Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Teaching and Learning

In both K-12 and university settings, writing that involves the use of sources has become central and integral to language and literacy education. Among the various types of writing that use sources, synthesis writing—which requires the writer to critically consult and combine multiple viewpoints—has become a standard task. Despite its normalization, however, previous studies have reported that both first language (L1) and second language (L2) writers experience substantial difficulties when attempting to produce compelling synthesis texts (Doolan, 2021; Gui et al., 2023). Unsurprisingly, synthesizing information from multiple sources presents a further challenge for L2/multilingual writers, as they operate within multiple linguistic and rhetorical systems. One notable gap in the field is the lack of a sociocultural perspective despite increasing recognition by language education researchers of the importance of investigating synthesis writing from a sociocultural perspective. These factors—the recognized importance of the topic, the continued struggle of L2 writers with the task, and the knowledge gap in the field—motivated the present study, a qualitative, multiple-case study of multilingual writers in a graduate-level academic writing course at a U.S. university. The primary finding of this study showed that sociocultural variables—such as the writer's identity, target communities and audiences—play a powerful role in shaping the writer's writing process and strategy implementation. Secondly, this study demonstrated the usefulness of multimodal and digital resources as well as translingual approaches for synthesis writing. Moreover, it was noteworthy that not all participants had developed a transformative understanding of or approach to synthesis writing even though the true purpose of synthesis writing is to generate the writer's own novel perspective, not to rehash others' perspectives. This has led to important pedagogical implications: more instructional (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Youngjoo Yi (Advisor); Peter Sayer (Committee Member); Leslie Moore (Committee Member); Cui Zhang (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Language; Literacy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study examined undergraduate multilingual writers' disciplinary writing practices by drawing on the academic literacies framework (Lea and Street, 1998), which conceptualizes student writing at the level of social identities, epistemological varieties in disciplines, and institutional power relations rather than at the skill-based level. Existing studies on multilingual undergraduate students have focused on their initial writing experiences in their first year of university study. Little attention has been paid to what happens in their later undergraduate years. This study addressed that gap by focusing on senior-level undergraduate multilingual writers' writing experiences in disciplinary courses. It examined the possible roles that knowledge and identity played in their disciplinary writing and learning in order to shed light on the nature of these undergraduate students' transitions into disciplinary writing after prior exposure to English as a Second Language (ESL) and First Year Writing (FYW) courses. This multiple-case study involved five undergraduate multilingual writers who were in different disciplinary fields. Drawing on multiple sources of data, including writing samples, stimulated recall protocols, interviews with student writers and professors, and related course materials, this study explored the faculty expectations for student writing at the undergraduate level and the composition practices that the participants used (consciously or unconsciously) to meet these expectations. The findings revealed that disciplinary knowledge played a critical role in demonstrating and assessing writing competence, and issues of writer identity emerged, as the participants were often concerned with how their construction of disciplinary knowledge as a novice/student would be perceived by the professor/expert. Their use of composition practices revealed their intentionality as writers and the attempts that they made to delimit their shortcomings in terms of d (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Leslie Moore (Committee Member); George Newell (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Higher Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

