Exploring the interaction of explicit, genre-based instruction with antecedent genres and student engagement.

Explicit instruction;Boundary crossing;Antecedent genres;Templates;Student engagement;Creativity

Jason Charles Dietz

University:University of Louisville

Department:English

关键词: Explicit instruction;    Boundary crossing;    Antecedent genres;    Templates;    Student engagement;    Creativity;   

Others  :  https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1345&context=etd

美国|英语

来源: The Universite of Louisville's Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation enters the ongoing discussion regarding whether or not genre canand/or should be explicitly taught in the classroom. It begins with an overview of genretheory, specifically centering on explicit genre instruction and the question of genrecontext. It uses genre, transfer, student engagement, and creativity scholarship, as well asmy own empirical research, to argue that instructors might best enable students to learngenres by linking classroom instruction not the social genre context, but to theindividual’s genre context. I sought to evaluate such a pedagogical possibility byexamining individual students’ propensity to cross genre boundaries, to repurpose theirantecedent genre knowledge, and to engage with their writing assignments.The dissertation reports the results of my analysis in six chapters. Chapter oneprovides a comprehensive literature review and discusses the framework I developed formy project, over-viewing the concepts of boundary crossing, antecedent genres, studentengagement, and creativity. Chapter two reports my procedures for data collection,coding, and analysis, and describes the data sources for this project: interviews with fourinstructors and fifteen students, as well as pre- and post-writing surveys gathered fromstudents in six first year composition courses. Chapters three through six report the results of my research. In chapter three Iexamine the presence of a powerful, direct, pervasive, and at times, obstructive influencethat I termed the “antecedent effect,” or students’ tendency to default to antecedent genreknowledge in a rhetorical situation. Chapter four reports the potentially mitigating impactof explicit instruction on the antecedent effect, specifically suggesting that explicitinstruction may enable more students to cross genre boundaries than otherwise would.Chapter five suggests that student engagement with writing prompts may be nearlyuniversal, but also argues that such engagement may not always be positive for learning.This chapter also reveals an extensive overlap between boundary crossing, studentengagement, and creativity. Finally, chapter six synthesizes the theoretical andpedagogical implications of my findings, recognizes the limitations of the research I haveperformed, and suggests areas for future research, including suggestions on ways thatsuch research might be conducted based on my findings.