Composition Forum 46, Spring 2021
http://compositionforum.com/issue/46/

Beyond Osmosis: Developing Teaching for Transfer Pedagogy for Graduate Classes in Composition

Ryan P. Shepherd, Courtney A. Mauck, Christopher J. Barber, and Sue Fletcher

Abstract: Empirical methods to evaluate undergraduate pedagogy have become quite common in the field of composition studies. Reflection on and evaluation of graduate pedagogy in the field is much less common, however. In this article, the authors suggest that scholars in the field endeavor to develop pedagogical methods for graduate education, while also proposing one such pedagogical approach. The first author developed an approach for the graduate course History and Theories of Composition using an adaptation of Teaching for Transfer pedagogy. With the help of his graduate student co-authors and with interviews from experienced graduate instructors and additional graduate students, the research team further developed this pedagogy to be more effectively applied to graduate courses in composition studies. We believe this approach may be one among many to use, and we encourage other scholars to further develop this method and to develop alternatives.

The field of composition studies has built a robust set of pedagogical approaches to teaching composition, writing, rhetoric, and literacy over the last five decades. In recent years, scholars have developed tools to test these approaches to determine their efficacy. This evaluation of composition pedagogy goes back many years in the field, beginning with the more theoretical work of Linda Flower and John R. Hayes and continuing to the more empirical work of scholars such as Lucille Parkinson McCarthy. There has been an escalation of studies evaluating pedagogical approaches through empirical methods in the last two decades, with many of them developing out of learning transfer theory. For example, the Writing about Writing approach developed by Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle was evaluated through case studies in the original 2007 article and has since been evaluated in other texts such as the article by Carol Hayes, Ed Jones, Gwen Gorzelsky, and Dana L. Driscoll. It was then adapted to professional writing contexts and evaluated by Sarah Read and Michael J. Michaud. Similarly, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines have made a move toward more empirical verification of pedagogical approaches through work from scholars such as Anne Beaufort; Irene L. Clark and Andrea Hernandez; Dan Fraizer; Susan Green et al.; Joanna Wolfe, Barrie Olson, and Laura Wilder; and many others.

Perhaps the most versatile pedagogical approach that has been studied throughout numerous texts is the Teaching for Transfer (TFT) approach first developed by Liane Robertson, Kara Taczak, and Kathleen Blake Yancey in their article in Composition Forum and greatly expanded upon in their later book Writing Across Contexts (Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak). The TFT approach initially focused on mainstream first-year writing contexts, but it has since been expanded to two-year colleges (Andrus, Mitchler, and Tinberg) and WAC contexts (Yancey, Davis, Robertson, Taczak, and Workman) as well.

These empirical approaches to teaching writing have advanced pedagogical theories and methodologies. Scholars can create and test approaches to determine what works and adapt pedagogy to continually improve. Unfortunately, graduate pedagogy in the field of composition studies has been much less theorized and studied, to the point where Leonard Cassuto called it “remarkably sparse” (15). What scholarship does exist has not taken up the approach of improvement through empirical methods. Graduate teachers, such as the first author of this text, Ryan P. Shepherd, often rely on their own experiences in graduate school or adaptations of undergraduate models when developing their first graduate classes. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, graduate pedagogy should be developed theoretically and tested empirically with the same rigor that the field uses when developing undergraduate pedagogy. As it stands, composition studies has few texts that focus specifically on teaching graduate composition courses, and those we do have tend to focus on the teaching practicum (see, for example, Sidney I. Dobrin). Studies that explore theoretical approaches to graduate pedagogy beyond the practicum are rare. Those that rely on empirical approaches to evaluate these pedagogical methods do not seem to exist.

With this in mind, the authors of this text have two goals. The first is a general call for more published work theorizing and testing pedagogical approaches to teaching graduate courses. To further this call, we have interviewed nine scholars in the field about what informs their approaches to teaching graduate classes and how they determine student outcomes and evaluate their approaches’ efficacies. The second goal is to propose one possible approach for teaching graduate composition courses. This approach is an adaptation of the TFT approach presented by Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak. TFT has built a body of research that suggests that it is effective in encouraging students to use what they are learning beyond the classroom context. We believe that a similar approach may be effective in graduate education as well. In undergraduate composition classes, the TFT approach requires students to develop a “theory of writing” (4). Here, we are adapting this to help graduate students develop a “theory of composition”—that is, a theory for how to teach, study, and produce research in the field of composition studies. To determine the efficacy of this approach, this text is co-written by students who were in the class—Courtney A. Mauck, Christopher J. Barber, and Sue Fletcher—who offer experiential and experimental insights and suggestions. To build on the co-authors’ suggestions, six additional students from the course were interviewed about their experiences during and after the class.

This adaptation of TFT may be one effective approach among many for graduate composition courses. We call for other scholars to build on this approach or develop additional pedagogical approaches in the pages of composition studies journals.

Graduate Pedagogy

Even though little has been written about graduate composition pedagogy, valuable scholarship on this topic does exist. This scholarship offers insight into the design of graduate rhetoric and composition courses and occasionally has connections to learning transfer and TFT as well. These connections tend to come in the form of suggestions for reflection and connection to content outside of the bounds of the class. Most of the scholarship focuses on one of three areas: the teaching practicum and/or training for graduate teaching assistants; multimodal composition in graduate education; and graduate student disposition. In what follows, we offer a brief overview of this scholarship and its applicability to graduate composition pedagogy. We then supplement the somewhat sparse literature on this subject with interviews with graduate instructors of rhetoric and composition.

Theories and Approaches to Graduate Pedagogy in Composition

The most in-depth literature concerning graduate composition pedagogy is focused on the composition teaching practicum—the orientation or training session often given to new teaching assistants in master’s and doctoral programs. Often, this is taught by the writing program administrator, and the course usually includes graduate students from composition graduate programs as well as students from literature, linguistics, and/or creative writing depending on the graduate program structure at the given institution.

This practicum is covered most extensively in the collection edited by Sidney I. Dobrin, Don’t Call It That: The Composition Practicum, which focuses on the roles of the composition practicum as “an introduction to composition theory, to research methodologies, to pedagogical theory, to histories of composition studies as a discipline, and to larger disciplinary questions about writing” (2). Chapters in the collection offer methods that are particularly applicable to TFT, but may also be applicable to broader forms of graduate education. While none of the chapters refer to learning transfer directly, several chapters offer methods to encourage students to connect what they do in the practicum to their own teaching, research, and scholarly practices. Some examples include the chapter by Anthony J. Michel, who encourages the “productive classroom practices of theorizing” (185), and the chapter by Susan Kay Miller, Rochelle Rodrigo, Veronica Pantoja, and Duane Roen, who present the practicum “as an early foundation for lifelong professional development” (82). These chapters and others in the collection offer a loose connection to learning transfer through connections to contexts outside of the practicum, but they are otherwise not concerned with issues of transfer in graduate education.