Written scientific argumentation is a common practice among scientists, yet it is relatively absent from science K-12 classrooms (Applebee & Langer, 2013). However, recent research shows that opportunities to engage in collaborative discourse and argumentation provide students enhanced conceptual understanding and reasoning. Since one of the hallmarks of doing science is learning critical and rational skepticism, opportunities to develop the ability to argue scientifically appear to be an essential feature of a successful classroom (Osborne, 2010). What does this approach look like in a high school science classroom? How do students respond to and take up such practices in their talk and writing? This dissertation examines how high school students learn to construct and evaluate evidence as well as “do” science during an ecology unit in an accelerated biology class taught by a highly regarded teacher. The teacher's approach was grounded in the assumption that students learn through modeling to understand scientific content knowledge and practices while engaging in inquiry. Specifically, this study explored how the teacher supported her students using talk, writing, and arguing to learn for reflective analysis during an ecology unit. This specific unit required the construction of mathematical charts and graphs to better understand a multi-day lab demonstration project on interspecific and intraspecific competition among two species of Paramecia. Teaching and learning of scientific argumentation are framed as a construction of academic literacies (Lea & Street, 1998), that are an emphasis on describing the literacy practices within disciplinary fields (biology) and how those literacy practices might be acquired. So conceptualized, researching the acquisition and development of academic literacies focus on describing how students are socialized into the community's practices including its literacy practices. Research methodology was grounded in microethnographic disco (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: George Newell (Advisor); Lin Ding (Committee Member); Mollie Blackburn (Committee Member) Subjects: Biology; Education; Education Philosophy; Educational Theory; Literacy; Reading Instruction; Science Education; Secondary Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This project advocates for sustained, explicit, graduate-level reading instruction in the discipline of writing studies. It posits that professional academic reading is a complex activity that requires graduate students to develop contextually unique skills and habits of mind to perform effectively. It posits also that graduate students struggle to learn this form of reading and would benefit from direct instruction. Further, it positions threshold concepts for reading—oft-“invisible” disciplinary assumptions or ways of thinking that are troublesome to learn but important to internalize to fully enter an academic community—as an important pedagogical tool in graduate-level reading curricula. The project makes several moves in advocating for such reading instruction: (1) It makes the case for why graduate-level reading instruction is needed; (2) it consolidates multiple strands of reading theory that have influenced writing studies into a working definition of professional-level reading in the discipline; (3) it constructs a list of threshold concepts for disciplinary reading; (4) it outlines a framework—the reading sandwich cycle—for integrating threshold concepts with reading instruction; (5) and it makes suggestions for integrating reading instruction throughout course work and elsewhere in graduate curricula.

Committee: Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Advisor); Neil Baird Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sue Wood Ph.D. (Committee Member); Per Broman Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Adult Education; Curricula; Educational Theory; Literacy; Reading Instruction; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2021, English

In this project, I set out to understand the impact that writing-related faculty development programs can have on institutional cultures of writing, teaching, and learning. Scholarship in writing across the curriculum (WAC) has historically illustrated pedagogical and curricular changes that support student writers in higher education. Cultural change is necessary to do this work because institutional cultures are often influenced by persistent misconceptions of writing as a general, transferable skill that can be taught in one course and applied in another. In the 1960s and 1970s, the birth of WAC as both an institutional practice and as a disciplinary movement offered opportunities for individuals to share these ideas with higher education faculty from diverse fields. While many WAC leaders want to change institutional cultures of writing, little research illustrates how this transformation can occur or what role writing-related faculty development might play. Drawing on scholarship in writing studies, higher education change, and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this dissertation begins to address this gap. I argue for using a local|disciplinary methodology to understand what writing-related faculty development programs do and what changes result as faculty adopt principles and conceptions from these programs. Through my multi-institutional study, I found that changing faculty conceptions of writing is a key goal of writing-related faculty development work, but this goal is not always made explicit in program practices. Research at three case institutions illustrates how institutional history and location can influence program goals, practices, and leadership. In Chapter 1, I overview the cultural-historical prevalence of misconceptions of writing. In Chapter 2, I outline the local|disciplinary methodology that informs this research. Chapter 3 provides results from a national study that illustrates writing-related faculty development programs aim t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Wardle (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Hutton (Committee Member); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Thomas Poetter (Committee Member); John Tassoni (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, EDU Teaching and Learning

