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Given the growing interest in fiction writing in Australia, seen in the rise in the number of festivals, writers' centres, how-to books, biographies and creative writing classes, it is surprising that very little research has been done within Australia on the nature of literary creativity itself. A review of international literature on creativity from areas such as the arts, history, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, business and education shows movement away from traditional and conventional ideas of creativity that focus primarily on the individual, towards more contextual approaches that reconceptualise creativity as the result of a dynamic system at work. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's tripartite model of creativity, which includes a field of experts, a domain of knowledge and an individual author, has been successfully applied to the arts and sciences in North America. It is argued that the systems model is also relevant to Australian fiction writing, a term which is used here to include novels in literature, popular fiction and genre fiction categories. This thesis is primarily based on in-depth interviews with 40 published Australian fiction writers. With over 400 publications between them, the individual writers interviewed represent a broad cross section of Australian fiction categories at both the national and international level. In addition to literary writers like Carmel Bird and Venero Armanno, this sample also incorporates writers in other genres such as Di Morrissey and Nick Earls (popular fiction), Paul Collins (science fiction and fantasy), Anna Jacobs (romance), Peter Doyle (crime) and Libby Gleeson and Gary Crew (children's and young adult fiction). Although the individual writers possess unique combinations of characteristics, biographies and processes, their collective responses demonstrate common participation in systemic processes of creativity. By analysing these responses in terms of Csikszentmihalyi's systems model, this thesis presents evidence that demonstrates a system of creativity at work in Australian fiction. The analysis of the collected data provides evidence, firstly, of how writers adopt and master the domain skills and knowledge needed to be able to write fiction through processes of socialisation and enculturation. Secondly, it is also the contention of this thesis that the individual's ability to contribute to the domain depends not only on traditional biological, personality and motivational influences but also socially and culturally mediated work practices and processes. Finally, it is asserted that the contribution of a field of experts is also crucial to creativity occurring in Australian fiction writing. This social organisation, comprised of all those who can affect the domain, is important not only for its influence on and acceptance of written works but also for the continuation of the system itself. The evidence shows that the field supports further writing as well as writing careers with many authors becoming members of the field themselves. In sum, the research demonstrates that, rather than being solely the property of individual authors, creativity in Australian fiction writing results from individuals making choices and acting within the boundaries of specific social and cultural contexts.

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abstract: Writing is an important lifelong skill. Most college freshmen are required to take first-year composition (FYC) to meet the needs of writing across disciplines. Yet, a great number of students enter college unprepared. To combat this, the writing process should be practiced as part of a solid writing program. The Common Core State Standards, the “WPA Outcomes for First-Year Composition,” and the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Education address the use of the writing process as a lifelong skill. Using Emig’s (1971) work on the composing process and Flower and Hayes’ (1981) cognitive process theory as a theoretical framework, this study seeks to define the components of the writing process and how these evolve for students in an online FYC course. A qualitative, descriptive case study approach was used to explore qualitative documents. These documents were coded according to themes gleaned from the writing process literature. These emerging themes: invention work, multiple draft production, and the collaborative and social aspects of writing were used throughout the process-based curriculum. Participants made changes to their general writing process by conducting more invention work than they had before and finding the practice worthwhile, by producing more drafts than they had on previous writing projects, and by reflecting more about what the collaborative and social aspects of writing mean to them. The online FYC course curriculum gave students the tools to build and shape their existing writing practices, or as one participant wrote, “I wasn’t reinventing the wheel, just operating the tools.” / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Curriculum and Instruction 2015

The field of writing studies has long inquired about how writers engage in individualized writing processes. As an extension of this inquiry, contemporary scholarship in writing studies began to study collaborative writing through the understanding of writing as a social act. Our understanding of writing processes and collaborative writing has expanded through studies of writing as it occurs in the academy, the workplace, and extracurricular settings. Still, to a large extent, inquiries about writing processes and collaborative writing activity centered on alphabetic texts and focused on writers. Rarely do studies engage"in addition to writers"artists and designers as authors in the collaborative writing process. Composing, as understood by scholars and teachers of writing, is changing due to technological shifts in media and yet, as a field, we have failed to question multimodal composing as an individual or collaborative process.<br />    To extend previous writing studies scholarship, this dissertation engages qualitative case study methodology to explore three unique multimodal collaborations of comics authors. As a visual rhetoric scholar with a personal focus on teaching students about composing in all media, I am drawn to asking questions about how arguments are composed using multimodal means. My personal and scholarly interest in comics led to inquiries about how comics are composed and initial research found that comics are often composed in collaboration, with writers and artists who with them carry multiple and varying literacies (alphabetic text, visual, spatial, etc.). Comics provide a rich subject of study to address this inquiry because of their inherently multimodal nature as a medium that incorporates both word and picture in diverse combinations and for a variety of rhetorical purposes. For this study, I have chosen to focus on comics texts that differ in terms of subject matter, genre, and collaborative makeup in order to examine multimodal collaborations and create distinct cases. Through three cases of multimodal collaboration"Understanding Rhetoric, the Cheo comics, and Brotherman: Dictator of Discipline"this study argues for a further complication of our field\'s understanding of writing processes and collaborative composing. / Ph. D.