Several other articles focus specifically on the teaching practicum or training for graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). Many of these articles have a loose association with learning transfer theory as well through their suggestions for reflection and connection to content beyond the course. Ronda Leathers Dively asks new GTAs to “reflect on their pedagogical practices, to enact appropriate practices in future contexts, and to articulate the rationale behind these practices.” Michael Stancliff and Maureen Daly Goggin encourage GTAs to grapple with theories and get students to select one to apply to their own teaching. Casie Fedukovich and Megan Hall ask GTAs to analyze “new contexts,” develop “new pedagogical insights,” and raise “new questions for research” as part of the training. Heidi Estrem and Shelley E. Reid present connections between the large general audience for FYW courses and what WPAs need to do when developing GTA training. These articles detail the creation of graduate practica and offer some insight into developing graduate pedagogy. While applications beyond the practicum context are not always explicitly stated, the courses described offer opportunities for reflection that would facilitate connection to contexts beyond the class.

A stronger connection to learning transfer comes from several articles that explore disposition in GTAs as it relates to practicum classes. Disposition is an important factor in learning transfer (see, for example, Dana Lynn Driscoll and Jennifer Wells) and would likely influence TFT pedagogy in graduate courses. Disposition is approached from the perspective of resistance (Ebest), identity formation (Grouling), and self-perception (Dryer) among GTAs in the practicum. None of these authors address disposition and learning transfer directly.

The approaches to TA training above offer a useful starting point for this project in that these courses are often designed with very specific outcomes in mind and are built to meet these outcomes. Our goal in this project builds on this idea: we are encouraging a self-reflective and meta-aware approach to building all graduate composition courses much in the way that these scholars have built self-reflective and meta-aware approaches to the teaching practicum. We hope to do this with learning transfer explicitly in mind, and we want to take this a step further as well by evaluating the effectiveness of our approach after the course has finished.

There are fewer texts that focus on graduate composition pedagogy beyond the teaching practicum and fewer still that offer connections to learning transfer beyond the class. The biggest source of graduate composition pedagogy articles is a special issue of Computers and Composition focused specifically on graduate education and technology. This issue was edited by Peter Goggin and Patricia Webb Boyd, and the articles largely focus on the development of programs that incorporate technology into graduate composition education. Douglas Eyman, Stephanie Sheffield, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss focus on the formation of the Digital Rhetoric Collective and the opportunities it offers for professionalization of graduate students. Kathleen Blake Yancey explores the curricular revision of the graduate program at Florida State University in which she endeavored to “remix” the program: taking parts from the old curriculum and incorporating an additional focus of technology. Michael Knievel and Mary P. Sheridan-Rabideau explain how they reshaped their MA program to focus on new media, including the process of incorporating new media into all graduate work in writing.

These articles are useful in that they offer models for building curricula to move toward a specific theoretical approach at the graduate level, but in the special issue, two articles particularly stand out as offering clear connections to graduate curriculum development and learning transfer. Meredith Graupner, Lee Nickoson-Massey, and Kristine Blair argue for focusing on students’ development of “a professional identity” through a transition to becoming “a knowledge-maker who positions herself among various theories and methodologies that guide her modes of inquiry and pedagogy” (15). Chris M. Anson and Susan K. Miller-Cochran call for a “constructivist” approach (38) to teaching: that is to say, that students should be building new knowledge on top of existing knowledge and not simply be expected to absorb teacher expertise. The authors state that graduate composition programs “should be searching for ways to make connections among disciplines, students, and the community while incorporating new approaches that will help make graduate education more relevant to the world outside of academia” (39). We are building on this idea of trying to develop a more connected and carefully developed graduate pedagogy. Connection beyond a single class is important for the development of graduate students into professional scholars and serves as a useful means of engaging in learning transfer beyond class context.

Additional articles have occasionally come up in regards to graduate education and pedagogy, such as Meagan Kittle Autry and Michael Carter’s article on support for graduate writing in writing centers, Staci Maree Perryman-Clark’s development of a course on Black women and rhetoric, Nancy Mack’s article on using parody in a composition theory class, Richard Marback’s article on making argument more accessible beyond our doctoral programs, and Laura R. Micciche and Allison D. Carr’s article on creating a writing class for graduate-level English majors. There is even a special issue of Composition Studies from 1995 that deals exclusively with graduate course syllabi (Bolin, Burmester, Faber, and Vandenberg). However, these articles have only loose connections to learning transfer in graduate composition pedagogy. Perhaps the article most relevant to this project is by Peter H. Khost, Debra Rudder Lohe, and Chuck Sweetman from a special issue of Pedagogy edited by Leonard Cassuto. Khost, Lohe, and Sweetman point out something we are expressing here: new approaches to graduate teaching “should be grounded in greater metacognitive awareness” and should not rely on “osmosis” (20). We are attempting to answer the call in this article for pedagogy that may help to offer both a critical awareness of what one is teaching and students an opportunity to connect content beyond the classroom through direct attempts to facilitate these connections instead of through “osmosis.”

While there is less pedagogical theorizing at the graduate level in composition studies, what does exist offers insight into the development of our pedagogy of graduate TFT. The field has a robust exploration of the teaching practicum and some other texts that explore topics such as the incorporation of technology in rhetoric and composition graduate programs and a host of other issues. These texts often call for reflection and connection to contexts beyond the class —both of which may help facilitate learning transfer. Many of these articles paint a very detailed picture of how to build a specific class at the graduate level: a practicum, a course on new media, or a course on race and rhetoric, for example. Few texts attempt to build a theory of graduate education writ large, however. Scholars in the field of rhetoric and composition often do this at the undergraduate level: we create theories that drive the pedagogy of writing and composition courses at various levels and with various subjects. We have several theories of first-year composition or writing across the curriculum, for example. The authors of this text hope to create a similar pedagogical theory at the graduate level in this text, and we call on other scholars in the field to do so as well.

