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.

In 1985, 66 school districts filed a suit against the Kentucky Department of Education accusing the system of inequitable spending practices. In 1990, the Supreme Court declared the entire educational program unconstitutional, resulting in the Kentucky Education Reform Act or KERA. This new reform movement brought a plethora of changes to school districts across the state including its mode of assessment. KERA introduced new avenues of measuring student progress using writing as the main vehicle to assess content and communication skills. Unfortunately, the majority of Kentucky's high schools showed little improvement in this tested area with only 34% of high schools reaching proficiency in the past twenty years of KERA's existence. In 2009, Kentucky passed into law Senate Bill 1, voiding the previous assessment but increasing the focus on on-demand writing for five grades rather than the three required by KERA. Preempting this new reform was the adoption of the Common Core Standards, which also includes a focus on writing. This consistent attention to writing assessment, and data identifying writing as a major weakness across the Commonwealth, prompted the impetus to examine four schools that achieve high scores in on-demand writing assessment. This qualitative investigation employed a case study design to research these four sites, which represented four different geographic locations in the state. Data sources included observations, interviews, document analysis, and fieldnotes to explore these schools through an interpretivist lens. The collected data were entered into qualitative research software to enable collective coding resulting in distinct categories and resulting themes. Three themes evolved in this cross-case analysis: curriculum, learning culture, and motivation. Teachers from these schools use similar classroom strategies and the learning environments reflect corresponding characteristics. Each school addressed student motivation differently, but the analogous perception of inducing intrinsic and extrinsic student engagement in writing occurred in all four schools. The implications of these results could be overwhelmingly positive as schools seek suggestions to improve writing scores. The findings from this investigation are relevant to the time and may serve as an impetus to improve writing instruction.

This thesis proposes a novel way to theorize genre, understand students' writing practices, and encourage more robust writing processes. I propose a method of categorizing texts according to temporal duration and use the resulting methodology as a lens to better understand student composing processes. I use temporal duration theory to analyze the composing processes of 53 BYU students over the course of two years. The results of my analysis suggest that a student's writing process correlates with the duration of a text's rhetorical influence. This is manifest in two ways: (1) as students write with a purpose of creating, promoting, or sharing an identity with the audience; and (2) as students write with the belief that the text will be useful to them at some future date. In both these circumstances, it isn't only that students have particular goals related to the audience and purpose—goals which drive process. Rather, it is also that students see how the influences and purposes of texts might endure, and their belief in duration motivates writers to engage in robust writing process activities. Genre temporal duration theory offers opportunities for future research about writing process, student engagement, and writing pedagogy.

While the field technical and professional communication (TPC) has long been concerned with workplace writing and policy writing, few studies have addressed the process of policy writing within an academic context. Using antenarrative and apparent feminism methodologies, this dissertation explores the policy writing process and feminist leadership practices of the DESIGN Committee, a group of women academics who worked to propose new policy to address gender inequity in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields for faculty working in their statewide educational system (SES). Employing methods of observation, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and artifact collection over a period of three years, the researcher sought to answer two research questions: What does the process of policy writing look like for the DESIGN Committee? In what ways do feminist leadership practices, as performed by the committee leader and other committee members, influence the work of the DESIGN Committee? Through the creation of an antenarrative of the DESIGN Committee?s policy work, three important threads stand out: proximity, transparency, and accountability. These threads provide an alternative to the dominant narrative of the committee?s work. In addition, the committee leader?s use of feminist leadership practices, such as creating community, encouraging self-empowerment, and fostering collaboration, impacted the efficiency of the policy writing process. These results point to important factors for future policy writers to consider when composing policy to address diversity, equity, and inclusion or when employing feminist leadership practices.

A recent shift in the composition studies has resulted in the renewal of interest in rhetorical invention. There is no uniformity among researchers and professionals about the optimal conditions preceding the composing process, especially among college students. This study was intended to explore the effectiveness of structured (Larson's Heuristic) and non-structured (freewriting) strategies of rhetorical invention produced by community college students. The objectives of this study were to determine the following: 1) whether there is an overall improvement of students' written argumentation after instruction in the strategies of rhetorical invention; 2) whether college student writers are more likely to use structured than non-structured strategies of rhetorical invention after instruction in both strategies; 3) whether there is a relationship between the nature of invention strategy used by the students spontaneously on the pre-test and the type of rhetorical invention used by them in the post-test; and 4) whether there is a relationship between the type of rhetorical invention and the quality of final drafts of argumentative essays. The study was designed as a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Matched-samples t-test, chi-square goodness-of-fit tests, and ANOVA procedures were employed to address specific research questions of this research. Focus groups, conducted during the final stage of the research, provided emic data about students' experience in and attitude toward the strategies of rhetorical invention. Findings indicate that though students' performance on the post-test was higher than on the pre-test, there was no statistically significant improvement in the quality of written argumentation after the completion of instruction in the strategies of rhetorical invention. Secondly, after completion of the instruction, students used structured (Larson's Heuristic) and non-structured (freewriting) strategies of rhetorical invention with comparable frequently. Thirdly, there was a moderate relationship between the type of rhetorical invention used by student writers in the pre-test and the type of rhetorical invention used by them in the post-test and that in the pre-test. Finally, there was a statistically significant relationship between the type of rhetorical invention and the quality of the final drafts of written argumentation in the pre-test. Further, the length of evidence of rhetorical invention was related strongly to the quality of the final drafts in the pre-test. No statistically significant relationship was detected between the type of rhetorical invention and the quality of written argumentation in the post-test. The results of this study enabled the researcher to articulate questions and provide suggestions for future investigation of written composing and rhetorical invention among college students. / Ph. D.

