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AIA Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development

With support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation

gts. INNOVATION ABSTRACTS x3:
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WRITING: A WAY OF LEARNING

The Maricopa Writing Project, a summer faculty development program, was designed to increase the
involvement of community college instructors in writing across the curriculum. Faculty from a variety of
content areas participated in this project, which was based on the assumption that we can improve student
performance through offering instructors new options in teaching methods and classroom activities. We
asked them to learn about and consider using writing in their courses in ways that enhance student learning.

The premise underlying the project is that writing is a way of learning, that students achieve more when
their classroom activities and homework.assignments include writing. They learn more, as writing demands
their active involvement in finding meaning in content material and gives them a greater understanding of it;
they retain their learning better, as writing imprints it more thoroughly in their minds; and they learn it
differently, as they gain a personal connection to what they are learning and make their own sense of it in
ways that go beyond recognition or recall of facts and into application and creativity.

The Maricopa Project borrowed from the work of the National Writing Project, an extensive movement
(now more than 100 sites) which has been widely praised as the most successful effort ever initiated for
improving the writing skills of students across the country. The Writing Project model is a
workshop/seminar that brings practitioners together to focus on writing as a teaching and learning tool: as
they study the process of writing, these teachers share already successful classroom practices and techniques

and devise new ones. Engaged in such activities, they become a working community of writers who
& discover how writing allows them to grow and develop—to connect with their content material, with their
own thinking, and with each other.

The faculty members in the Maricopa Writing Project, meeting for a two-week demonstration project,
undertook these tasks:

 

1. First, they investigated the literature that describes the relationship between writing and learning from
both theory-research and practice-based perspectives.

Since teachers in other fields were not necessarily trained in educational theory and may have had little
structured contact with writing beyond their own required English courses, their understanding of the
writing process is often limited to think of writing as a teaching tool or assign writing to their students
for primarily learning purposes. Reviewing recent materials about writing substantiates the value of
writing to learners.

2. Second, they reviewed publications in their specific fields, looking for innovative techniques using
writing in their content areas. Then they presented their most significant findings to the group for
discussion.

Many community college faculty have not been able to stay current with the literature in their
disciplines. Once they achieve the educational level appropriate to their fields, they may lose access to
the university library. From then on, they generally read only those journals to which they
subscribe—often without the depth of study more time could allow. As well, many faculty are not able
to attend conferences often and seldom develop presentations; some may become fairly isolated in
small departments. Given the opportunity to discover and share information, the project participants
become aware of the tremendous wealth of possibilities for writing-for-learning.

Q 3. They shared their own previously successful classroom practices with project colleagues and developed
eo! new instructional plans for the fall semester.

 

 

 

 

cay Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712 Is