Source-based writing is considered as a significant strand of academic literacy that focuses on how individuals read, understand, create and produce texts. At the doctoral level, synthesizing a candidacy examination essay is an example of a particularly demanding task in source-based writing that is based on the meticulous selection, organization, and combination of voluminous source texts at a sophisticated and advanced level. Due to the importance of synthesizing in displaying ESL students' academic literacy skills in English at a highly advanced level, this study explored synthesizing through the lens of the doctoral candidacy examination experience at a Midwestern university. Adopting a multifaceted perspective of literacy and writing, I carried out qualitative multiple case studies where I examined how ESL doctoral writers dealt with the sophisticated reading-to-write challenges associated with such writing. Influenced by Spivey's (1990, 1997) discourse synthesis framework (i.e., organizing, selecting and connecting) from existing research on L1 composition, I researched the students' challenges with synthesizing, their task representation of synthesizing, and reading-to-write processes in synthesizing while approaching the task of writing an exam essay. Through the course of one academic semester, I obtained several sources of data, including semi-structured interviews, stimulated recall protocols, exam writing artifacts, my research notes, and past coursework-related documents and artifacts. I analyzed the data inductively and triangulated them to examine the different avenues the students utilized in approaching this advanced synthesizing writing task (i.e., the challenges encountered, how they represented the task, and the read-to-write process they followed). Findings of this research indicated that the participants' essays and processes of synthesizing entailed using the three sub-processes of selecting, organizing and connecting to varying extents. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); George Newell (Committee Member); Cory Brown (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Multilingual Education

Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, 2020, English

In this thesis, I rhetorically analyze two landmark texts in the academic advice genre: Michelle Ballif, Roxanne Mountford, and Diane Davis' (2008) Women's Ways of Making it in Rhetoric and Composition and Elizabeth A. Flynn and Tiffany Bourelle's Women's Professional Lives in Rhetoric and Composition: Choice, Chance and Serendipity. To analyze these guides, I first give a brief overview of the genre standards and then compare the composition of the two books. Next, through coding for emerging genre trends based on my frame as a potential female in the rhetoric and composition field, I analyze the two books' feminist methodologies and locate the general rules and the comprehensive attitudes imposed on young women entering and beginning in the field. I also situate the two advice guides for better or for worse into the genre of self-help books. Academic advice guides are a part of the self-help genre because they present a challenge and subsequently offer strategies and solutions. I then discuss how these findings provide results to four targeted research questions. My primary goal is to establish the patterns and problems with the academic advice guide genre targeted towards rhetoric and composition women in order to house a more productive research space where women can safely find a sisterhood. This genre research is crucial to the field as a whole because a) self-help style books retain reader popularity especially among women so the messages should be monitored and b) the rhetoric and composition field remains a difficult place for women to achieve academic advice guide's version of “success” (a constant eye to the next publication, tenured professorship, AND a life).

Committee: Christine Tulley (Committee Chair); Christine Denecker (Committee Member); Megan Adams (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Educational Leadership; Families and Family Life; Gender Studies; Language; Teacher Education; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

This longitudinal, qualitative multiple-case study explored four MA students' second language (L2) academic writing anxiety in coursework for a TESOL program. The participants in this study came from China, Uyghur in China, Vietnam, and Mexico. They were culturally and linguistically diverse. Employing a social cognitive theoretical framework (Bandura, 1986) and a complex dynamic approach (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), this study investigated the many facets of L2 writing anxiety. Viewing writing through the lens of the process writing approach (Flower & Hayes, 1981), this study examined the sources, intensity, and fluctuations of L2 writing anxiety during each phase of writing academic papers as well as at different times during one academic semester. Given the nature of assignments in the TESOL MA program, another lens through which the participants' engagement with writing anxiety was investigated was reading for writing. Major sources of data included semi-structured interviews, participants' responses to anxiety self-evaluation scales, recall protocols, course syllabi, field notes, and writing samples. Findings are reported first through four separate case studies and then through cross-case analysis in response to the study's research questions. At a broader level, the study found that the TESOL MA students' L2 academic writing anxiety was multi-faceted, situation specific, and individually driven. In more specific terms, and with respect to the writing process, the highest level of L2 writing anxiety occurred during the pre-writing stage. As for major anxiety sources, this varied for each individual. For some it was writing topic and task representation, while for others it was new learning context, language use (grammar and vocabulary), or teacher evaluation of their writing. With regard to movement across the semester, anxiety levels were high at the beginning of the semester due to fear of unfamiliar assignments, and then, after a long period of rel (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Youngjoo Yi (Committee Member); George Newell (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; English As A Second Language; Foreign Language; Higher Education; Language

