Composition Forum 48, Spring 2022
http://compositionforum.com/issue/48/

Connecting Work-Integrated Learning and Writing Transfer: Possibilities and Promise for Writing Studies

Michael-John DePalma, Lilian W. Mina, Kara Taczak, Michelle J. Eady, Radhika Jaidev, and Ina Alexandra Machura

Abstract: This article explores ways that the field of rhetoric and writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement with work-integrated learning (WIL) research and pedagogy in the context of transfer research. Specifically, the article discusses: (1) redesigning writing internship pedagogies to align with WIL learning and curriculum theories and practices; (2) revisiting threshold concepts of writing by accounting for knowledge, theories, and practices that are central to epistemological participation in a variety of professional writing careers; (3) reconsidering notions of vocation to emphasize the ways writers’ personal epistemologies and social trajectories interact with the purposes, aims, and values of academic and workplace contexts; and (4) reconceptualizing writing major curricula in relation to the conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositions of expert writers in a range of professional contexts. In short, we argue that intentional engagement with WIL can enrich work on writing transfer and the field of rhetoric and writing studies as a whole. In addition to our theoretical discussion of the value of engaging with WIL frameworks in writing studies, we introduce our multi-institutional, transnational study of how WIL affects diverse populations of undergraduate students’ recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices as an example of the kind of generative research on writing transfer and WIL that we are encouraging writing transfer researchers to take up.

Over the last two decades, scholarship on writing transfer{1} has emerged as one of our field’s central lines of inquiry (Moore). A rich body of theoretical and empirical work on writing transfer has shown how writers in academic contexts reuse and (re)adapt what they learn from one task to another, from one class to another, from one school year to the next (Moore and Bass), and from classrooms to workplace contexts (Anson and Forsberg). This body of scholarship likewise contributes understanding about the ways the Teaching for Transfer (TFT) curriculum (Yancey et al., Writing across Contexts) and meta-awareness about writing can facilitate students’ transfer of writing knowledge and practices (Beaufort, Reflection; Taczak; Yancey). Work along these lines has also enriched our field’s knowledge of what writers transfer as they move between print-based and new media texts (Alexander et al., Adaptive Remediation; DePalma; Shepherd).

An exigent strand of empirical inquiry that has yet to be fully explored through the lens of transfer, however, is the ways work-integrated learning (WIL) experiences affect writers’ transfer of writing knowledge and practices. WIL is the “the integration of academic theoretical knowledge with experiential knowledge” for the purpose of preparing students for their professional careers (Schonell and Macklin 1197). WIL programs blend workplace practices with learning in higher education contexts in order to equip undergraduates across the disciplines for their transition from university contexts to workplace environments. The goal of WIL is to boost students’ employability by providing them with the knowledge, practices, and skills required and appreciated by employers (AAC&U). WIL is distinct from standard work-based learning in U.S. contexts in that WIL not only intentionally integrates work practices with learning across programs of study but also requires that the experiential learning students undertake in their degree programs meet several criteria: For a learning activity such as an internship or practicum to qualify as WIL, it must: 1) be purposefully designed; 2) be informed by design principles; 3) draw on relevant industry expertise; 4) foster opportunities for reflection and engaged feedback; and 5) be shaped to support students’ career goals through alignment of activity with career development frameworks (Dean et al., UOW WIL Pedagogy).

To date, the vast majority of research on writing transfer has been exclusively conducted in the United States, whereas the WIL framework is widely employed in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada and distributed widely by the World Association for Collaborative Education (WACE). Given the dearth of scholarship that works at the intersection of writing transfer and WIL research—two vital areas of study that aim to foster transformational undergraduate education in order to equip students to thrive in future professional contexts—there is a need for scholarship in writing studies that examines the generative possibilities of putting these areas of scholarship in conversation.

In response to this exigence, we argue in this article that intentional engagement with WIL can enrich work on writing transfer and the field of rhetoric and writing studies as a whole in four specific ways: (1) redesigning writing internship pedagogies to align with WIL learning and curricular theories and practices; (2) revisiting threshold concepts of writing by accounting for knowledge, theories, and practices that are central to epistemological participation in a variety of professional writing careers; (3) reconsidering notions of vocation to emphasize the ways writers’ personal epistemologies and social trajectories interact with the purposes, aims, and values of academic and workplace contexts; and (4) reconceptualizing writing major curricula in relation to the conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositions of expert writers in a range of professional contexts.

