by Anne Beaufort, University of Washington-Tacoma
There are a few studies all composition teachers should know about, even though they make our jobs become more complex. Lucille McCarthy (1987) follows “Dave” through freshman writing, a poetry class, and a biology class to see what he carries from freshman writing to these other courses. The answer: nothing. He sees no connection between the tasks assigned in these two content-area classes and his tasks in freshman writing. McCarthy explores some of the reasons why. Second, writing teachers should know about “Tim,” whom I followed from freshman writing through the courses in his double major engineering and history (Beaufort, 2004). Although he claimed that the most important thing he learned in college writing was to think about audience, in fact, he misapplied what he’d learned about audience in trying to make personal connections for his history professors to the topics he chose to write on. In Tim’s case, there was negative transfer. He enjoyed college writing, but the skills emphasized weren’t ones he used in his other courses.
And yet, Premack (1989)states simply, unequivocally,
The objective of both education and (in a sense) intelligence is transfer. We commend teaching that enables the student to perform correctly in situations different from those in which he was trained (p.239).
Since our courses are touted as “general skills” courses, it is easy to think that no matter what curriculum and pedagogy we are using in our writing courses, our students will be more successful in future writing situations. But all of the research in the cognitive sciences and composition studies on transfer of learning says this simply is not true (Beaufort, 1998; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Dias, 2000; David N. Perkins & Gavriel Salomon, 1989; Singley & Anderson, 1989; Tuomi-Grohn, Engestrom, & Young). Unless we teach a few key concepts to facilitate transfer, little positive transfer will happen between our writing courses and other writing demands students must handle.
There’s another reason we can be myopic about the need to teach for transfer: We teach from our own discourse communities without considering the consequences of doing so. It doesn’t matter which discourse communities we teach from—English studies, cultural studies, environmental studies, etc. Whatever readings, thematic subject matter, genre requirements, etc. we choose to give our students, those are specific to some discourse community. Again, as the research has shown, beyond the level of spelling, vocabulary, and rules of grammar, everything else about writing is context-specific (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1996; Bazerman, 1981; Beaufort, 1998; Berkenkotter, Huckin, & Ackerman, 1989). So unless we name the particular discourse community we are using as the basis for assigning and evaluating writing, students will mistakenly think the standards we suggest are universal, to be applied in all writing situations.
From my own research (Beaufort, 1999, 2007) and from my reading of the literature on transfer of learning, it appears, then, that we can do a few useful things in our writing courses (or subject matter courses too, where we assign writing:
- teach these two broad concepts—discourse community and genre—and show students the ways these concepts can help them to understand the conventions of multiple writing situations
- name the discourse communities students will be encountering thru the activities of the course at hand, and discuss the specific features of those discourse communities. Do the same with genres assigned.
- give students opportunities to reflect on how they’ve applied these concepts in their work in the course
- encourage students to use these concepts to map new writing conventions they encounter in different writing situations.
To become more informed on what “teaching for transfer” looks like, I highly recommend the articles in the bibliography by Perkins (1989; , 1989) and Salomon (1987). These articles are succinct and clear, and can stimulate more thinking about transfer of writing knowledge. I would also suggest Appendix A of my book, College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Level Writing (2007, Utah State Press). The Appendix has practical curriculum suggestions for teaching the abstract concepts of “discourse community” and “genre.”
In closing, here are some questions that may be useful for our virtual dialogue:
- in what ways can we use the concept of transfer of learning to bridge from what students know already about writing to what they need to learn in our classes?
- are there other critical high-level concepts about writing we should emphasize besides “discourse community” and “genre” that will serve students well in understanding conventions of new writing situations?
- what activities can help us teach these concepts to students? help them to apply the concepts in arenas where they feel confident already as writers?
- what are the roadblocks to teaching for transfer as spelled out here? what could get us past the roadblocks?
- what would the benefits be of changing curriculum so that we teach for transfer? what would the costs be?
- are there any arguments that would suggest we shouldn’t try to teach for transfer? how would we counter these arguments?
- what are the political ramifications of teaching writing for transferability?
I look forward to hearing others’ thoughts on this issue.
Works Cited
Anderson, J. R., Reder, L. M., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Situated learning and education. Educational Researcher, 25(4), 5-11.
Bazerman, C. (1981). What written knowledge does: Three examples of academic discourse. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2, 361-387.
Beaufort, A. (1998). Transferring writing knowledge to the workplace: Are we on track? In M. S. Garay & S. A. Bernhardt (Eds.), Expanding literacies: English teaching and the new workplace (pp. 179-199). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Beaufort, A. (1999). Writing in the Real World: Making the Transition from School to Work. New York: Teachers College Press.
Beaufort, A. (2004). Developmental gains of a history major: A case for theory-building". Research in the Teaching of English(November).
Beaufort, A. (2007). College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Berkenkotter, C., Huckin, T. N., & Ackerman, J. (1989). Social context and socially constructed texts: The initiation of a graduate student into a writing research community. (No. Technical Report No.33): Center for the Study of Writing, U.C. Berkeley.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Dias, P. (2000). Writing Classrooms as Activity Systems. In P. Dias & A. Pare (Eds.), Transistions: Writing in Academic and Workplace Settings (pp. 11-29). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
McCarthy, L. P. (1987). A stranger in strange lands: A college student writing across the curriculum. Research in the Teaching of English, 21(3), 233-265.
Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1989). Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational Researcher, 18(1), 16-25.
Perkins, D. N., & Salomon, G. (1989). Teaching for transfer. Educational Leadership, 46(1), 22-32.
Premack, D. (1989). Some thoughts about transfer. In M. L. Rice & R. L. Schiefelbusch (Eds.), The teachability of language (pp. 239-262). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Salomon, G., & Globerson, T. (1987). Skill may not be enough: The role of mindfulness in learning and transfer. International Journal of Educational Research, 11, 623-637.
Singley, M. K., & Anderson, J. r. (1989). The transfer of cognitive skill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tuomi-Grohn, T., Engestrom, Y., & Young, M. (2003). Conceptualizing Transfer: From Standard Notions to Developmental Perspective. In T. Tuomi-Grohn & Y. Engestrom (Eds.), Between School and Work: New Perspectives on Transfer and Boundary-Crossing (pp. 19-38). Amsterdam: Pergamon.
Blogs 
Joanna Howard teaches Basic Writing, FYC, Literature and Poetry at the Rockville campus of Montgomery College in Montgomery County, Maryland. An avid blogger, she was one of the founders of Community College English (http://cce.typepad.com/cce/), now run by Holly Pappas of Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Joanna feels fortunate to have given her first presentation, "Using Blogging for Professional Development," at the C's with the late John Lovas and Dale Larsen. Currently, she is working on her Moodle-based text for Basic Writing as well as a poetry cycle about Irish ancestry. And, she blogs at 2 Board Alley: the Space for First Draft Writing( http://giovannamaria.typepad.com). 