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation explored the teaching for transfer experiences of two second language (L2) writing teachers who taught an undergraduate-level academic writing course at an American university. Focusing on how the two teachers approached undergraduate source-based writing instruction, with a specific focus on transfer, this study sheds light on the nature and challenges of teaching for transfer in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context, an area that is underdeveloped in the current L2 writing scholarship. Guided by theoretical perspectives concerning reading-writing connections, especially reading to write, and learning transfer, a qualitative case study was conducted through a variety of data gathering instruments, such as teacher interviews, teacher stimulated recalls, classroom observation field notes, video recording, instructional artifacts, and focal student interviews. Participants of the study included two teachers and three focal students from the two teachers' classes. A key point regarding the teachers was that they brought different backgrounds concerning formal knowledge of transfer into their teaching. By following the two teachers' instructional practices throughout a full academic term (16 weeks), this study sought to provide an in-depth and holistic picture of how the two teachers handled transfer in their classrooms. The findings of this study revealed that, overall, the two teachers addressed various dimensions of transfer, including: (a) transfer between reading and writing, (b) transfer between L1 and L2, (c) transfer between instruction and major writing assignments, (d) transfer between instruction and in-class writing practices, (e) transfer across major writing tasks, and (f) transfer beyond the 1902 course. However, there were differences between them in terms of how they treated those dimensions of transfer with respect to their approaches and to the amounts of instructional time they allocated to them. Despite these differ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Newell George (Committee Member); Francis Troyan (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; English As A Second Language; Pedagogy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Teaching and Learning

Multimodality is beginning to receive attention in the field of L2 writing research; however, its impact on the development of L2 learners' writing ability is not yet fully understood. Of several issues of multimodal composition research, where multimodal composition takes place and what L2 learners learn through composing multimodal are two issues that need to be addressed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of learners' multimodal composition practices. In response to the potential issues of the current multimodal composition research, this qualitative study intends to investigate undergraduate ESL learners' experiences in the multimodal composition curriculum to understand how they navigate through the curriculum and what they learn through engaging in multimodal composition. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of multiliteracies, multimodality and the socio-cognitive approach to second language acquisition, this dissertation employs multiple sources of data in order to construct a multi-faceted view of L2 learners' experience in the multimodal composition curriculum, including course materials, student weekly reflections, progress journals, students' written and multimodal productions, interviews, class session videotaping, and researcher's fieldnotes. Findings from this dissertation suggest, while L2 learners see multimodal composition as motivating, more attention needs to be paid on L2 learners' challenges of using digital tools in multimodal composition. The three focal participants displayed versatile strategies of using different modes of communication (e.g., text and images) during the creating process. The findings also reveal a complementing role of skill-based writing exercises to the multimodal composition projects in the multimodal composition curriculum. The analysis of students' multimodal composition products indicates that L2 learners managed to use multiple semiotic resources to represent meanings in different multimodal composition p (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Youngjoo Yi (Advisor); Alan Hirvela (Committee Member); George Newell (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

BS, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences

Can a mindfulness meditation intervention help struggling learners overcome anxiety caused by a deficit in reading comprehension and improve trait mindfulness, efficacy, and reading abilities? I hypothesized a mindfulness intervention could significantly improve all these areas, thus enhancing classroom performance. In this study, participants in a five-week reading intervention program took pre-assessments to measure the above-mentioned variables. They were then randomly assigned to one of two groups—mindfulness intervention or control. The mindfulness group practiced the intervention for five weeks, while the control group only received the intervention in the fifth week. Following treatment, post-assessments were taken to measure any changes in variables. Results indicated a main effect of time for reading anxiety. Subsequent analyses suggested that mindfulness meditation may have influenced this main effect.

Committee: Christopher Was Ph.D. (Advisor); Angela Neal-Barnett Ph.D. (Committee Member); Katherine Rawson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Belinda Zimmerman Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation attempts to address three areas of significance to the current academic zeitgeist: 1) the disciplinary re-characterization of English composition in consideration of its ability to aid the transfer of writing practices, 2) the increasing theorization of writing in academic settings as sets of social practices, 3) the repeated calls for serious research to be conducted in college and university writing centers. Using ethnographic methods and tools, I conducted a semester-long study in which I observed participants in a first-year composition (FYC) class and the required tutorials in the school's writing center. This dissertation focuses on the work done for one assignment, the Primary Source Analysis (PSA). Grounded in the academic literacies model of Lea and Street (1998, 2006), my research looks at how the literacy practices of the PSA are theorized, taught, and taken up in three contexts. First, the institutional and curricular context: How do the school's course curriculum and the school's writing center conceive the teaching and learning of writing academically? Second, the classroom context: How does the classroom instructor reflect and refract institutional literacy practices? And third, the tutorial context: How do the case study students and writing tutors reflect and refract both institutional literacy practices and those literacy practices constituted in Dr. Joyce's classroom as the students move between the classroom and the writing center? In response to these questions, I identified a list of practices associated with the PSA and analyzed these practices through the frame of reflection and refraction (e.g., Bloome & Brown, 2012). I use classroom documents, administrator interviews, and the class text to characterize the practices within the institutional and curricular context. Then I trace how the classroom instructor, peer writing consultants (PWCs), and students reflect and refract the FYC practices prescribed and imparted by those (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: George Newell PhD (Advisor); Caroline Clark PhD (Committee Member); Beverly Moss PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Literacy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation explores seven second language (L2) undergraduates' learning experiences in a First-Year Writing (FYW) course at an American university. While the FYW course is designed from the perspective of first-language (L1) composition scholarship and focuses, broadly speaking, on analytical writing and the related development of critical thinking skills, the English as a Second Language (ESL) writing courses most of the participants had taken are designed from the perspective of second language (L2) writing scholarship and the development of more fundamental writing skills. Thus, employing a qualitative case-study approach, the present study was especially interested in the L2 students' transition from ESL to FYW, as this kind of study is not common in writing scholarship, though many L2 writers participate in both types of courses, thus generating a need for such an investigation. Driven by the theoretical frameworks of knowledge telling versus knowledge transforming, writing to learn, as well as transfer of learning, data was collected through interviews, journals, think-aloud protocols, classroom observations, field notes, and text-based artifacts. Participants included seven L2 undergraduates from Honduras, Bangladesh, and China recruited from three different sections of FYW; two FYW instructors; and the director of the First-Year Writing Program. Five of the L2 students (those from China) had taken one or two ESL writing courses at the university before they took the FYW course, and their experiences were of particular interest during the study. By following the participants throughout a 15-week semester as they engaged the various FYW course assignments, the study produced an in-depth look at their task representations of what they were asked to do and how they responded to the course activities and expectations. The findings reveal, first, that the seven L2 undergraduates used their first languages (L1) in various situations when the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); DeWitt Scott (Committee Member); Halasek Kay (Committee Member); Selfe Cynthia (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Curriculum Development; Education; English As A Second Language; Higher Education; Literacy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

Second language (L2) writing research has shed light on the important question of whether instructors' feedback (written and/or oral) is beneficial for students' writing (Conrad & Goldstein, 1999; Bitchener, 2008; Ferris, 2006; Truscott, 2007), and yet there are still debates about the efficacy of teacher feedback. One of the reasons why this continues to be a subject of debate is how feedback has been investigated. The research has generally been quantitative in nature and has looked at outcomes (in the form of student writing) as well as teacher practices in terms of the types of feedback they actually provide. What has been missing is qualitative research that looks at feedback dynamics through the eyes of students, especially with regard to how they actually transfer, or attempt to transfer, teacher input to their writing. To address this gap, this qualitative case study explored L2 students' actual feedback experiences through the lens of transfer. The participants for this study were four L2 (second language) graduate students from China enrolled in an academic writing course. The triangulated data source included class observations, field-notes, interviews, questionnaires, self-writing reports, and the actual written products of the participants. Working with such notions as scaffolded feedback (e.g., Donato, 2000; Odo & Yi, 2014; Rassaei, 2014; Weissberg, 2006; Williams, 2002) and situated transfer (e.g., Anson, 2016; Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1993; Rounsaville, 2012; Wardle, 2009) from a socio-cognitive perspective, the foci of the study were: (1) to examine how the L2 students responded to and transferred the teacher's grammar and content feedback; (2) to investigate whether a `transfer climate' emerged as the students moved across the three major writing tasks in the writing course; (3) to determine whether a transfer perspective is useful in understanding the feedback dynamics that place in academic writing courses, and (4) to see whether the transfe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor) Subjects: English As A Second Language; Literacy