The theoretical arguments we offer in this article concerning the ways research on writing transfer and the field of writing studies as a whole can benefit from more intentional engagement with WIL emerged during the course of our research team’s multi-institutional, transnational study of writing transfer in the context of WIL. We developed this in-process qualitative study at the Elon University Center for Engaged Learning’s Writing Beyond the University Research Seminar to investigate how WIL affects diverse populations of undergraduate students’ recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices at US, Asian, Australian, and European institutions. In the final section of this article, we introduce our study as an example of the kind of generative research on writing transfer and WIL that we are encouraging writing transfer researchers to take up. Such research, we argue, has the potential to elucidate how students engage in recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices when they transition from their academic courses into WIL experiences and back into academic coursework, address the need for more multi-institutional empirical studies of writing transfer and more transnational studies of transfer in the context of WIL, and offer empirical data regarding ways WIL experiences contribute to students’ writing development.

It is true that scholars in writing studies, professional writing studies, and technical communication have contributed valuable research on writers in workplace settings (Blakeslee; Dias et al.; Driscoll; Hughes et al.; Katz; Killingsworth and Jones; Spilka; Winsor). Writing researchers have also produced insightful qualitative studies of transfer in internship (Anson and Forsberg; Baird and Dilger), workplace (Freedman and Adam), co-op (Brent), and community-based writing contexts (Bacon; DePalma; Zimmerelli). None of these studies, however, intentionally draw together the insights of writing transfer and WIL scholarship. Thus, there is a need for research in writing studies focused on writers’ transfer of writing knowledge and practices in the context of WIL experiences. In an effort to take strides in this direction, our article begins with an overview of WIL in order to familiarize writing scholars with this valuable conceptual framework and pedagogical approach. We then outline four ways that future engagement with WIL can extend and enrich rhetoric and writing studies scholarship and pedagogy generally and writing transfer research specifically. Finally, we offer our ongoing qualitative study as an example of a future research path on writing transfer in the context of WIL experiences and outline the potential payoffs of such research for the field of rhetoric and writing studies.

Work-Integrated Learning: Overview and Definitions

WIL programs are rooted in the notion that a critical function of higher education is to prepare students for meaningful engagement in professional contexts during and after their undergraduate education (Billett, Realising). In today’s globalized, digitized, and rapidly changing markets, WIL programs thus seek to facilitate the teaching of transferable knowledge and skills that employers deem critically important in workplace contexts. Given these desired outcomes, a key dimension of inquiry for WIL scholars and practitioners is determining the kinds of knowledge and practices that will enable university graduates to advance in their chosen professional paths (Billett and Choy; Trede). Relatedly, WIL researchers focus on how best to integrate and organize learning experiences in classroom and practice-based settings across a range of disciplines and professional fields (Billett, Curriculum; Smith et al.; Jackson). Schonell and Macklin theorize a WIL curriculum as one that allows students to develop and transfer workplace skills that combine research, theory, and practice from the university classroom to the workplace setting. This curriculum model emphasizes the role of mentoring that ensures the integration of theoretical knowledge and applied practices.

According to Dean et al. (UOW WIL Pedagogy), WIL experiences can take place in a wide range of contexts, including “a physical or simulated workplace” or the classroom and include “practicums, placements, internships, service learning, industry projects and experience, workplace simulations and professional activities” (4). Dean et al. classify these WIL activities under five categories: Co-curricular WIL (non-credit bearing), Foundational WIL (theoretical in nature with no participation in work practices), Embedded WIL (simulations or course-based industry projects experiences), Applied WIL (internships, industry projects supervised by the instructor), and Professional WIL (extended internships, placements guided by the workplace supervisor). Table 1 below illustrates the differences between these categories.

Table 1. Classification of WIL Experiences (based on Dean et al., UOW WIL Pedagogy)

Classification of WIL	Definition	Example
Co-curricular	Coordinated activities within a subject. They often involve sessions led by a teacher or facilitator.	Volunteering
Foundational	Purposefully designed activities and no direct participation in the work practices. There are elements of reflection and engaged feedback.	Excursions, observations
Embedded	There is direct participation in the workplace, whether it is through the actual workplace, a simulation, or a work-based activity.	Role play, simulations
Applied	Direct participation in the workplace or work-based activities. There are community partners involved and career development learning.	Professional placements, internships
Professional	Course content completely devoted to WIL. They give students the opportunity to practice skills and reflect in a workplace for sustained periods of time. They also involve support and feedback from both teachers and coordinators.	Professional placements, internships over a sustained amount of time