Kandidatuppsatsen analyserar Haruki Murakamis gestaltning av sin skrivprocess i boken Författare till yrket. Syftet är att undersöka hur en individuell skrivprocess kan kopplas till generell teori. Frågeställningen är hur Murakamis skrivprocess kan förstås i förhållande till Flower och Hayes kognitiva processteori för skrivande. Undersökningen genomfördes genom närläsning och kvalitativ tematisk analys. Sekundärmaterialet utgjordes av böcker och artiklar som ytterligare belyste resonemangen i primärmaterialet. Analysen visade att Murakami gestaltar sig själv i tre dimensioner i sin skrivprocess - intellekt, själ och kropp - en medveten konstruktion av identiteten där varje del inte behöver vara helt sann men helheten är sanning i stora drag.  Framställningen av självet och skrivprocessen är en konstnärlig gestaltning med inslag av fantasi såväl som minne och fakta men framstår som ärlig och i stort sett trovärdig. Det gick att associera alla delar av Murakamis gestaltning med den kognitiva processteorin. Uppsatsens slutsats är att det går att koppla en individuell skrivprocess till den kognitiva processteorin för skrivande och det går att replikera ansatsen för analys av fler författares skrivprocesser. / The Bachelor Thesis analyzes Haruki Murakami’s depiction of his writing process his book Novelist as a Vocation (the version translated from Japanese to Swedish by Eiko and Yukiko Duke 2017). The purpose is to investigate how an individual writing process can be linked to general theory and the research question is how Murakami's writing process can be understood in relation to Flower and Hayes' cognitive process theory for writing. The analysis was conducted through close reading and qualitative thematic analysis. The secondary material consisted of books and articles that further elucidated the reasoning in the primary material. The analysis showed that Murakami shapes himself in three dimensions in his writing process - intellect, soul and body - a conscious construction of the identity where each part does not have to be completely true but the whole is truth in general. The presentation of the self and the writing process is an artistic design with elements of imagination as well as memory and facts, but appears to be honest and largely credible. It was possible to associate all parts of Murakami's design with the cognitive process theory. The conclusion is that it is possible to link an individual writing process to the cognitive process theory for writing and it is possible to replicate the approach for analysis of more authors' writing processes.

No description available.

In order to provide evidence of the worth of the Summer Institute of the National Writing Project, this study sought to determine whether participation in the professional development would increase feelings of teacher efficacy in writing. The Summer Institute professional development is consistent with recommendations of researchers in teacher efficacy and in professional development. Albert Bandura?s social cognitive theory provides a contextual framework for both teacher efficacy and the Summer Institute. The study compared the pre- and posttest scores on the Teacher Efficacy Scale for Writing and Writing Orientation Scale (Graham, S., Harris, K. R., Fink, B. & MacArthur, C., 2001) reported by 65 teachers participating in the Summer Institute. The study investigated relationships between beliefs about writing and feelings of efficacy. Dependent samples t-tests showed statistically significantly higher posttest scores for personal teaching efficacy t(63) = -5.96, SE = 7.34, p < .001 and for general teaching efficacy t(63) = -2.96, SE = .11, p = .004. Statistically significant higher posttest scores were found in natural learning in teaching writing, t(61) = -4.87, SE = .104, p < .001. No statistically significant differences were found for correctness in teaching writing and explicit instruction in teaching writing. Correlation analysis of posttest mean scores indicated statistically significant correlations between personal teaching efficacy and explicit instruction in writing (r = .419, p = .001) and between mean scores in general teaching efficacy and correctness in writing (r = -.317, p = .012). Results suggest that participation in the Summer Institute could enhance teacher efficacy in writing and increase student performance on writing assessments. The Institute?s focus on process writing seems to be effective in changing teachers? perspectives on writing instruction. Results support a recommendation that types of professional development in which teachers have participated should be used as a source of variance in research on teacher efficacy. Other suggestions include allowing more time to pass before administration of the posttest or a third administration of the instruments to subjects after returning to classrooms and implementing the ideas.

No description available.