The book features work from the Center for Engaged Learning’s two year, multi-institutional research seminar on writing transfer with over 40 participating faculty.
Featuring work from the Center for Engaged Learning’s two year, multi-institutional research seminar on writing transfer with more than 40 participating faculty, an important new book, “Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer,” has been released by the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse.
Edited by Elon’s Jessie L. Moore, associate professor of English and director of the Center for Engaged Learning, and N.C. State University’s Chris Anson, professor of English, the book is available in an open-access, electronic format. A print version will be available from University of Colorado Press. Other Elon faculty participated in the project. The book includes a chapter written by Paula Rosinski, professor of English and director of Writing Across the University, and another co-authored by Ketevan Kupatadze, senior lecturer in Spanish.
In “Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer,” Anson and Moore offer an important new collection about prior learning and transfer theories that asks what writing knowledge should transfer, how we might recognize that transfer, and what the significance is — from a global perspective — of understanding knowledge transformation related to writing.
The contributors examine strategies for supporting writers’ transfer at key critical transitions, including transitions from high school to college, from first-year writing to writing in the major and in the disciplines, between self-sponsored and academic writing, and between languages. The collection concludes with an epilogue offering next steps in studying and designing for writing transfer. Further, an appendix includes The Elon Statement on Writing Transfer, which has become an important document in the field of writing studies.
For more information on this topic, you can visit the Project Showcase for the Center’s Research Seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer where participants’ publications and presentations related to their seminar projects are featured.
This book and research seminar are just two of the many efforts by the Center for Engaged Learning to bring together international leaders in higher education to develop and to synthesize rigorous research on central questions about student learning. The center fosters investigations of these and related questions; hosts multi-institutional research and practice-based initiatives, conferences and seminars; and shares related resources for faculty and faculty developers on high-impact practices for engaged learning.
For more information, email CenterForEngagedLearning@elon.edu.