The fundamental purposes of WIL programs, according to Janice Orrell, are to foster in students “work readiness, dispositions of lifelong learning, ... knowledge transfer and career development” (8). To achieve these purposes, WIL programs strongly emphasize “critical reflection and integration [of theory and practice] processes” (Orrell 7). Orrell’s conception signals the reciprocal relationship between theory and practice in both university settings and workplace contexts. That relationship is cultivated through critical reflection that enables and facilitates transfer between the two contexts. These key aspects of WIL have been recurring themes, findings, and recommendations of writing transfer studies in academic settings (Moore; Moore and Bass; Taczak; Yancey et al., Writing across Contexts). The WIL framework is thus fitting to explore these purposes and has the potential to offer writing studies a more cohesive and comprehensive approach to studying writing transfer in workplace contexts. Moreover, although “written communication” has been cited numerous times as an important employability requirement in WIL scholarship (e.g., Abeysekera; Jackson), a focus on writing remains peripheral in WIL scholarship and pedagogy, and a focus on writing transfer is absent, issues that we take up at length elsewhere (see Eady et al.).

Engagement with WIL in Writing Studies: Promise and Potential Payoffs

Although the term WIL is not widely used in rhetoric and writing studies and there is little intentional engagement with WIL scholarship among writing specialists, there are a few empirical studies of transfer that have been conducted in internship and workplace contexts. In what follows, we outline the contributions from transfer scholars in rhetoric writing studies who have conducted key studies in these areas in order to highlight the ways qualitative studies of transfer in WIL-related contexts have already contributed to the field in significant ways.

The field of rhetoric and writing studies has published a number of important studies on transfer in the context of writing internships. One of the earliest publications in the field with this focus is Chris M. Anson and Lee Forsberg’s Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing. In their semester-long qualitative study of six writing interns at the University of Minnesota, Anson and Forsberg explore how undergraduate students adapted their academic knowledge to meet the demands of multiple readers and unfamiliar professional writing expectations of their professional writing internship. This study has had a substantial impact on writing transfer research and pedagogy, as it offers a systematic account of the difficulties that writers navigate when they adapt prior writing knowledge and practices from academia to writing in the workplace. The study also highlights how writing interns may experience transitions between academic and workplace contexts.

Like Anson and Forsberg, Doug Brent’s Crossing Boundaries: Co-op Students Relearning to Write is an important study that provides insight into the particular exigencies of transferring writing knowledge and practices from university contexts to writing internships. Brent’s study follows six undergraduate students at the University of Calgary as they transition from their academic coursework to a four-week co-op in a variety of internship settings and professional fields. Through his study, Brent discovered that writers’ prior engagement with a wide range of academic discourses and a broad rhetorical background significantly helped co-op students transition into the workplace. He thus alerts writing specialists to the importance of considering the vast range of influences on students’ rhetorical development, and he highlights the need to focus on helping writers become conscious of what questions to ask when encountering a new rhetorical environment (i.e., helping them to transform, not just transfer, their rhetorical knowledge).

A recent study that extends Brent’s research on transfer in the context of internship experiences is Neil Baird and Bradley Dilger’s How Students Perceive Transitions: Dispositions and Transfer in Internships. In their study, Baird and Dilger focus on two undergraduate interns at Western Illinois University. Building on Dana Driscoll and Jennifer Wells’ research on dispositions in writing transfer, Baird and Dilger highlight the importance of expectancy-value and self-efficacy in the transfer of writing knowledge and practices. Through their study, Baird and Dilger demonstrate the ways both dispositions of ease and ownership affect transfer, and they illustrate the complexity of disposition changes, as dispositions can be generative or disruptive in intricate, context-dependent ways.

In addition to qualitative studies detailing internship writing, the scholarship on writing transfer has also been enriched by studies of workplace writing among graduates. An important case study on transfer in the context of workplace writing is Anne Beaufort’s Transferring Writing Knowledge to the Workplace: Are We On Track? Like the other studies of transfer in these contexts, Beaufort’s study of the writing difficulties faced by a recent college graduate transitioning to the workplace suggests that students’ academic writing experiences often fail to prepare them for the writing demands of the workplace. In considering how writing instructors might help students bridge the gap between academic and workplace writing, Beaufort provides three insightful pedagogical recommendations: 1) writing instructors should focus on writing process and teach writing as a series of problem-solving activities; 2) students should write in many genres and gain experience writing for a variety of audiences and situations; 3) instructors should teach the concept of discourse communities in order to emphasize social context and considerations beyond the immediate writing situation.