Interviews with Graduate Instructors

Because the development and testing of pedagogical theories of graduate composition education is largely absent from the literature (with the possible exception of Khost, Lohe, and Sweetman), the co-authors of this text decided to supplement this literature by asking graduate composition instructors directly about the development and implementation of their pedagogy in graduate courses. To do this, Ryan conducted IRB-approved interviews with nine scholars who teach graduate courses in rhetoric and composition at universities across the United States. Interviewees were selected in order to get a broad range of institution types and geographical locations. Of the ten interviewees asked to participate, nine agreed to be interviewed. For a brief overview of the people selected for these interviews, see Table 1 below. Interviewees offer a mix of experience levels, program types, and home institutions. Two of the interviewees were scholars of color, and three work at institutions where students of color make up more than half of the student population. All but one of the discussed programs offers a graduate concentration in rhetoric, composition, and/or writing. All the courses explored as part of these interviews were specifically composition or writing focused, but the specific subject matter of individual courses varied wildly. Some teachers were teaching courses that resembled “History and Theory of Composition”—the course used for this study—such as “Introduction to Rhetoric & Composition” and “Composition Studies.” Other teachers were teaching practica, such as “Teaching College Writing,” and others — like the practicum—focused on specific pedagogical interests such as “Teaching Multimodal Composition” and “Online Writing Instruction.” The remaining courses were more specialized content in rhetoric and composition, such as “The History of Rhetoric,” “Technology and Literacy,” and “Scholarly Publication.” Most of these classes were a mix of rhetoric and composition graduate students and students from literature, linguistics, and creative writing. Ultimately, the interviews covered a wide range of the types of courses typically taught in rhetoric and composition graduate programs.

Table 1. Interviewees

Name{1}	Rank{2}	Institution Location	Institution Type	Graduate R&C Program	Course Level	Course Type
April	Assistant	South	Doctoral, Professional	MA	MA	Teaching College Writing
David	Associate	Midwest	Doctoral, HR	MA & PhD	PhD	Introduction to Rhetoric & Composition
Dana	Assistant	Midwest	Doctoral, VHR	MA & PhD	MA/PhD	Composition Studies
Eric	Assistant	Southwest	Doctoral, VHR	MA & PhD	MA/PhD	History of Rhetoric
Jill	Associate	South	Master’s, Larger	MA	BA/MA	Teaching Multilingual Composition
Michael	Assistant	Northeast	Doctoral, Professional	MA & PhD	PhD	Technology and Literacy
Rick	Assistant	West Coast	Master’s, Larger	English MA	MA	Composition Studies
Sophia	Full	Southwest	Doctoral, VHR	MA & PhD	PhD	Scholarly Publication
Todd	Associate	East Coast	Doctoral, HR	MA & PhD	MA/PhD	Online Writing Instruction

Interviewees were asked a set of fifteen questions that focused on their pedagogical approaches and what goals or take-aways they had for students in the class (see Appendix 1). The final question specifically asked about learning transfer. Interviews were loosely structured, and questions often led to deeper discussions on these topics as they related to graduate teaching.

All the interviewees were dedicated and thoughtful teachers who deeply considered the goals of their classes and how they were meeting them. Common goals and take-aways included encouraging students to find research interests, putting theory into practice, fostering pedagogical reflection and/or application, learning to apply research methods, and understanding current conversations in the field. Many of the interviewees referred to more than one of these goals for their classes. When asked about general take-aways, Sophia said that she wanted students “to feel like they know how to do something.” In other words, she wanted them to go beyond simply learning content to internalizing and applying it. This was a sentiment expressed by all the interviewees at various times during the interviews: class content should go beyond the class to teaching, writing, researching, and administration.

Interviewees offered both general and specific teaching models used when building their graduate composition classes. Models and approaches mentioned included situated and experiential learning, translingualism, social constructivism, feminist pedagogies, and cultural rhetorics. Dana said that she hoped to create a “distributed learning model where everyone is valued.” Rick described his approach as “invitational,” meaning that he created a welcoming approach for students new to the field of rhetoric and composition. He presented this as a way of showcasing what rhetoric and composition has to offer: “Here are the ways that they can help you. Here are the ways that you can use them and manipulate them and let them change you in ways that will benefit you as a scholar and a teacher.”

All the interviewees mentioned applications beyond the class context. Teaching was the most common application mentioned, followed closely by research applications. Research applications included things such as selecting methodologies and improving scholarly writing. Connecting to learning contexts beyond the classroom was the primary goal for nearly all the interviewees. Five out of the nine interviewees mentioned exercises based around meta-awareness and/or reflection as part of their pedagogy. While not always referring to it by name, all nine mentioned at least one reflective practice during the interviews. It seemed clear from the interviews that encouraging students to think beyond the class and apply content to other contexts was a common and important component of graduate education in composition studies. What the reflections in these classes focused on varied. Many of the interviewees mentioned applying class content to concurrent or future teaching, and many mentioned applying content to scholarly writing and research. Dana specifically mentioned the reflection working toward professionalization of students, allowing them to work toward “development as instructors.”

When asked about specific take-aways for teaching, research, or graduate education, most of the interviewees focused on one of the areas. In general, the interviewees at larger institutions were more focused on outcomes related to research, and those at smaller institutions were more focused on outcomes related to teaching. It seemed there was a push in specific programs to help students become better teachers, better scholars, and sometimes both.

Many of the interviewees expressed a goal of trying to be explicit and transparent in their teaching. This was often in response to their own graduate education in which the moves toward professionalization were often left opaque. Sophia stated that she had talked with other faculty who were of the mind that “Well, if you can't figure that out for yourself, then you're not really cut out for this,” and said that other instructors thought that “this stuff should just be so obvious to everybody! Why waste a class on it?” None of the interviewees seemed to have this mindset. All of them seemed invested in helping their students as much as they could to succeed.

None of the interviewees explicitly mentioned learning transfer as part of their pedagogy until asked about it explicitly in the final question. In response to that question, three interviewees mentioned learning transfer as part of the content covered in their class, but only one expressed it as a motivation for developing their graduate composition pedagogy. That same interviewee was the only one to mention TFT directly. Of course, that is not to say that these graduate instructors were not engaging in classroom practices that would facilitate transfer. They certainly were. All nine interviewees expressly mentioned at least one activity that connected to content outside of the class: building research methods for other graduate classes, creating a process for scholarly publication, developing teaching materials for future courses, and creating research questions for future research just to name a few. Codifying these practices and evaluating their efficacy may be helpful in developing future graduate composition courses.

The interviewees had robust and thoughtful approaches to pedagogy that were likely to offer students opportunities for growth beyond their classes. Part of what this text hopes to encourage is a movement towards documenting these approaches and testing their efficacy to improve graduate education.

Adapting TFT for Graduate Classes

Building on the literature and interviews above, we hope to create a possible pedagogical approach for graduate composition classes. We have chosen to adapt the Teaching for Transfer (TFT) model for graduate courses because of its efficacy with undergraduate courses (Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak). This model was first developed by Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak for first-year writing contexts, but we believe this model is well suited for graduate courses as well. A focus on reflection and creating theories of writing is particularly appropriate to encourage graduate students to make connections beyond the classroom—something that has been encouraged in the literature on graduate composition pedagogy and that was mentioned by all of the instructor interviewees for this project. In particular, we are hoping to build a “greater metacognitive awareness” (Khost, Lohe, and Sweetman 20) with this pedagogy. In this section, we will first explain the concept of learning transfer and then specifically TFT to contextualize the pedagogy we are proposing.