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Educational Studies

Writing is a crucial skill that people need to successfully communicate thoughts and information. Writing proficiently is essential to function in many activities of every day life, including school, the workplace, relationships, and the community at large. In school, students are regularly asked to demonstrate their academic knowledge through written communication. The purpose of this study was to measure the effects of a strategy instruction approach, GO 4 IT…NOW!, in an inclusive secondary Language Arts classroom. Specifically, this was a descriptive study using multiple probes across participants to assess the quality of participants' writings after implementing GO 4 IT…NOW! strategy instruction. All students demonstrated strong improvement in paragraph writing skills after the implementation of the GO 4 IT…NOW! strategy. Limitations, future directions, and implications for practice are provided in the discussion.

Committee: Ralph Gardner III / Ph.D (Advisor); Moira Konrad Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Secondary Education; Special Education; Teaching

PHD, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This dissertation examines the ways that teachers of writing conceptualize and employ the term “writer.” The field of Rhetoric and Composition has a long history of prioritizing the writer in the writing process; a steady stream of scholarship has called for students to “see themselves as writers,” and the central issues of the field have long been associated with—sometimes even defined by—various conceptions of what a “writer” ought to be or do. This project responds to calls across the discipline for a more comprehensive understanding of both the writer and its place in scholarly conversations. Through two qualitative studies of writing teachers—a series of 10 multi-tiered ethnographic interviews and an interactive focus group—I explore various notions of "writer" and their pedagogical ramifications. Data were gathered and analyzed using a constructivist methodology (unstructured interviews and inductive coding) and contextualized within observed trends in Composition scholarship. Results reveal widely disparate notions of writer amongst participants, but also some shared assumptions. The coding process resulted in eight data-based categories: four broad types of writer and four overarching characteristics of writer. These categories, while discrete, interconnect in intriguing ways, and the observed tension between them suggests that the word “writer” cannot be viewed in singular terms. The most pronounced disjuncture is between identity and activity; that is, notions of writer based on the act of writing tend to clash with the mythologized “figure” of the writer. Results further suggest that even as Composition pedagogies evolve in the 21st century, the term “writer” tends to be associated with neo-romantic and anachronistic ideas of writing and literacy. In light of these results, I argue that the identity of writer may be too tenuous and unstable to serve as a pedagogical goal. In a broad sense, this research illuminates the implications of competing discou (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sara Newman Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Curriculum Development; Higher Education; Literacy; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teaching

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2014, English

This thesis argues for a new approach to developing theories and practices concerning plagiarism and student writing through research and scholarship. This approach, entitled the ethic of collaboration, aims to challenge romantic singular authorship and argues for research and scholarship that is transparent about its influences and engages multiple perspectives. As an example, this thesis also reports the results of a qualitative research study that employs this ethic and seeks to learn more about the actual lived practices of first-year writing instructors as they discuss plagiarism in their classroom. Observations of and interviews with instructors reveal that instructors employ very diverse approaches to teaching about plagiarism and source use, and their discourse deploys various different frames, a system of language that organizes and interprets the meaning, importance, and consequence of plagiarism. Implications for classroom instructors, writing program administrators, and particularly scholarship and research on plagiarism are discussed.