Extending this research, Beaufort investigates the transitions of two recent graduates from top-ranked US universities into a nonprofit organization called the Job Resources Center (JRC) in Learning the Trade: A Social Apprenticeship Model for Gaining Writing Expertise. Beaufort’s study offers key insights regarding the conceptual and procedural knowledge required for novice writers to effectively contribute to a professional discourse community—namely, that learning to write for a professional community requires extensive immersion, socialization, and explicit guidance from experts in the workplace context. Beaufort’s findings also make clear that learning to write in a professional community requires expert writers to make content-specific knowledge explicit to novice writers as they attempt to move from the role of newcomer to full-fledged participant in a workplace setting.

A similar emphasis on teaching and learning with the aim of equipping writers to transfer their academic writing knowledge and practices in workplace contexts is found in Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam’s Learning to Write Professionally: ‘Situated Learning’ and the Transition from University to Professional Discourse. In this study, Freedman and Adam determine that the modes of learning genres in classroom and workplace settings are different enough to cause significant disjunction for the learner or novice when moving between these contexts, and that when students transition from the university to workplace, “they not only need to learn new genres but they also need to learn new ways to learn these genres” (395).

From this very brief review of writing transfer research in internship and workplace contexts, it is evident that qualitative studies of transfer in workplace contexts have contributed a range of significant knowledge to the field of writing studies. There is still much work to be done in this vein, however. Scholarly work on writing transfer could surely profit from increased engagement with technical communication and professional writing scholarship. Likewise, and more specifically in line with our purposes here, writing transfer scholarship and the field of rhetoric and writing studies writ large can benefit in a range of ways from intentional engagement with WIL in our future research. In what follows, we thus outline a number of those possibilities.

Redesigning Writing Internship Pedagogies. Engagement with WIL scholarship has the potential to enhance the pedagogical approaches that writing teachers utilize when designing and teaching writing internship courses—a key site for cultivating the recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices between academic and professional contexts. WIL scholarship provides rich insight into how best to approach designing, scaffolding, and teaching internship courses, and the field of writing studies could benefit in important ways from this expertise. Many writing majors, professional writing programs, and English departments offer internship courses. These courses are seen as an important component of the curriculum for preparing writers for their professional careers. The value of such internship experiences are often framed in terms of providing students with opportunities to gain professional experience, build a professional network, learn about writing in workplace settings, and establish relationships with mentors. However, knowledge about how best to design, structure, and teach internship courses in writing studies contexts is often undertheorized, and WIL frameworks could provide fruitful approaches and concepts that can animate curricular innovation.

There is very little scholarship to date that addresses designing and teaching writing internship courses in order to maximize the kinds of learning such courses are intended to foster. WIL scholars, on the other hand, have produced a robust body of scholarship on pedagogical and curriculum design principles for WIL that has the potential to inform writing internship pedagogies and the curricula of writing majors (Billett, Realising; Cooper et al.; Coll and Eames; Kramer and Usher; Orrell; Patrick et al.). WIL scholarship, for example, could productively inform the ways writing internship courses and experiences are organized, sequenced, and enacted to align with the intended learning outcomes in university and workplace settings. Research on pedagogical design principles and practices in WIL could likewise provide valuable guidance regarding how to structure writing internship courses that effectively engage students’ personal epistemologies, instructors’ expertise, and internship supervisors’ knowledge and experience. Writing specialists, in other words, could benefit in significant ways by considering how best to adapt WIL pedagogies and curricula to writing internship courses in order to best meet key learning outcomes—one of which is preparing writers who are equipped to mobilize and adapt their writing knowledge and practices as they traverse academic and professional contexts. Given the importance of writing internship courses in the curriculum generally and for the transfer of writing knowledge and practices in particular, there is a need to engage more deeply with learning and curriculum theory that can provide needed guidance regarding how best to integrate learning experiences in academic and practice settings for writing majors in writing internships courses. Scholarship in WIL provides a generative basis for future work along these lines in writing studies.