Learning Transfer Theory and TFT

Learning transfer theory is a common topic in the pages of composition studies journals, but one which is also commonly misunderstood. At its heart, learning transfer is using knowledge acquired in one context in a different context. However, it rarely is as simple as that definition suggests. The first and most important point to address is that nothing “transfers” in learning transfer; people do not pick up knowledge in one context, move it to another context, and unload it. Knowledge acquisition and application is far more complex than that. Instead, when people learn something new, they mix that knowledge in with what they already know. This process is referred to as “assemblage” if the person simply tacks new knowledge onto the old knowledge without fundamentally shifting their core thinking, and it is referred to as “remix” if the person integrates the knowledge into their pre-existing knowledge more comprehensively (Robertson, Taczak, and Yancey). For example, let us say a first-time teaching assistant is taking a graduate practicum in teaching university writing. And let us say this TA took a first-year writing course when they were an undergraduate student that focused on developing an authentic voice and grammatical correctness as the primary pillars of the class. Now, let us imagine the TA practicum focuses on building multimodal assignments and understanding discourse communities. In an assemblage model, the TA would keep the essence of what they already believe—that voice and grammatical correctness are at the center of FYW—but may also tack on information about multimodal composing and discourse communities. In a remix model, the TA may abandon part or all of their past learning and mix it more concretely with the new learning. In this case, they might choose to develop a class that centers around multimodal composing but that also includes readings and activities that are designed to develop an authentic voice. In assemblage, the center stays the same and new information is added. In remix, the center may change entirely.

The process of mixing in new knowledge continues as people move beyond the learning context and apply what they learn to new situations. Application usually requires changing the knowledge in some ways. Doug Brent calls this process of changing knowledge “transformation.” Michael-John DePalma and Jeffrey M. Ringer call this “adaptive transfer,” and Kara Poe Alexander, Michael-John DePalma, and Jeffrey M. Ringer build on this to create “adaptive remediation,” as learners move across media.

Because nothing “transfers” in learning transfer, it is more helpful to think of transfer as building connections. The process involves learners shifting knowledge inside of their heads and connecting it to other types of knowledge. Learning transfer is far more about making connections than it is about moving anything (Shepherd). For example, if we continue the example above, the TAs may find that when they move on to teaching at a new institution, they think back and connect what they learned in their practicum about discourse communities to a new WAC-focused curriculum. They never explicitly were told to connect discourse and WAC, but they may be able to see a connection and draw on prior knowledge to apply in this new situation. Attempting to teach with connection building in mind is important to consider when teachers create pedagogical approaches built on learning transfer theory. The teachers are only creating contexts in the classroom that facilitate making connections—not causing connections to happen directly. That is to say, teachers are attempting to create an atmosphere where it is easy to connect classroom content to contexts outside of the classroom, and the students will or will not make those connections themselves. Whether they do make connections depends on several factors, such as their willingness to mindfully abstract what they are learning (Salomon and Perkins), their willingness to generalize the content beyond the immediate context (Beach), their attitudes toward writing and perceived connections across writing contexts (Driscoll), their dispositions toward classroom factors and content (Driscoll and Powell), and many other influences.

TFT is a pedagogical approach that is centered on learning transfer theory. This approach was first developed by Robertson, Taczak, and Yancey in Composition Forum. The authors further detailed and evaluated this model in Writing Across Contexts (Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak). TFT was initially conceived for undergraduate students of first-year writing. Three central pieces make up TFT in this form and all subsequent adaptations: key terms, reflective practice, and a theory of writing. The introduction and application of key terms is central to the pedagogical approach. This allows students to develop a vocabulary to discuss concepts central to understanding writing{3}. The key terms used by Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak build on threshold concepts in the field. Certain further iterations of TFT encourage students to build on and remix the key terms initially presented by the instructor to take more ownership of the terms and apply them to specific writing contexts in students’ lives (Yancey, Davis, Robertson, Taczak, and Workman).

The second component of TFT, regular reflective practice, is a method to get students to consider what they are learning and how it applies to other contexts. In TFT, it is “used in explicit and intentional ways to help aid students in understanding both their identity as a writer and the creation of their theory of writing” (Robertson and Taczak 97). The final component is the development of a theory of writing. This develops out of the students’ engagement with the terms and their reflective practice throughout the semester. Students build their theory of writing as a way of understanding what they are learning. It includes things such as writing processes, how they understand the key terms, and how they create knowledge through writing (Robertson and Taczak). The theory may include their adaptations of key terms as mentioned above (Yancey, Davis, Robertson, Taczak, and Workman).

These three concepts are central to TFT, and they are easily adapted to other contexts (see, for example, Andrus, Mitchler, and Tinberg; or Wolfe, Olson, and Wilder). This specific adaptation for graduate composition pedagogy uses all three of these components but shifts the approach to be more in line with the specific contexts of rhetoric and composition graduate programs.

TFT for Graduate Courses

Ryan used the TFT framework for a graduate composition course titled History and Theories of Composition (HTC) and later updated this curriculum with the help of Courtney, Chris, Sue, and an additional graduate student co-author, David T. Johnson (Shepherd, Johnson, Fletcher, Mauck, and Barber). The HTC curriculum used all three elements of TFT but adapted them to the content of the class. Key terms became threshold concepts, reflective practice remained largely unchanged, and the theory of writing became a theory of composition.

The HTC course incorporated many key terms from composition studies, of course, but the real replacement for the key terms component of TFT came in the form of threshold concepts. Ryan selected the readings for HTC to build up to the book Naming What We Know, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle. The expectation was that earlier readings would introduce students to theoretical concepts in the field of composition studies. Reading Naming What We Know would help students internalize those concepts and frame them within the larger knowledge of the field. Early readings in the course introduced students to the idea of writing being a subject of study, to writing being a social and rhetorical activity, and to writing being a cognitive activity, for example. Later readings built on these concepts and introduced newer readings that showed more modern instantiations of earlier theories. Eventually, readings introduced students to learning transfer theory and toward the end of the course, the students read Naming What We Know directly. To demonstrate this progression, we offer the example of writing and cognition. Early in the semester, students read articles by Bizzell on cognition and writing, later read articles on learning transfer, and finally read sections in Naming What We Know on writing as “a knowledge-making activity” (19) and varied writing as “a cognitive activity” (71). The purpose was to introduce an idea, build upon it, and then offer a concept to provide a way of contextualizing the idea within modern writing studies. By the time students got to Naming What We Know, that text should have seemed obvious and easy: The purpose of earlier readings was to build knowledge and get the “key” concepts necessary to understanding the field. This build up was a means for early rhetoric and composition scholars “to invent a field” much like novice writers “invent a university” (Mack 435)—that is to say, students were encouraged to grapple with questions before being given a simplified concept. They were motivated to create their own theories of composition studies. “Inventing” the field was a critical part of our pedagogy, but it was also something mentioned in both the literature on graduate education and in the interviews with graduate scholars. For example, Graupner, Nickoson-Massey, and Blair introduce “developing a professional identity” as part of their graduate curriculum development (15), and Marback introduces the idea of allowing space to exercise “judgement to guide knowledge making” in graduate classes (824). Early readings allowed students to develop a professional identity and build knowledge on their own without an outside authoritative reading of the theories and concepts. Then, threshold concepts were introduced to coalesce those ideas and put them into conversation with ideas in the field. The purpose of the threshold concepts was very similar to the purpose of the key terms in standard TFT: The key terms allow first-year students to have a shared vocabulary to discuss writing. The threshold concepts allow the graduate students to have a shared understanding of ideas in the field.

Reflective practice began on the first day and continued throughout the semester. Smaller reflections happened in almost every class through reading responses and in-class activities. The larger reflections were the biggest departure from TFT, however. These involved students answering a series of questions (see Appendix 2). These questions were asked on the first day, were asked again at midterm (at which time they were discussed in depth), and were a guiding mechanism that informed their final theory of composition. The questions on the first day were meant to get students to think about what they knew, what they partially knew but needed to build on, and what they did not yet know. “I don’t know” was an acceptable answer to these questions early in the semester, but later in the semester, students were expected to begin to build answers—even if only tentatively. This tentativeness was embraced. At the end of the semester, the questions were still presented as just a starting point: students’ answers would still shift and change as they moved through other classes and went on in their academic careers. These reflections were to encourage students to work through ideas relating to their views on the field. They helped students “to have bad ideas, to write bad sentences, to make bad claims” (Micciche and Carr 491) in order to work toward having better ideas, sentences, and claims. In addition to being part of TFT, reflective practice was mentioned by all nine of our graduate instructor interviewees, with five of the nine explicitly explaining reflective and/or metacognitive practice as part of their graduate pedagogy. Reflection is also mentioned regularly in the literature, including in the articles by Mack, by Dively, and by Stancliff and Goggin. Reflection seems to be agreed upon as an important part of graduate education in composition.

The questions culminated in the final project for the course: the theory of composition. Much like the theory of writing from TFT pedagogy, the purpose of the project was to get students to metacognitively engage with composition as a concept. The primary difference is that the theory of writing is designed to get students to consider how they write and think about writing whereas the theory of composition is designed to get students to consider how they define the field of composition and their place within it. The students were expected to answer the questions from the first day, organizing and focusing their answers as they saw fit; some students focused more on teaching, while others focused more on research, for example. The theory of composition assignment was designed to give students a framework for approaching future classes, teaching, and research in composition studies. It was also, of course, to help them position themselves in the field and to begin figuring out who they were as scholars, to develop “an adequate vocabulary for talking about the purposes and values of composition studies” (Marback 824) and to “transition to a knowledge-maker” (Graupner, Nickoson-Massey, and Blair 15). By the time they had their theory of composition, the hope was that they could articulate their positions on major conversations taking place in the field and would “feel like they know how to do something,” as our interviewee Sophia succinctly put it.

Much like any new curriculum, this approach was not perfect, and we suggest adaptations here and elsewhere. The authors have suggested updates to how content was presented and approached in another text (Shepherd, Johnson, Fletcher, Mauck and Barber). However, ultimately the curriculum serves as a good starting point for the development of TFT at the graduate level and for the development of other grounded pedagogical approaches for graduate education in general.

It is worth noting that this article is an extension of the class. Courtney, Chris, and Sue were students in the graduate TFT course taught by Ryan. Their involvement here is an attempt to move what was learned in the class into pedagogy and research beyond the class and to “create the conditions for the exercise of judgment to guide knowledge making in composition studies” (Marback 824). To further evaluate the efficacy of the graduate TFT curriculum, Courtney, Chris, and Sue also interviewed six students who took the section of HTC that used the pedagogical approach described here. Between the three co-authors and six interviewees, the voices of nine out of the eleven students who took the class are represented in this text.

Interviews with Graduate Students

IRB-approved interviews with the HTC students were conducted one year after the course took place. Interview questions were developed by the entire research team (see Appendix 3), but only Courtney, Chris, and Sue conducted the interviews. This was to maintain as much neutrality as possible. The research team felt that if Ryan conducted the interviews, there might be a tendency for students to answer in ways they thought that he would want. Having the graduate students conduct the interviews was an attempt to minimize this influence, allowing students to answer more honestly without unease related to criticizing one of their professors. While Courtney, Chris, and Sue knew the names of the students that they interviewed, Ryan never saw the names of the students who agreed to be interviewed, was not able to listen to the recordings of interviews, and was only able to view transcripts of interviews after all identifying information was removed. These assurances were given to the interviewees before the interviews were conducted and were carried out by the research team.

All students in the class were pursuing graduate degrees in rhetoric and composition. All except Sue taught composition courses as GTAs, with Sue teaching as a full-time instructor on campus. Among the interviewees, half identified as women and half as men. One interviewee was a person of color. Two of the interviewees were MA students, two were second-year PhD students, and two were third-year PhD students. Most interviewer/interviewee pairings had taken multiple classes together by the time the interviews were conducted. Moreover, interview dynamics varied drastically in terms of age and academic experience between participants and researchers. All three interviewers were Caucasian with two identifying as women and one as a man. At the time of the course, Chris was a first-year MA student, and Sue and Courtney were first-year PhD students. Because of the small number of subjects, we are not sure how these subjectivities affected students’ perceptions of the class. Future research should address how students’ identities may affect their reception of graduate education.

Interviewees generally felt that HTC was different than other graduate courses they had taken. These differences fell into three major categories. The first was the organization of the course. The course was designed to carefully build content toward course goals, and it appears that some students noticed this progression. Most interviewees agreed that the course was more organized than other seminars they had experienced. Students also noted that there were more “major” assignments than they had expected from a seminar. While on one hand some participants appreciated having comparatively less pressure to perform well in every assignment (especially the final project) to achieve a passing grade, other students felt overwhelmed by the quantity of assignments. TFT pedagogy often aims to provide students with conditions that encourage students to take risks and to practice adapting to a variety of writing tasks, but these exact conditions for risk-taking will, of course, vary based on individual students. While Courtney, Chris, and Sue agree that having multiple, lower-stakes assignments was more conducive to academic breakthroughs than other models, increasing the number of assignments may result in some practicality issues. Finally, two students felt HTC placed a greater emphasis on discussion and peer-to-peer collaboration than other classes they had experienced. Courtney, Chris, and Sue concur with this assessment.

The majority of those interviewed noted that there were connections to their past professional and academic experiences. All but one noted that course content connected to their past professional and academic experiences, while four of the six interviewees felt the course design helped them make direct connections to these prior experiences. However, one interviewee wished more time had been spent on building these connections.

In terms of making connections to contexts concurrent with or after the class, such as other graduate classes, teaching, and research, most of the interviewees described applying ideas or materials from class to their future teaching. For example, one described how HTC informed their classroom discussions of writing processes and prompted them to talk more about multimodality with students. The one interviewee who did not see themselves making connections attributed this to the class content already being integrated into their teaching. Interviewees described directly incorporating learning transfer into their classes, using the structure of HTC as a model for their own teaching, and picking up pedagogical “tricks” from class content and structure. One of the interviewees applied class material to comprehensive exams, one described applying class content to future graduate classes, and two explicitly described applying knowledge from the class to their own research. Because of the nature of composition studies, the line between teaching and research was not always clear for the interviewees: many of them were researching their teaching as part of the program. Because of this, it is possible that more than two were making connections to their research.

Outcomes from the syllabus of HTC listed the course outcomes as students being able to:

• Get a sense of the history of composition studies as a field.

• Understand the main theories of composition, both historically and currently.

• Connect theories to current research and teaching interests.

• Create your own theories of composition and how they should be applied.

Without referencing these outcomes, Courtney, Chris, and Sue asked interviewees to relay what they thought the desired outcomes for the course were one year later. All interviewees, as well as the graduate co-authors, agreed that theoretical knowledge was an outcome. Four said familiarity with the discipline and its history was one and that development of professional skills and knowledge was another. Two interviewees said adoption of specific theories was an outcome. This has some overlap with the outcomes above, but only one of the interviewees mentioned the theory of composition directly as an outcome (something they said they “didn’t even realize” until it occurred to them during a later interview question). As Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak have argued, being explicit with students about the desired outcomes of course activities can be instrumental for facilitating writing transfer (“Teaching for Transfer” 100). Perhaps there should be more communication and transparency in what the theory of composition is meant to achieve. Five of the interviewees did believe, however, that outcomes for the course were clearly communicated, and two explicitly stated they remembered them being clear at the time but had a hard time recalling them one year later.

Overall, students seemed to have a positive impression of the class, with one student stating, “I didn’t think anything in the class was not useful…for me everything we did and read helped in some regard.” However, some students did state they would have preferred different reading responses, fewer major assignments, and more collaboration on major assignments. A prevalent theme in these interviews was how strongly students’ experiences were shaped by the particularities of their academic and professional experience (or lack thereof). This was reflected in discrepancies over the perceived value of class discussions. While one newer student wished the professor had taken “a little bit more control over the discussion” in the early stages of the class to provide clear baseline information about key terms and movements, some PhD students valued deeper theoretical discussions and a more open format. Moreover, past or prospective careers were referenced by multiple students in explaining the positives and negatives of their experience in HTC. Thus, one key takeaway from the study of this course may be that a greater variety of backgrounds and experiences at the graduate level may require pedagogical theories to account for a deeper-engrained background of thought-styles, expectations, and habits.

Courtney, Sue, and Chris also believe it is significant that the first-year graduate students were more likely to report initial class anxiety in HTC, a feeling perhaps induced by the course’s design to facilitate risk taking as well as students’ personal efforts to reposition their personal and professional identities relative to a brand-new academic context. While multiple interviewees (and all the interviewers) reported overcoming their initial fears, it is important to acknowledge that the ease and nature of one’s adaptation or integration into a pedagogical setting may differ depending on factors of student identity and disposition. Accepting the premise that the social dynamic of a classroom may influence students’ sense of identity and willingness to take risks, more research may need to be conducted to understand the role of race, sex, gender, ethnicity, language, etc. in transfer-oriented classroom contexts.

That said, some key elements students saw as positive were the emphasis on pedagogy, the value of collaboration, the teacher modeling, the weekly responses, and out-of-class communication. Many students valued open-class discussions on the topics and thought this was instrumental to their transfer to out-of-class contexts. All the students valued the class content as applicable to teaching and fewer reported applying class content to research. Very few reported applying class content to non-academic settings. It should be noted, however, that most participants were still in the graduate program at the time these interviews were conducted, and interviewees may not have had opportunities to apply their learning to non-academic contexts.

Courtney, Chris, and Sue noted that little was said by participants about specific major assignments or the theory of composition. They attributed this silence partly to our selection of interview questions, which focused more on general classroom components rather than asking specifically about the assignments and their broader impact. The graduate co-authors are inclined to believe that if we had pressed on specific assignments, further connections/uses may have been revealed. Courtney, Chris, and Sue also noted that interviewees might not have been able to articulate the impacts of the theory of composition project at the time of the interviews, especially if not prompted, but through their discussion could note specific ways that project influenced their pedagogy, research, and other contexts. This prompting of reflection after the theory of composition may be a critical part of the implementation of this pedagogy.

Of course, it should be noted that this is only a single class. The six interviewees and three graduate co-authors of this piece do not provide a large enough sample to say with any certainty that an adaption of TFT in this form is an effective method for teaching graduate classes. More attempts to implement and adapt this pedagogy or develop others are necessary to truly understand what pedagogical approaches are most effective for helping graduate students in composition to internalize class content and apply it in contexts outside of the class.

Conclusion

The pedagogical approach we present in this text is one possible approach for graduate composition courses. It is built up from a Teaching for Transfer model, often shown to be effective in undergraduate teaching. We think the model presented here will also be one effective approach for graduate teaching as well, and we believe the interviews with students reflect this. In addition to building on an effective approach from undergraduate education, this model also builds on recommendations from our graduate instructor interviewees and from the research on graduate education. In particular, we feel this approach strongly incorporates reflective practice and helps students to build a professional identity in the field. We encourage graduate teachers to continue to adapt this TFT approach and to build other approaches to graduate education that are grounded in research and validated through methods scholars in the field often use to validate undergraduate approaches to pedagogy.

Our major call in this project has been a big one. We believe that graduate composition teachers should approach their pedagogy with the same grounding as undergraduate courses. We in the field of composition studies often go to great lengths to help our undergraduates learn, but we “assume these strategies are unnecessary” with graduate students (Ebest 40). We should not approach our graduate pedagogy with the philosophy of “osmosis” (Khost, Lohe, and Sweetman 20). Nor should we, as our graduate instructor interviewee Sophia said, approach graduate courses with an attitude of “if you can't figure that out for yourself, then you're not really cut out for this.” Instead, we should endeavor to create pedagogical methods for graduate courses in the field of composition studies that help our students develop fully as teachers and scholars.

