Writing Expertise: A Research-Based Approach to Writing and Learning Across Disciplines
By Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle
Copy edited by Andrea Bennett and Don Donahue. Designed by Mike Palmquist.
In Writing Expertise, Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle address the question, “How can instructors across disciplines best help students write well?” Drawing on research about how disciplines use writing to engage in shared ways of thinking, practicing, and demonstrating knowledge, the authors offer an approach that helps faculty across the disciplines invite students to bring new ideas and identities to their work. Throughout the book, Adler-Kassner and Wardle help instructors explore what it means to write well in their courses, fields, or disciplines and offer strategies and activities that can help them improve their assignments by infusing research-based writing activities into their courses.
Writing Expertise provides an innovative, equity- and research-based approach to writing in the disciplines that will enrich instructor and student thinking. Thoughtful discussions and well-designed activities provide the support needed to help instructors put disciplinary thinking into written form, develop systematic aways of learning about the students who write in their courses, and ultimately develop more effective, inclusive courses.
Linda Adler-Kassner is Professor of Writing Studies, Associate Vice Chancellor of Teaching and Learning, and Faculty Director of the Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning at University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books and numerous articles and book chapters. Her scholarly interests include how literacy is defined, taught and assessed; what values and ideologies are attached to those definitions; the consequences of definitions, values, and ideologies for learners; and, most recently, how faculty and students can work with research-based frameworks associated with expertise and knowledge-making to create more inclusive classes.
Elizabeth Wardle is the Roger and Joyce Howe Distinguished Professor of Written Communication and Director of the Roger and Joyce Howe Center for Writing Excellence at Miami University. Her scholarship focuses on the teaching and learning of writing in various contexts, from first-year composition to writing in the disciplines. She is co-editor and author of Changing Conceptions, Changing Practices: Innovating Teaching Across Disciplines (2022) and Writing about Writing (now in its fifth edition), and has also published over 30 articles and book chapters. She is the recipient of Miami’s University Distinguished Scholar Award, and various teaching and scholarship of teaching and learning awards. Under her leadership, the Howe Center was awarded a CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence and the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum’s Exemplary Enduring WAC Program Award.
Together, Adler-Kassner and Wardle have co-edited two previous books: Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, winner of the CWPA Distinguished Book Award, and (Re)Considering What We Know: Learning Thresholds of Writing, Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy.
Publication Information:
Adler-Kassner, Linda, & Elizabeth Wardle. (2022). Writing Expertise: A Research-Based Approach to Writing and Learning Across Disciplines. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-B.2022.1701
Series Editors: Aimee McClure, Clarke University; Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University; Aleashia Walton, University of Cincinnati Associate Editor: Jagadish Paudel, University of Texas at El Paso
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF). It is also available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado.
In Writing Expertise, Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle address the question, “How can instructors across disciplines best help students write well?” Drawing on research about how disciplines use writing to engage in shared ways of thinking, practicing, and demonstrating knowledge, the authors offer an approach that helps faculty across the disciplines invite students to bring new ideas and identities to their work. Throughout the book, Adler-Kassner and Wardle help instructors explore what it means to write well in their courses, fields, or disciplines and offer strategies and activities that can help them improve their assignments by infusing research-based writing activities into their courses.