Revisiting Threshold Concepts of Writing. WIL-focused writing research that examines the domain-specific conceptual knowledge, domain-specific procedural knowledge, and dispositional knowledge of professional writers in a range of workplace contexts could also enrich writing transfer scholarship by providing a means of extending the rich range threshold concepts articulated in Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle’s Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies. Adler-Kassner and Wardle define threshold concepts as “ideas, ways of seeing, ways of understanding that change a learner’s stance” (x). Expanding on this definition, they explain that threshold concepts enable learners to “see things differently and make connections across sites and ideas that might have seemed unconnected,” and “they change how people know because they lead to different ways of approaching ideas by thinking through and with these concepts” (Adler-Kassner and Wardle x). Adler-Kassner and Wardle provide a rich roadmap of the concepts that are central to epistemological participation in the discipline of rhetoric and writing studies. Though the threshold concepts Adler-Kassner and Wardle make visible in their book are vital for students who seek to join the discipline of rhetoric and writing studies, they make clear that the threshold concepts about writing that they map are also likely to be of value to students who are not on a path to becoming writing scholars and teachers, as is the case for many undergraduate writing majors across the US. As they explain,

threshold concepts about writing are a little different than threshold concepts of some other disciplines. Whereas students in a physics class may be learning threshold concepts that do not necessarily apply if they leave the study of physics, the same cannot be said of threshold concepts of writing. Everybody writes, and so much of what we know as a field about writing is relevant to all writers, whether they are just passing through a writing class or preparing to finish a PhD in writing studies. (xi-xii)

We agree with Adler-Kassner and Wardle’s point, and we see value in pursuing research that might extend their threshold concepts of writing by studying the conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositions of professional writers across various workplace contexts.

By drawing on WIL frameworks for investigating work-integrated writing contexts, writing transfer research has the potential to reveal additional threshold concepts of writing that are vital to developing expertise in particular professional writing contexts beyond the university. Which threshold concepts, for example, might be particular to professional writing pathways such as editing and publishing, social media marketing, or hospital communication? Since a majority of graduates from writing majors pursue professional writing careers outside of the academy and only a select few go onto to become scholars and teachers in the field of rhetoric and writing studies, extending our knowledge of threshold concepts about writing in work-integrated writing contexts beyond the university could be of great value as students consider how to use and reshape their writing knowledge and practices when they move from the academy to professional writing environments. To be clear, we are not suggesting that the threshold concepts in Naming What We Know are limited to writing in academic contexts or to the field of rhetoric and writing studies, nor are we implying that the threshold concepts in the book are of little value to professional writers who pursue writing careers beyond the university. We see the threshold concepts of writing outlined in the book as expansive, widely adaptable, and of immense value to writers across a range of career trajectories. Instead, we contend that the conceptual and terminological frameworks offered in WIL scholarship may allow writing transfer researchers to give even more clear-cut accounts of the overlaps and differences between writing in university contexts and writing in work environments.

Reconsidering Notions of Vocation. Scholarly conversations centered on the notion of vocation is another area of WIL research that could become a productive focus for writing transfer research. Following Billett, we use the term vocation here to mean “a personal journey or trajectory, including ‘a calling’: what individuals are called to do either because of its alignment with their personal disposition, or preference or societal press to undertake this form of employment” (Billett, Realising 830). Writing transfer scholarship that takes up questions at the intersection of vocation and rhetorical education could provide important insights into the ways writers’ personal epistemologies, motives, and purposes interact with the social contexts in which they are situated. Over several decades, the field of writing studies has developed keen understandings of the ways social contexts, discourse communities, and activity systems invite and constrain particular kinds of rhetorical work. This important body of scholarship has demonstrated the extent to which writing contexts have bearing on the shared knowledge, values, goals, motivations, language practices, assumptions, interpretive practices, habits, and genres of professional communities. The social turn provided valuable insights regarding the social nature of writing and complicated individualistic notions of writing in needed ways. This shift in emphasis, however, meant less focus on the ways writers perceived and articulated their particular personal trajectories as writers. Work on dispositions in transfer has to some degree recaptured an emphasis on the ways writers’ social and personal trajectories intersect with social contexts for writing, but a focus on vocation, as it has been taken up in the context of WIL, could animate writing transfer research in productive ways by encouraging transfer researchers to attend more intentionally to writers’ personal epistemologies, motives, and purposes as they study writers’ transitions across contexts.

Education and learning theory research generally and WIL research specifically have produced interesting insights regarding the importance of vocation (students’ personal epistemologies, motives, and purposes) in the context of engagement with learning experiences. WIL scholars, for example, have shown that understanding students’ sense of vocation and providing students with opportunities to reflect on notions of vocation in the context of their work has significant implications for what and how they learn. As Billet asserts,

Given that individuals are meaning-makers and that the quality and kind of their learning is mediated by how they elect to participate in workplace activities and interactions, learner engagement becomes very important [...] Hence, the learning that derives from students’ participation in any given activity is not dependent upon the affordances of the educational institution or workplace, but on how individuals elect to engage with what is afforded them in both education and practice settings. Consequently, considerations for organising effective learning experiences extend to not only what they mean to students (i.e., worthwhile and worth engaging with), but also to how learners can be active in maximising what is afforded them. (Billett, Realising 835-36)

Given the importance of vocation to student learning, the field of writing studies could benefit by examining the range of ways that writing majors and students who pursue careers as professional writers perceive and articulate their sense of vocation and, more specifically, their personal and social purposes as writers in the contexts of their academic and professional work. For example, what motivates students to pursue careers as professional writers? What motivates students to pursue a writing major as a course of study? Learning more about writers’ perceptions of vocation within the contexts of writing majors and across professional writing careers could inform the shape of our writing pedagogies, particularly the kinds of reflection and discussion that we invite writers to engage in.

Another way in which this line of WIL research might inform work in rhetoric and writing studies is that a focus on vocation could provide writing faculty a better sense of the various professional careers at students' disposal (Armatas and Papadopoulos; Choy and Sappa). For academics who have been trained as scholars and teachers in the academy and have had limited exposure to professional writing contexts beyond the university, it can be difficult to provide students with access and guidance to the vast range of careers in writing they may pursue. We may know of careers in writing that we can share with students by name (e.g., content writer, marketing and communication specialist, public relations writer), but we lack the first-hand experience and in-depth expertise of professional writers who have spent their careers in those fields. That said, a focus on vocation could encourage writing specialists to gain greater knowledge of the writing fields and roles that many of our students are pursuing after graduation. One pathway for deepening our knowledge and expertise of writing professions could be to engage in research that examines questions of vocation among professional writers and professional writers-in-training who have opted to major in writing as their course of study.

Reconceptualizing Writing Major Curricula. Taking cues from WIL research might encourage more writing transfer scholars to design studies that seek to understand the kinds of domain-specific conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositional knowledge that are required of graduates as professional writers across a range of workplace contexts. Deepening our understanding of the conceptual, procedural, and dispositional knowledge that are required among expert professional writers across a range of workplace environments would enable writing faculty to better design learning experiences for the demands that graduates will face as they transition into professional contexts. In order to prepare undergraduate writing majors with the expertise required to thrive as professional writers in a range of workplace contexts, our field needs a better understanding of the knowledge and dispositions of expert writers within a diverse set of professional contexts.

Students who major in engineering, nursing, or accounting have a clear sense that their education is preparing them to assume a relatively well-defined professional role after graduation—engineer, nurse, or accountant, respectively. For professional writing and rhetoric majors, the professional roles that students are being prepared to take up after graduation are far more varied and less well-defined. There is certainly validity to the claim that professional writing majors are equipped as adaptable communicators, innovative problem-solvers, creative professionals, agile thinkers, skilled designers, expert researchers, and the like. However, what could strengthen those claims—give them more grounding, depth, and precision—is empirical research that seeks to understand the knowledge, practices, and dispositions of professional writers across diverse workplace contexts. What do such writers know? What do professional writers know how to do? What kinds of dispositions do these expert writers display? Taking up such questions across a range of workplace contexts wherein professional writers are employed could provide invaluable knowledge that has the potential to significantly inform the curricula of writing majors. Specifically, by investigating the knowledge, procedures, and dispositions of professional writers in a range of workplace contexts—as WIL research tends to encourage (Boag-Hodgson et al.; Durham et al.)—writing scholars can begin to reimagine writing major curricula in innovative ways and provide a better means of facilitating the transfer of writing knowledge and practices across university and professional contexts.

The creation and redesign of writing majors across the US continues to grow, but the identities, aims, and curricula of writing majors tend to vary widely (see Alexander et al., Approaching). In some cases, writing majors are designed much like miniature graduate programs in rhetoric and writing studies. In other cases, writing majors are a combination of literature, creative writing, and professional writing courses. Other models of the writing major are oriented primarily toward technical and scientific communication. The bases for these curricular decisions are wide ranging. Writing transfer research employing a WIL-informed lens on the conceptual knowledge, procedures, and dispositions of professional writers in a range of workplace contexts could contribute to our vision of how best to train writers who will move into careers such as editing and publishing, social media marketing, medical communications, or grant writing. Conducting multi-institutional transfer research on professional writers across a diverse range of workplace contexts could provide writing specialists with a better sense of the robust kinds of expertise required to thrive as professional writers in different writing-centered career paths. Findings, approaches, and design principles from WIL research (Glavas and Schuster) might streamline curricular design processes by providing insights into transfer between academia and the professions; these insights can then be adapted to writing curriculum design.

