Transnational Writing Program Administration - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874219612 ISBN 13: 9780874219616

Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

While local conditions remain at the forefront of writing program administration, transnational activities are slowly and thoroughly shifting the questions we ask about writing curricula, the space and place in which writing happens, and the cultural and linguistic issues at the heart of the relationships forged in literacy work. Transnational Writing Program Administration challenges taken-for-granted assumptions regarding program identity, curriculum and pedagogical effectiveness, logistics and quality assurance, faculty and student demographics, innovative partnerships and research, and the infrastructure needed to support writing instruction in higher education.

Well-known scholars and new voices in the field extend the theoretical underpinnings of writing program administration to consider programs, activities, and institutions involving students and faculty from two or more countries working together and highlight the situated practices of such efforts. The collection brings translingual graduate students at the forefront of writing studies together with established administrators, teachers, and researchers and intends to enrich the efforts of WPAs by examining the practices and theories that impact our ability to conceive of writing program administration as transnational.

This collection will enable writing program administrators to take the emerging locations of writing instruction seriously, to address the role of language difference in writing, and to engage critically with the key notions and approaches to writing program administration that reveal its transnationality.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David S. Martins is associate professor and writing program administrator at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Transnational Writing Program Administration

By David S. Martins

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2015 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-87421-961-6

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Transnational Writing Program Administration: An Introduction DAVID S. MARTINS, 
Part I: Transnational Positioning, 
1 Deconstructing "Writing Program Administration" in an International Context CHRIS M. ANSON AND CHRISTIANE DONAHUE, 
2 Tech Travels: Connecting Writing Classes across Continents ALYSSA O'BRIEN AND CHRISTINE ALFANO, 
3 The First-Year Writing Seminar Program at Weill Cornell Medical College - Qatar: Balancing Tradition, Culture, and Innovation in Transnational Writing Instruction ALAN S. WEBER, KRYSTYNA GOLKOWSKA, IAN MILLER, RODNEY SHARKEY, MARY ANN RISHEL, AND AUTUMN WATTS, 
4 Adaptation across Space and Time: Revealing Pedagogical Assumptions DANIELLE ZAWODNY WETZEL AND DUDLEY W. REYNOLDS, 
5 So Close, Yet So Far: Administering a Writing Program with a Bahamian Campus SHANTI BRUCE, 
6 Exploring the Contexts of US-Mexican Border Writing Programs BETH BRUNK-CHAVEZ, KATE MANGELSDORF, PATRICIA WOJAHN, ALFREDO URZUA-BELTRAN, OMAR MONTOYA, BARRY THATCHER, AND KATHRYN VALENTINE, 
Part II: Transnational Language, 
7 Global Writing Theory and Application on the US-Mexico Border BARRY THATCHER, OMAR MONTOYA, AND KELLY MEDINA-LÓPEZ, 
8 Globalization and Language Difference: A Mesodiscursive Approach HEM PAUDEL, 
9 (Re-)Situating Translingual Work for Writing Program Administration in Cross-National and Cross-Language Perspectives from Lebanon and Singapore NANCY BOU AYASH, 
10 Discourses of Internationalization and Diversity in US Universities and Writing Programs CHRISTINE M. TARDY, 
Part III: Transnational Engagement, 
11 Disposable Drudgery: Outsourcing Goes to College REBECCA DINGO, RACHEL RIEDNER, AND JENNIFER WINGARD, 
12 Economies of Composition: Mapping Transnational Writing Programs in US Community Colleges WENDY OLSON, 
13 From "Educating the Other" to Cross-Boundary Knowledge-Making: Globally Networked Learning Environments as Critical Sites of Writing Program Administration DOREEN STARKE-MEYERRING, 
Afterword BRUCE HORNER, 
About the Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Deconstructing "Writing Program Administration" in an International Context

CHRIS M. ANSON AND CHRISTIANE DONAHUE

The scene is familiar: you're moving across a rural landscape in a train, car, bus, or even on a bicycle. If this landscape is arable, eventually you'll pass by something you immediately recognize as farmland. The crops will be specific to the region, of course: corn, cotton, soybeans, pineapple, tobacco, poppies. But if someone were to ask you what goes on in those fields, what activity the fields represent, without hesitation you'd say farming. Even when we travel to the most remote and culturally distinctive regions of the world, "farming" activates familiar schemas for us.

In some ways, the concept of the "writing program," with its roots in the history of US higher education and the development of the almost ubiquitous first-year composition (FYC) requirement, is generic enough in most educators' minds to make a rough but workable analogy to the concept of farmland. The activities that take place in most writing programs — curricular oversight, teacher development, the placement of students into courses, and the attempt to make several or many different classes cohesive across a range of teachers — exist at the same level of generality as tilling soil, putting down seed, and harvesting what grows.

When we think about writing programs and their administration, it's tempting to construct them by activating familiar schemas that we map onto other educational contexts. Acknowledging that students may be fulfilling a variety of educational requirements structured in different ways, in various kinds of degree programs with different missions, and in other languages, we nevertheless imagine some kind of organizational center whose goals and activities share an affinity with the ones we know. At the helm is a director, someone with specialized knowledge and, usually, an advanced degree in rhetoric and composition. The principle activity is teaching, which is provided by a group of academic staff, sometimes tenure-line faculty, sometimes graduate students, but usually — especially at larger institutions — part-time or full-time instructors on contingent appointments. However, these assumptions often ignore major differences in what constitutes a "program," and how that program functions within its broader activity system — with various complex political, ideological, and social (f)actors at work. Consider, for example, the difference between a family-run soybean farm and a corporate-style wheat farm. These farms' economies of scale will be strikingly different. The larger farm will be in a more productive, competitive bargaining position than the smaller and may be able to withstand the ebbs and flows of the economy more effectively. Although there will be a hierarchy that governs both farms, the larger one will adhere to a carefully designed structure with specified roles and reporting processes, while the family farm will operate on the basis of tradition and unwritten rules of activity and productivity. The "farmers" in the corporate operation may include managers who have MBAs or advanced degrees in agricultural economics, while the titular head of the family farm may only be a high school graduate. When we compare the large, business-run US farm with one, say, in China, significant differences emerge from these countries' governance systems and overarching political and economic ideologies. Every operation within the farm itself — its roles, interpersonal relations, activities, finances, and measures of accountability — must be understood in light of these systems.

Over the past twenty years, the common refrain in US composition literature that references writing instruction and writing programs beyond US borders has been one of lack or even absence: "There is no ..." Even as recently as 2007, Susan McLeod stated that "there was until very recently no comparable [FYC] course in universities based on the European model" (McLeod 2007, 23), with the exception of some in the Netherlands — a claim that simply does not bear out (see, for example, Donahue 2008). That misperception, we propose, has grown out of our tendency to look for what we know and, not seeing it, proclaim that it doesn't exist, such as arriving in a country where farming takes place out of sight in huge underground greenhouses when we expect it to be above ground. Sometimes the farm doesn't look like a farm. The "there is no ..." belief persists for three additional reasons. It has grown out of our tendency, first, to equate any "writing program" with "first-year US-style composition curriculum," and, second, to restrict our knowledge to what we can read in English. Third, and perhaps more insidiously, the narrative serves us better by falsely reassuring us of our unique status in the world of writing instruction. And our overseas colleagues tend to oblige — because the programs can appear so different, the narrative is easier to enter. Only when pressed about classroom activities or curricular goals do alternate narratives emerge, usually ones that more closely resemble writing across the curriculum (WAC) or writing in the disciplines (WID).

And...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0874219612
• ISBN 13: 9780874219616
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 362
• Herausgeber: Martins David S.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland