involved in disciplinary literacy efforts https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/josotl/article/view/32483disciplinary literacyWAC/WIDlab reportsactivity systems
spellingShingle Rick Fisher
Mixed Messages
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
disciplinary literacy
WAC/WID
lab reports
activity systems
title Mixed Messages
title_full Mixed Messages
title_fullStr Mixed Messages
title_full_unstemmed Mixed Messages
title_short Mixed Messages
title_sort mixed messages
topic disciplinary literacy
WAC/WID
lab reports
activity systems
url https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/josotl/article/view/32483
work_keys_str_mv AT rickfisher mixedmessages