Finally, writing transfer research that examines the knowledge, practices, and dispositions required among writers in workplace contexts would better position writing faculty to make visible the value of pursuing an undergraduate (professional) writing and rhetoric major when recruiting prospective majors. For many prospective majors, the argument that a liberally educated person is prepared to succeed in any career path is weak and unpersuasive. Rightly or not, broad claims about critical thinking, clear communication, problem-solving, and creativity often ring imprecise, shallow, and unhelpful for students and parents who wonder how a major in writing or professional writing prepares students for careers as expert writers. Hesitation on the part of students to pursue a major in writing is compounded by a lack of understanding about what a (professional) writing major is. “Professional writing” is a term that is used primarily in the university to refer to a major that prepares undergraduates for a range of different careers in writing, editing, and design. Unlike majors for nurses, accountants, or engineers in which the professional title mirrors the name of the undergraduate major, professional writers’ titles in workplace contexts vary widely (e.g., publishing director, public relations strategist, social media marketing specialist). Thus, in order for writing faculty to persuasively communicate to students the valuable kinds of transformational learning that a writing major cultivates, writing specialists need to do a better job at identifying and naming the kinds of conceptual, procedural, and dispositional knowledge we teach in precise and compelling terms. WIL perspectives and writing transfer research in the context of WIL experiences can provide means of making those learning outcomes visible, thus allowing writing faculty to better articulate the identities and valuable learning (transfer) that is fostered in a writing major.

Future Research on Writing Transfer and WIL

In this closing section, we offer an overview of our empirical study in order to provide readers with a concrete example of the kind of inquiry that we are urging the field of writing studies to pursue. In addition to sharing our study as one possible starting point for inquiry that would put writing transfer and WIL in scholarly conversation, we outline the ways our WIL-based project can contribute to writing transfer research in the field of writing studies. Our multi-institutional, transnational research project seeks to examine how WIL experiences affect writers’ recursive transfer of writing practices and knowledge by investigating the following question: How do WIL experiences affect writers’ recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices from one context to another?

Our qualitative research study is a transnational research collaboration that includes scholars from four countries on four continents. To investigate how WIL affects linguistically and socioculturally diverse undergraduate students’ transfer of writing knowledge and practices at US, Asian, Australian, and European institutions, we are collecting data from students who are engaged in Applied WIL experiences, namely, internships and teaching practicums (see Table 1 above for the definition of Applied WIL). During the course of these WIL experiences, each member of our research team collected four kinds of data in their respective institutional context: pre- and post-surveys, three written reflections, and major writing projects that students produced as part of their WIL experiences (e.g., internship and teaching portfolios). We also conducted artifact-based interviews with students and WIL supervisors at their workplaces.

Pre- and Post-Surveys. We gave students a pre-survey at the beginning of the WIL experience, and we administered a post-survey at the conclusion of the WIL experience. The purpose of the pre-survey is to learn about students’ prior writing knowledge and experiences, conceptions of writing, attitudes toward writing, and expectations regarding using their prior writing knowledge and practices in their WIL experiences before these experiences began. Our post-survey is designed to examine how, if at all, students’ writing knowledge, conceptions of writing, and attitudes toward writing may have changed as a result of their WIL experience. The post-survey is also designed to gauge students’ expectations regarding how they might use the writing knowledge and practices from their WIL experiences in future writing contexts.

Written Reflections. We asked participants to write three reflections during the course of their WIL experience. Each student wrote a 500-word reflection at the beginning, middle, and end of their WIL experience. We drew from our knowledge about the role of reflection in writing transfer and the research on the Teaching for Transfer curriculum (TFT) to help design our reflections. Specifically, we based the design of reflection prompts on Kara Taczak and Liane Robertson’s 360° reflection assignments (Taczak and Robertson). Our goal in designing these reflections was to invite students to reflect in substantive ways on their writing knowledge, practices, and experiences before, during, and after the WIL experience, so that we could gather in-depth information about how, if at all, students’ theories of writing, writing practices, attitudes about writing, expectations as writers, and writing knowledge were affected during the course of the WIL experience. In line with the TFT curriculum, the reflections are reiterative in nature to encourage transfer.