In future research, we hope that composition scholars continue to test our approach to graduate pedagogy and other approaches to determine what works best to help our graduate students succeed.

Appendices

1. Appendix 1: Instructor Interview Questions
2. Appendix 2: Reflective Questions
3. Appendix 3: Graduate Student Interview Questions

Appendix 1: Instructor Interview Questions

1. What is your name?

2. Where do you teach?

3. For this interview, which course will you be discussing?

4. When was it taught?

5. How many students were in that course?

6. What level of graduate education and/or other experience did student in your class have?

7. What was their emphasis outside of or within rhetoric and composition?

8. What sort of theoretical models that inform your teaching are important for your graduate pedagogy in general?

9. What theoretical models did you use to inform your teaching with this specific class?

10. What sorts of take-aways are a priority for you when teaching graduate students?

11. What take-aways were a priority when teaching this specific class?

12. What do you hope students take away from your classes in terms of preparation for other graduate classes? Research? Teaching?

13. What pedagogical scholarship are you aware of for teaching graduate students?

14. What gaps do you feel exist in that scholarship?

15. Have you considered or do you currently incorporate learning transfer theory into your grad pedagogy?

    1. Yes: How do you enact/incorporate it?

    2. No: Would you consider incorporating it?

Appendix 2: Reflective Questions

1. How do you define “composition”?

2. What (if any) is the relationship between composition studies and English Studies?

3. How should composition be taught?

4. What are the goals of composition (FYC and other)? How can and should these goals be met?

5. How should composition be studied? Why?

6. What are the goals of composition research?

7. What methodologies can best lead us to those goals?

8. What ties us together as a discipline?

9. What do you see as the central “threshold concepts”?

10. How do these concepts inform your teaching and research?

Appendix 3: Graduate Student Interview Questions

1. Was your experience of History and Theories of Composition different from other graduate rhetoric and composition seminars? If so, how?

2. Did your academic or professional background influence your experience of History and Theories of Composition? If so, how?

3. Did the instructor do things to help you make connections between class content and prior experiences in your research? Teaching? Other classes? Other contexts?

4. Did you find ways to apply what you learned from the class in your research? Teaching? Other classes? Other contexts?

5. How familiar were you with learning transfer theory prior to taking History and Theories of Composition?

6. What, in your opinion, were the desired course outcomes of History and Theories of Composition? How clearly were they communicated?

7. Were there aspects of the class that did not seem useful for your development as a teacher or scholar? If so, which? Explain.

8. What, if any, changes would you propose for the History and Theories of Composition seminar moving forward?

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms assigned by the researchers. (Return to text.)

2. As of May 2020. (Return to text.)

3. The key terms have remained fairly static across TFT literature. The most recent list from Robertson and Taczak is: “rhetorical situation/exigence, audience, genre, reflection, knowledge, context, discourse community, and purpose” (97). (Return to text.)

Works Cited

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth Wardle, editors. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Utah State UP, 2015.

Alexander, Kara Poe, Michael-John DePalma, and Jeffrey M. Ringer. Adaptive Remediation and the Facilitation of Transfer in Multiliteracy Center Contexts. Computers and Composition, vol. 41, 2016, pp. 32-45.

Andrus, Sonja, Sharon Mitchler, and Howard Tinberg. Teaching for Writing Transfer: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, vol. 47, no. 1, 2019, pp. 76-90.

Anson, Chris M. and Susan K. Miller-Cochran. Contrails of Learning: Using New Technologies for Vertical Knowledge-Building. Computers and Composition, vol. 26, 2009, pp. 38-48.

Autry, Meagan Kittle, and Michael Carter. Unblocking Occluded Genres in Graduate Writing: Thesis and Dissertation Support Services at North Carolina State University. Composition Forum, vol. 31, 2015, https://compositionforum.com/issue/31/north-carolina-state.php. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Beach, King. Consequential Transitions: A Sociocultural Expedition Beyond Transfer in Education. Review of Research in Education, vol. 24, no. 1, 1999, pp. 101-139.

Beaufort, Anne. College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction. Utah State UP, 2007.

Blair, Kristine. Composing Change: The Role of Graduate Education in Sustaining a Digital Scholarly Future. Composition Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, 2014, pp. 103-106.

Bolin, Bill, Beth Burmester, Brenton Faber, and Peter Vandenberg. Introduction: A Forum on Doctoral Pedagogy. Composition Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, 1995, pp. 4-5.

Cassuto, Leonard. Guest Editor’s Introduction: Graduate School, Graduate Students, Graduate Teaching. Pedagogy, vol. 15, no. 1, 2014, pp. 13-18.

Clark, Irene L. and Andrea Hernandez. Genre Awareness, Academic Argument, and Transferability. The WAC Journal, vol. 22, 2011, pp. 65-78.

DePalma, Michael-John, and Jeffrey M. Ringer. Toward a Theory of Adaptive Transfer: Expanding Disciplinary Discussions of ‘Transfer’ in Second-Language Writing and Composition Studies. Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 20, 2011, pp. 134-147.

Dobrin, Sidney I., editor. Don’t Call It That: The Composition Practicum. National Council of Teachers of English, 2005.

Downs, Douglas, and Elizabeth Wardle. Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’. College Composition and Communication, vol. 58, no. 4, 2007, pp. 552-584.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn. Connected, Disconnected, or Uncertain: Student Attitudes about Future Writing Contexts and Perceptions of Transfer from First Year Writing to the Disciplines. Across the Disciplines, vol. 8, no. 2, 2011, https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/articles/driscoll2011.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Driscoll, Dana Lyn, and Roger Powell. States, Traits, and Dispositions: The Impact of Emotion on Writing Development and Writing Transfer across College Courses and Beyond. Composition Forum, vol. 34, 2016, https://compositionforum.com/issue/34/states-traits.php. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn, and Jennifer Wells. Beyond Writing and Skills: Writing Transfer and the Role of Student Dispositions. Composition Forum, vol. 26, 2012, https://compositionforum.com/issue/26/beyond-knowledge-skills.php. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Dryer, Dylan B. At a Mirror, Darkly: The Imagined Undergraduate Writers of Ten Novice Composition Instructors. College Composition and Communication, vol. 63, no. 3, 2012, pp. 420-452.

Ebest, Sally Barr. When Graduate Students Resist. Writing Program Administration, vol. 26, no. 1, 2002, pp. 27-43.

Estrem, Heidi, & Reid, E. Shelley. Writing Pedagogy Education: Instructor Development in Composition Studies. Exploring Composition Studies, edited by Kelly Ritter and Paul Kei Matsuda, Utah State University Press, 2012, pp. 223-240.