Committee: James Porter (Committee Chair); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Katharine Ronald (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, EDU Teaching and Learning

The study sought to examine how I, a teacher researcher, implemented a culturally relevant writing pedagogy in my first grade classroom, that integrated the funds of knowledge of my students and their families (Gay, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 2001; Moll at al., 1992). The particular goals of this study were to examine: how I learned about the funds of knowledge of my students and their families (Moll at al., 1992); how my teacher pedagogy changed and how the roles of my students changed; and finally, to examine how my role as a teacher researcher impacted the relationships with my professional colleagues and administrators within my school. The implications of this research for my own teacher pedagogy, for current practitioners, and for teacher education, indicate that by engaging in the process of inquiry with an ethic of care, changes to teacher pedagogy will result, specifically when implementing culturally relevant pedagogy (Noddings, 2005, 2012). The result of implementing a culturally relevant writing pedagogy with an ethic of care, that integrated the funds of knowledge of my students and their families, was the growth and academic achievement the students demonstrated. In addition to that growth I myself changed as a teacher researcher and the students’ roles changed. As I engaged in practitioner inquiry I developed the ability of “how” to implement culturally relevant pedagogy in my classroom.

Committee: Laurie Katz PhD (Advisor); Patricia L. Scharer PhD (Committee Member); David Bloome PhD (Committee Member); Mollie Blackburn PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Early Childhood Education; Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, EDU Teaching and Learning

Given the high status of English academic publishing in academia, there has been an increasing demand on doctoral students to enter into the arena of publishing in international English- medium journals. However, to date, the academic publishing efforts of non-native English speaking (NNES) doctoral students in Anglophone contexts have been under-researched. Addressing this gap, this multiple case study explored how NNES doctoral students enrolled in a U.S. university negotiated the demands of English-medium academic publishing from a sociopolitical perspective. The participants in this study included four NNES doctoral students from East Asian countries. Triangulated data sources included interviews with the focal students and their faculty advisors, questionnaires, email communication, publication-related documents, university policy documents, and analytic field notes. Drawing on the notions of discourse community, (Swales, 1990), legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and social capital (Boudieu, 1986, 1990), the study focused on (1) the difficulties and successes that the students experienced, (2) the strategies that they used to overcome their difficulties and secure English-medium academic publication, and (3) the micro and macro sociopolitical forces that influenced the students' writing-for-publication process. The findings of the study revealed that the students had to negotiate the complex sociopolitical realities of meeting the publication demands by U.S. and home academic cultures, while studying in a U.S. university. They experienced a range of difficulties not only at the language and genre levels, but also in negotiating unequal power relations with their faculty advisors in the coauthoring process to be recognized as legitimate and competent scholarly writers. To overcome their difficulties and secure English-medium academic publication, the students developed and used academic research networks and linguistic/ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Committee Chair); Keiko Samimy (Committee Co-Chair); Danielle Pyun (Committee Member) Subjects: English As A Second Language; Higher Education; Literacy; Multilingual Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, EDU Teaching and Learning

The long-standing debate over the value of literature in the teaching of L2 academic writing has been ongoing. Given the general discomfort with the use of literature in source-based writing and in EAP writing instruction and the absence of literary texts in EAP writing courses, studies that look at how source texts are used in L2 writers` acquisition of academic literacy skills are rare. Operating in response to that debate, this study sought to explore how three undergraduate multilingual academic writers negotiated the specific academic discursive practice of using both literary and nonliterary texts to complete source-based writing tasks. In doing so, the overarching goal of this study was to explore the use of literature within the context of teaching source-based writing in an EAP writing course. Theoretical formulations drawn from Vygotsky`s sociocultural theory of mediation as extended by Lantolf (2000) formed the core framework of analysis for the study. Using qualitative methods of data gathering such as, participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, the primary sources of data examined were personal journals, course artifacts, questionnaires, interview transcripts, and field notes. The study sheds light on the complexities involved in learning multifaceted academic discursive practices such as source-based writing. The findings suggest that although the participants encountered some discursive challenges in the practice of using sources, they negotiated the practice of source-based writing in individually nuanced ways by adopting an agentive approach to employing mediating semiotic resources in their social context. A substantive new finding was related to how the use of a literary text has the potential to enhance and encourage the participant`s creativity in the composition of their own texts. This finding could be characterized as a grounded theoretical hypothesis and was evident in the ways that elements of creativity were embedded (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela Ph.D (Advisor); David Bloome Ph.D (Committee Member); Keiko Samimy Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Education