Artifact-Based Interviews. We also conducted artifact-based interviews within approximately one month of students completing the WIL experience, when students had returned to their university courses and might adapt writing knowledge from their WIL experiences into their university work. These audio-recorded one-on-one interviews were one hour each. Our artifact-based interviews with students and WIL supervisors were designed to gather data about their views of the writing students produced during the WIL experience. The student interviews were based on their survey responses, written reflections, the writing they produced in the context of their WIL experience, and the writing they produced in the academic course connected to their WIL experience. The purpose of the interview was to provide an opportunity for students to talk in in-depth and concrete ways about how their conceptions of writing and writing knowledge may have been affected by the writing they produced during their WIL experience. Similarly, we scheduled the interview during this period in order to see if students made connections between the writing in their WIL experience and the writing they are doing in their courses and workplaces after completing the WIL experience.

Student Writing. We collected the writing students produced as part of their WIL experience in order to use their written texts in the context of our artifact-based interviews. In addition, we collected writing projects such as internship portfolios and teaching practicum portfolios to triangulate our findings.

As we write this article, we are analyzing and coding our data. Even at this stage, however, we see our research (and other studies of this kind) as well-positioned to contribute to the field of writing studies in important ways.

First, multi-institutional, transnational research on transfer in the context of WIL has the potential to elucidate if and how students engage in recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices when they transition from their academic courses into WIL experiences and back into academic coursework. By documenting transitions away from and back into the university, such research can expand the discussion of unidirectional transfer within higher education (from course to course) and unidirectional transfer outside of higher education (from university to the workplace) with a discussion of multi-directional transfer.

Second, research of this kind addresses the need for empirical studies of writing transfer that span several institutional contexts. Scholarship on writing transfer is often undertaken within one institutional context and tends to focus on a single student (or a small number of students) at that site. Multi-institutional studies of transfer, on the other hand, are rare, with the exception of a few recent studies (e.g., Yancey et al., Writing across College; The Teaching for Transfer). That said, by embracing the affordances of multi-institutional research, such research designs could contribute to generalizable knowledge about writing transfer within and beyond individual institutional contexts.

Third, taking up such studies can address the need for more transnational studies of transfer in the context of WIL. To date, the vast majority of research on writing transfer has been generated almost exclusively in US educational contexts. Meanwhile across the globe, the WIL framework is widely employed to give students opportunities where they may apply and adapt disciplinary knowledge and practices to their professional contexts. Given the transformative ways that writing transfer and WIL scholarship have enriched and diversified writing as well as work-based pedagogies, there are opportunities for engaging these strands of research in fruitful exchanges that transcend national frameworks. US colleges and universities will gain a more systematic way of integrating and scaffolding high-impact learning activities, whereas global contexts will gain a better approach to facilitating transfer of writing knowledge and practices. The kind of research we are suggesting is well-positioned to harness this reciprocal gain and contribute to exigent work on writing and globalization in the field. Additionally, such investigations can speak to the field’s foci on linguistically, economically, and socioculturally diverse student populations.

Finally, the kind of research we are calling for will provide empirical data on student learning and offer substantial insights regarding ways WIL experiences contribute to students’ writing development, a significant element of research that, to date, has not been theoretically or empirically addressed in writing transfer or WIL literature. Centrally, almost all of those studies have examined transfer in a linear fashion: from an academic to another academic context or from an academic to non-academic contexts. Methodologically, those studies collected varied types of data and analyzed them using different theoretical and analytical lenses. The research we recommend, however, would employ a shared theoretical framework to examine WIL experiences and collect and analyze similar types of data.

We do not offer our research project as the model to emulate. Rather we share our study as one possible direction that might enrich writing transfer research in the field of writing studies. As our article makes clear, there are a diverse range of generative studies that might be taken up at the intersection of WIL and writing transfer. In sharing these possibilities and our current research efforts, our hope is that writing scholars will be more intentional about engaging with WIL in various ways. Doing so is apt to produce valuable insights that will invigorate writing research and teaching. Such scholarship can better enable writing specialists to equip writers for the rhetorical demands they face within and beyond the university.

Notes

1. By “writing transfer,” we mean “writers’ conscious or intuitive processes of applying or reshaping learned writing knowledge and practices in order to negotiate new and potentially unfamiliar writing situations” (DePalma and Ringer). Transfer thus entails both applying past writing knowledge to new situations and reshaping, adapting, re-situating, recontextualizing, and remixing writing knowledge and practices (Elon Statement; Nowacek; Robertson et al.). (Return to text.)

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