WPA as Researcher
Read the following:
Popken, Randall. “The WPA as Publishing Scholar: Edwin Hopkins and The Labor and cost of the Teaching of English.” Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration: Individuals, Communities, and the Formation of a Discipline. Ed. Barbara L’Eplattenier and Lisa Mastrangelo. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2004. (in coursepack)
These chapters from
Rose, Shirley K and Irwin Weiser, eds. The Writing Program Administrator as Researcher: Inquiry in Action and Reflection. Portsmouth, NJ: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1999 (on reserve at Hicks)
Rose, Shirley K and Irwin Weiser. "WPA Inquiry in Reflection and Action." (v-xi)
Bamberg, Betty. "Conflicts Between Teaching and Assessing Writing: Using Program-Based Research to Resolve Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas." (28-39).
Anson, Chris M. and Robert L. Brown, Jr. "Subject to Interpretation: The Role of Research in Writing Programs and its Relationship to the Politics of Administration in Higher Education." (141-152)
Weiser, Irwin. "Local Research and Curriculum Development: Using Surveys to Learn About Writing Assignments in the Disciplines." 95-116.
Writing Assignment:Drawing from the descriptions of and insights into WPA research provided by these selected readings, choose a particular writing program (such as ICaP or PW at Purdue) and identify 3 questions a WPA in that program might need to conduct research in order to answer. What areas of expertise would the WPA need to draw from? What inquiry methodologies would be appropriate? What would be the genres of documents in which the research outcomes might be reported?
