Book review - The Expanding Universe of Writing Studies: Higher Education Writing Research

Authors

  • Jonathan M. Marine George Mason University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2023.14.03.06

Keywords:

writing studies, research methods, corpus linguistics

Abstract

In 1966, more than 50 scholars from the UK, US, and Canada convened at Dartmouth College to discuss the state of the profession of English teaching, ultimately proposing a “growth” model of language learning which contrasted with the skills-based models of curriculum sequencing prevalent at the time. While debates about the impact of the 1966 Dartmouth conference on the teaching of English continue to ebb and flow, from contrasting early accounts by seminar participants (Muller, 1967; Dixon, 1969) to more modern work which situates the conference as a harbinger of the process movement (Trimbur, 2008) or Writing Across the Curriculum (Palmquist et al., 2020), its continued provocation of scholarly discussion has become a legacy in its own right. Even if the Dartmouth Seminar didn't change anything happening in the classrooms of its era and thereafter, which is unlikely (Harris, 1991), it would remain a rare moment of international, professional collaboration and consideration virtually unparalleled in our field's history.

References

Bazerman, C. (May 1st, 2020). Personal communication.

Bazerman, C. (2011). The disciplined interdisciplinarity of writing studies. Research in the Teaching of English 46(1), 8–21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23050587

Dixon, J. (1967). Growth Through English, A Report Based on the Dartmouth Seminar 1966. ERIC.

Dixon, J. (2009). English renewed: visions of English among teachers of 1966. English in Education, 43(3), 241-250. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-8845.2009.01051.x

Goodwyn, A., Durrant, C., Sawyer, W., Scherff, L., & Zancanella, D. (2019). The Future of English Teaching Worldwide. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351024464

Harris, J. (1991). After Dartmouth: growth and conflict in English. College English, 53(6), 631-646. https://doi.org/10.2307/377888

Moffett, J. (1968). Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Moffett, J. (1981). Coming on Center: English Education in Evolution. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.

Lunsford, A. A., & Lunsford, K. J. (2008). "Mistakes are a fact of life": A national comparative study. College Composition and Communication, 781-806. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20457033

Muller, H. J. (1967). The Use of English, Guidelines for the Teaching of English from the Anglo-American Conference at Dartmouth College. ERIC.

Palmquist, M., Childers, P., Maimon, E., Mullin, J., Rice, R., Russell, A., & Russell, D. R. (2020). Fifty years of WAC: Where have we been? Where are we going? Across the Disciplines, 17(3/4), 5-45. https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2020.17.3.01

Squire, J. & Britton, J. Forward to Dixon, J. (1967). Growth Through English, A Report Based on the Dartmouth Seminar 1966. ERIC.

Trimbur, J. (2008). The Dartmouth conference and the geohistory of the native speaker. College English, 71(2), 142-169. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25472313

Published

2023-02-10

How to Cite

Marine, J. M. (2023). Book review - The Expanding Universe of Writing Studies: Higher Education Writing Research. Journal of Writing Research, 14(3), 471–477. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2023.14.03.06

Issue

Section

Book review