Assignment for Tuesday, January 29 and Thursday, January 31
What Does a WPA Need to Know? How is it learned? Part Two:
Arguments and Assumptions about Graduate WPA Apprenticeships/ Experiential Learning
For Tuesday’s meeting (Jan 29),
please read the following discussions of graduate students’ WPA work, which discuss learning modes that could be located chiefly near “experiential learning” in Phelps’s continuum from formal learning to experiential learning to pragmatic learning. As you read, please consider the following question:
Do these discussions suggest that different areas of WPA knowledge are learned in different ways? Create a visual representation of the relationships between these areas and ways. I encourage you to be playful with developing your representation.
Desser, Daphne and Darin Payne. “Writing Program Administration Internships.” The Writing Program Administrator’s Resource: A Guide to Reflective Institutional Practice. Ed. Stuart C. Brown and Theresa Enos. Matwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002. 89-99.
Long, Mark C., Jennifer H. Holberg, and Marcy M. Taylor. “Beyond Apprenticeship: Graduate Students, Professional Development Programs and the Future(s) of English Studies.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 20.1/2 (Fall/Winter 1996): 66-78.
Thomas, Trudelle. “The Graduate Student as Apprentice WPA: Experiencing the Future.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 14.3 (Spring 1991): 41-51.
Jukuri, Stephen Davenport; W.J. Williamson. "How To Be a Wishy-Washy Graduate Student WPA, Or Undefined But Overdetermined: The Positioning of Graduate Student WPAs." Kitchen Cooks, Plate Twirlers & Troubadours: Writing Program Administrators Tell Their Stories. Ed. Diana George. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999. 105-119 (coursepack)
Brown, Johanna Atwood. "The Peer Who Isn't a Peer: Authority and the Graduate Student Administrator." Kitchen Cooks, Plate Twirlers & Troubadours: Writing Program Administrators Tell Their Stories. Ed. Diana George. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999. 120-126. (coursepack)
Richard McNabb, et al “Future Perfect: Administrative Work and the Professionalization of Graduate Students” (A Symposium). Rhetoric Review 21.1 (2002): 40-87. (coursepack or online)
Micchiche, Laura R. “More than a Feeling: Disappointment and WPA Work.” College English 64.4 (March 2002): 432-458. (coursepack or online)
For Thursday’s meeting (January 31),
consider this question about these same articles:
Some might argue that writing about graduate student writing program administration is a distinct subgenre of WPA discourse. What are some shared qualities or features of these articles and essays in this week’s reading? Create a list of generic features of gradWPA discourse OR draw from these articles to draft a manifesto for gradWPAs OR devise your own synthesis of these articles.
