for teachers to structure their courses to promote writing as a process. There are many strategies for promoting writing as process: incorporating exploratory writing into the course (in‐class freewrites, out‐of‐class thinking pieces), breaking difficult assignments into scaffolded parts, teaching metacognitive skills for self‐assessment and reflection, setting due dates for rough drafts, requiring peer review of drafts, scheduling paper conferences, and encouraging use of the campus's writing center. We should note especially that writing centers are effective at teaching students how to use the writing process for brainstorming, organizing, and developing ideas. Experienced tutors or consultants can help students understand the demands of an assignment, draw out initial ideas, overcome writer's block by encouraging imperfect first drafts, and help writers revise for clarity, complexity, and development. On many campuses the director of the writing center is one of an instructor's most important resources for developing ways to incorporate writing into a course. Chapters 11–16 offer many suggestions for encouraging students to deepen and extend their writing processes.
Four Discouraging Beliefs and Some Encouraging Responses
The steps just described can help teachers integrate writing and critical thinking activities into their courses. However, many teachers who are tempted to do so may be held back by negative beliefs or misconceptions about what happens when a teacher begins developing a pedagogy using writing and critical thinking. It will be helpful, therefore, to address these beliefs at the outset. Based on discussions with faculty from across the disciplines, we find the following four misconceptions the most pervasive and potentially discouraging.
Misconception 1: Emphasizing Writing and Critical Thinking in My Courses Will Take Time Away from Content
Many faculty, understandably concerned about coverage of material, do not want to shift class time away from content. In addressing this conundrum, one must first distinguish between how much a teacher “covers” in a given course and how much students actually learn in a meaningful and usable way. Much of the literature on best pedagogical practices suggests that less is more. For example, Robert Zemsky (2009), founding director of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research on Higher Education, argues that “no one has sufficient time or gray matter to master a knowledge base that is growing exponentially every decade or so.” Rather than focus exhaustively on content coverage, Zemsky urges educators to prioritize content, focusing on high‐priority material while simultaneously teaching the critical thinking and problem‐solving skills needed to acquire and apply new knowledge:
Discussions of the changing nature of knowledge often morph into what a successful learning outcome would be if detailed content were actually becoming less important than a well‐executed learning process. The former is static; the latter is dynamic in the sense that learning processes change as the learner seeks new knowledge and tackles new problems.
In our experience, integrating writing and critical thinking components into a course can increase the amount of subject matter that students actually learn. This assertion may seem counterintuitive until one realizes that many kinds of short assignments—particularly short, formal assignments or low‐stakes exploratory writing—can restructure the way students study outside of class. Critical thinking tasks—which require students to use their expanding knowledge of subject matter to address disciplinary problems—motivate better study habits by helping students see their learning as purposeful and interesting. If tasks are designed to improve academic reading (see chapter 7), students often learn to read textbooks and other course materials more powerfully and to interact more critically with primary source readings. With more confidence that students can learn from assigned readings, teachers can, if they choose, redirect some class time away from lecturing over the readings toward critical discussions, small‐group problem‐solving, or other critical thinking activities. The emphasis throughout this book is on helping students learn the subject matter of a course at a deeper and more intellectually mature level.
Misconception 2: Writing Assignments Are Unsuitable in My Course
Most teachers believe that writing applies naturally to English courses, liberal arts courses, and certain specialized courses in their fields. They may not, however, believe that writing is equally appropriate in their own courses. These doubts are frequently expressed by teachers of quantitative or technical courses or ones that focus on basic facts, concepts, or algorithmic procedures that, according to the teacher, must be “committed to memory” before the student can move on to problem‐solving and analysis. If we apply some conceptual blockbusting, however, we see that writing assignments can be used profitably in any course. (Our point is exemplified by the wide range of disciplines represented in this book—accounting, physics, chemistry, all levels of mathematics, nursing, business, education, and engineering, as well as the humanities and social sciences.) By conceptual blockbusting, we mean primarily rethinking what constitutes a writing assignment. Many of the assignments in this book are nongraded or are very short formal tasks designed to help students understand an important course concept. Others have a metacognitive aim—helping students reflect on their own thinking processes or productively altering their methods of studying or reading. Still others have a procedural aim—helping students learn disciplinary methods of inquiry and analysis. Whatever a teacher's goals for a course, writing assignments can be designed to help students meet them.
Misconception 3: Adding More Writing to My Course Will Bury Me in Paper Grading
Many teachers would gladly require more writing in their courses if it were not for the need to mark and grade all those papers. If teachers do not currently assign any writing in their courses, adding a writing component will admittedly require extra work, although not necessarily more total time devoted to teaching if some of the teacher's current preparation or conference time is shifted toward responding to writing. If teachers already require writing in their courses (say, a couple of essay exams and a term paper—assignments that often have low learning value for students), following the suggestions in this book might reduce the total time they spend on student writing while simultaneously making that time more rewarding for themselves and more productive for students. The NSSE/WPA research cited at the beginning of this chapter (Anderson, Anson, Gonyea, and Paine, 2009) has shown that what matters in using writing to promote deep learning is not the amount of writing in a course but the quality of the writing assignments themselves.
There are many ways to work writing into a course while keeping the paper load manageable. Some methods require no teacher time (for example, in‐class freewriting); some, minimal time (perusing a random selection of posts on a class discussion board); and some, very modest time (assigning write‐to‐learn microthemes using models feedback). Even when you require several formal papers or a major research project, you may employ any number of time‐saving strategies to reduce the paper load (see chapters 14–16). The key is to decide how much time you are willing to spend on student writing and then to plan your courses to include only what you can handle—always remembering that you do not have to read everything a student writes.
Misconception 4: I Am Not Knowledgeable Enough about Writing and Grammar to Help Students with Their Own Writing
Many teachers across the curriculum will admit that English was not their favorite subject. Although they produce competent professional writing in their own fields, they believe that because they struggle with their own writing and because they do not know grammatical terminology or composition theory, they lack the skills to help students. This book aims to allay these