Studies of writing process over the last 40 years have clearly shown that effective revision marks the difference between the skilled and the unskilled writer. Early research also showed that school and college students typically revised little and at superficial levels, so that the scope for improvement of writing was limited. The apparent failure of student writers to revise more substantively has been variously explained. On the one hand it is suggested that adolescent writers may lack the cognitive and metacognitive resources necessary for effective revision (Flower & Hayes, 1980; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Kellogg, 2008) and on the other that school models of composition may not adequately support critical reflection or reconceptualisation (Emig, 1971; Sommers, 1980; Yagelski, 1995). However, there are marked gaps in the evidence base concerning students’ current understanding and practice of revision, particularly at secondary level. There have been few recent school-based studies and almost no examination of adolescent writers’ perspectives on revising school writing. Post-National Curriculum studies in the UK are especially scarce. There is therefore insufficient empirical evidence to determine at what level secondary students now revise their writing or to explain the problems and opportunities they may encounter in the attempt. This is especially important in the context of national concern about standards of attainment in writing and increased policy emphasis on the drafting and revising process. The current study adopts a case study approach to investigate secondary students’ understandings of the purpose and process of revising school writing, and the criteria by which they evaluate their success. It combines one-to-one observations of writing and post-hoc interviews with analysis of students’ texts over the course of a classroom writing task. The findings suggest that whilst the revisions of writers of different abilities were indeed primarily superficial, students did not necessarily lack the understanding or capacity to revise more effectively. Able writers attributed their limited practice to tightly prescribed assessment requirements and time-controlled writing conditions. They were also hampered by a dichotomous view of the choices available to them which caused them to set unnecessary parameters on their revising behaviours. These findings have important implications for practice and policy.

This thesis considers the ways in which a multimodal approach to teaching writing process can help students better understand the choices available as they navigate first-year writing and beyond. Such an approach destabilizes their understanding of what counts as writing, beyond the strictly text-based practices they may normally associate with writing. This destabilization emphasizes the uncertainty of writing as a productive frame of mind, as it encourages a more critical approach for students as they develop and adapt their writing processes. A multimodal perspective on writing process encourages a more proactive approach to students’ development of a repertoire of writing knowledge and practice to increase their chances of transfer.

This study was conducted to compare the writing performance (writing products and writing processes) of the TOEFL iBT integrated writing task (writing from source texts) with that of the TOEFL iBT independent writing task (writing from prompt only). The study aimed to find out whether writing performance varies with task type, essay scores, and academic experience of test takers, thus clarifying the link between the expected scores and the underlying writing abilities being assessed. The data for the quantitative textual analysis of written products was provided by Educational Testing Service (ETS). The data consisted of scored integrated and independent essays produced by 240 test takers. Coh-Metrix (an automated text analysis tool) was used to analyze the linguistic features of the 480 essays. Statistic analysis results revealed the linguistic features of the essays varied with task type and essay scores. However, the study did not find significant impact of the academic experience of the test takers on most of the linguistic features investigated. In analyzing the writing process, 20 English as a second language students participated in think-aloud writing sessions. The writing tasks were the same tasks used in the textual analysis section. The writing processes of the 20 participants was coded for individual writing behaviors and compared across the two writing tasks. The writing behaviors identified were also examined in relation to the essay scores and the academic experience of the participants. Results indicated that the writing behaviors varied with task type but not with the essay scores or the academic experience of the participants in general. Therefore, the results of the study provided empirical evidence showing that the two tasks elicited different writing performance, thus justifying the concurrent use of them on a test. Furthermore, the study also validated the scoring rubrics used in evaluating the writing performance and clarified the score meaning. Implications of the current study were also discussed.

Students use a myriad of disparate technologies and information sources to conduct a variety of activities during the research-paper writing process. While this process is considered a complex task, there is no “information appliance” that provides support. Using established frameworks of the research-paper writing process, an online survey was conducted to describe how activities, sources, and technologies used by students during the process are related to the various phases of that process. Connections were made between activities and technologies to show how an information appliance may support the process from onset to completion. Results show that the activities conducted during the process are iterative. The design application is that some technologies, such as those that support searching, need not be viewable at all times, but must always be available. These connections provide further insight into the student research-paper writing process and provide an example of how design may support task.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF KAREN B. BONTRAGER, for the Master of Arts degree in ENGLISH, presented on June 18, 2009, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: PERCEPTIONS OF WRITING PROCESS: A STUDY OF FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION STUDENTS MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Lisa J. McClure The purpose of this exploratory study was to ascertain the perceptions of the composing process held by English 101 students at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Questionnaires were distributed to students in twenty sections of English 101 in the first few weeks and the last few weeks of the fall semester of 2007. The questionnaires invited students to reflect and report on their writing processes. Results of the study indicate that students' perceptions of the writing process are colored by the Current Traditional paradigm: students place a high value on the final product and understand writing as a linear process. There is also evidence that students' perceptions of their revising habits may differ from their actual practices.