Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / As an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to work in the University Writing Center (UWC) at IUPUI. This opportunity influenced my life in many ways, but none more important than my teaching. Looking back on my time in the UWC, I did not realize the connection between writing centers and composition classrooms. As a graduate student, I began to read literature that defined composition classrooms and writing centers as separate worlds. However, once I was an instructor, these two worlds were seamless weaving in and out of each other to the point that I couldn’t separate them. In fact, I didn’t understand how one could. I had read literature defining composition classrooms and writing centers as different worlds but was having experiences in the classroom that contradicted this perception, so I wanted to investigate how these experiences influenced my teaching. I sought out literature that explored the writing center-composition classroom connection to look at specific elements of my teaching and how they tied to UWC practices. This case study grew out of the initial challenges I faced as a new instructor, which led me on a journey to find my own approach to teaching composition. That journey resulted in the implementation of writing center best practices, that I learned as a tutor, into my teaching philosophy, and this background equipped me to approach writing instruction as a facilitator, guiding students to become better writers.This case study examines which writing center practices, gleaned from my experiences in the UWC at IUPUI, I’ve incorporated into my classroom, why I’ve chosen these practices, and what student feedback reveals about these practices.

As writing about writing (WAW) research enters its "second wave," characterized not only by an increase in data-driven studies that theorize and assess the effectiveness of WAW curricula (Downs) but also by an increase in its prominence and adaptation, particularly among emerging writing studies scholars and teachers (e.g., Bird et al.), a space has opened for more and varied types of research, especially empirical research, to determine its effectiveness and to produce more solid recommendations for training and curriculum development, especially for those who are new to the field. This case study, which highlights how a novice teacher responds to a new teaching experience, aims to address the dearth of empirical research on WAW curricula and to aid other graduate instructors interested in teaching WAW or program administrators interested in implementing WAW. The study reports results from data collected (e.g., interviews, in-class observations, teachings logs) on the experience of a second-year MA graduate student in composition and rhetoric as he taught a WAW-based curriculum in a first-year composition (FYC) class in the beginning of 2016. His twenty students were also research subjects, but only a small portion of their data is reported here. The instructor's experience, chronicled in narrative form, began optimistically, though with a hint of skepticism, and ended in discouragement and even pessimism. These results were largely unexpected due to the instructor's confidence with and knowledge of WAW history, assumptions, and pedagogy and experience teaching FYC. However, his struggle with the approach reveals and confirms several important points for anyone hoping to teach or implement WAW. Particularly, new WAW instructors need sustained training, support, and mentoring to help them properly temper their expectations for the course, correctly and usefully interpret their experiences teaching WAW, successfully transfer prior teaching knowledge and methods to the WAW classroom, and ultimately find their place in WAW instruction.

As writing about writing (WAW) research enters its second wave, characterized not only by an increase in data-driven studies that theorize and assess the effectiveness of WAW curricula (Downs) but also by an increase in its prominence and adaptation, particularly among emerging writing studies scholars and teachers (e.g., Bird et al.), a space has opened for more and varied types of research, especially empirical research, to determine its effectiveness and to produce more solid recommendations for training and curriculum development, especially for those who are new to the field. This case study, which highlights how a novice teacher responds to a new teaching experience, aims to address the dearth of empirical research on WAW curricula and to aid other graduate instructors interested in teaching WAW or program administrators interested in implementing WAW. The study reports results from data collected (e.g., interviews, in-class observations, teachings logs) on the experience of a second-year MA graduate student in composition and rhetoric as he taught a WAW-based curriculum in a first-year composition (FYC) class in the beginning of 2016. His twenty students were also research subjects, but only a small portion of their data is reported here. The instructors experience, chronicled in narrative form, began optimistically, though with a hint of skepticism, and ended in discouragement and even pessimism. These results were largely unexpected due to the instructors confidence with and knowledge of WAW history, assumptions, and pedagogy and experience teaching FYC. However, his struggle with the approach reveals and confirms several important points for anyone hoping to teach or implement WAW. Particularly, new WAW instructors need sustained training, support, and mentoring to help them properly temper their expectations for the course, correctly and usefully interpret their experiences teaching WAW, successfully transfer prior teaching knowledge and methods to the WAW classroom, and ultimately find their place in WAW instruction.

The place of the research paper in first-year composition (FYC) courses is often debated in composition forums. Many argue that the a-disciplinary nature of FYC doesn't allow instructors to teach the research paper in a way that will be transferable to disciplinary writing tasks, while others say that it is possible, as long as we have a thorough understanding of the kinds of writing tasks students will face in the disciplines and specifically teach writing skills that will be transferable. To identify these more generalizable writing skills to be emphasized, I interviewed 14 professors at Brigham Young University from different disciplines about the research papers they teach within their upper-division disciplinary courses and the kinds of researching and writing skills they expect students to have mastered before enrolling in these courses. I collated the results of the interviews and categorized 22 skills into four categories: writing process knowledge, genre knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, and researching knowledge, finding correlation between the 22 skills I identified with skills identified by both John Bean and Carra Leah Hood, lending credence to the value of my identified skills as worthwhile to be focused on in FYC. I draw on Amy Devitt's idea that the school genres we teach in FYC are antecedent genres to assert that teaching a research paper in FYC outside of the constraints of any one discipline can provide a viable and valuable learning experience, provided that it is taught with an emphasis on these writing skills that are most valued across the disciplines, and provided it is taught as a step along the way to later mastery of disciplinary genres.

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