Eyman, Douglas, Stephanie Sheffield, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss. Developing Sustainable Research Networks in Graduate Education. Computers and Composition, vol. 26, 2009, pp. 49-57.

Fedukovich, Casie, and Megan Hall. GTA Preparation as a Model for Cross-Tier Collaboration at North Carolina State University: A Program Profile. Composition Forum, vol. 33, 2016, https://compositionforum.com/issue/33/ncsu.php. Accessed 28 January 2021.

Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. College Composition and Communication, vol. 32, no. 4, 1981, pp. 365-387.

Fraizer, Dan. First Steps Beyond First Year: Coaching Transfer after FYC. Writing Program Administration, vol. 33, no. 3, 2010, pp. 34-57.

Goggin, Peter, and Patricia Webb Boyd. Letter from the Guest Editors. Computers and Composition, vol. 26, 2009, pp. 1-3.

Graupner, Meredith, Lee Nickoson-Massey, and Kristine Blair. Remediating Knowledge-Making Spaces in the Graduate Curriculum: Developing and Sustaining Multimodal Teaching and Research. Computers and Composition, vol. 26, 2009, pp. 13-23.

Green, Susan, Zornitsa Keremidchieva, Heidi Zimmerman, Amy Rice, Leah Witus, Marc Rodwogin, and Ruth Pardini. Developing Students’ Multi-Modal and Transferable Writing Skills in Introductory General Chemistry. The WAC Journal, vol. 28, 2017, pp. 106-122.

Grouling, Jennifer. Resistance and Identity Formation: The Journey of the Graduate Student-Teacher. Composition Forum, vol. 32., 2015, https://compositionforum.com/issue/32/resistance.php. Accessed 23 March 2021.

Hayes, Carol, Ed Jones, Gwen Gorzelsky, and Dana L. Driscoll. Adapting Writing about Writing: Curricular Implications of Cross-Institutional Data from the Writing Transfer Project. Writing Program Administration, vol. 41, no. 2, 2018, pp. 65-88.

Khost, Peter H., Debra Rudder Lohe, and Chuck Sweetman. Rethinking and Unthinking the Graduate Seminar. Pedagogy, vol. 15, no. 1, 2014, pp. 19-30.

Knievel, Michael, and Mary P. Sheridan-Rabideau. Articulating ‘responsivity’ in context: Re-making the M.A. in Composition and Rhetoric for the Electronic Age. Computers and Composition, vol. 26, 2009, pp. 24-37.

Mack, Nancy. Representations of the Field in Graduate Courses: Using Parody to Question All Positions. College English, vol. 71, no. 5, 2009, pp. 435-459.

Marback, Richard. Being Reasonable: A Proposal for Doctoral Education in Composition Studies. JAC, vol. 21, no. 4, 2001, pp. 821-839.

McCarthy, Lucille Parkinson. A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing Across the Curriculum. Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 21, no. 3, 1987, pp. 233-265.

Micciche, Laura R., and Allison D. Carr. Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction. College Composition and Communication, vol. 62, no. 3, 2011, pp. 477-501.

Michel, Anthony J. From Theory to Theorizing: Rethinking the Graduate Introduction to Composition Course. Don’t Call It That: The Composition Practicum, edited by Sidney I. Dobrin, National Council of Teachers of English, 2005, pp. 183-199.

Miller, Susan Kay, Rochelle Rodrigo, Veronica Pantoja, and Duane Roen. The Composition Practicum as Professional Development. Don’t Call It That: The Composition Practicum, edited by Sidney I. Dobrin, National Council of Teachers of English, 2005, pp. 82-97.

Perryman-Clark, Staci Maree. Black Female Intellectuals in the Academy: Inventing the Rhetoric and Composition Special Topics Course. Composition Forum, vol. 20, 2009, https://compositionforum.com/issue/20/black-female-intellectuals.php. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Read, Sarah, and Michael J. Michaud. Writing about Writing and the Multimajor Professional Writing Course. College Composition and Communication, vol. 66, no. 3, 2015, pp. 427-457.

Robertson, Liana, Kara Taczak, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. Notes Toward a Theory of Prior Writing Knowledge and Its Role in College Composers’ Transfer of Knowledge and Practice. Composition Forum, vol. 26, 2012, https://compositionforum.com/issue/26/prior-knowledge-transfer.php. Accessed 31 May 2020.

Robertson, Liane, and Kara Taczak. Teaching for Transfer. Understanding Writing Transfer: Implications for Transformative Student Learning in Higher Education, edited by Jessie L. Moore and Randall Bass, Stylus Publishing, 2017, pp. 93-102.

Salomon, Gavriel, and David N. Perkins. Rocky Roads to Transfer: Rethinking Mechanism of a Neglected Phenomenon. Educational Psychologist, vol. 24, no. 2, 1989, pp. 113-142.

Shepherd, Ryan P. Digital Writing, Multimodality, and Learning Transfer: Crafting Connections between Composition and Online Composing. Computers and Composition, vol. 48, 2018, pp. 103-114.

Shepherd, Ryan P., David T. Johnson, Sue Fletcher, Courtney A. Mauck, and Christopher J. Barber. Eng 7980: Learning Transfer in History and Theories of Composition. Composition Studies, vol. 48, no. 1, 2020, pp. 88-102.

Stancliff, Michael, and Maureen Daly Goggin. What’s Theorizing Got to Do with It? Teaching Theory as Resourceful Conflict and Reflection in TA Preparation. WPA: Writing Program Administration, vol. 30, no. 3, 2007, pp. 11-28.

Wolfe, Joanna, Barrie Olson, and Laura Wilder. Knowing What We Know about Writing in the Disciplines: A New Approach to Teaching for Transfer in FYC. The WAC Journal, vol. 25, 2014, pp. 42-77.

Yancey, Kathleen Black, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak. Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing. Utah State UP, 2014.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. Re-designing Graduate Education in Composition and Rhetoric: The Use of Remix as Concept, Material, and Method. Computers and Composition, vol. 26, 2009, pp. 4-12.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Matthew Davis, Liane Robertson, Kara Taczak, and Erin Workman. Writing Across College: Key Terms and Multiple Contexts as Factors Promoting Students’ Transfer of Writing Knowledge and Practice. The WAC Journal, vol. 29, 2018, pp. 42-63.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Matthew Davis, Liane Robertson, Kara Taczak, and Erin Workman. The Teaching for Transfer Curriculum: The Role of Concurrent and Inside- and Outside-School Contexts in Supporting Students’ Writing Development. College Composition and Communication, vol. 71, no. 2, 2019, pp. 268-295.