Writing and learning from context: Perceptions of composition in first-year learning communities

This study examines faculty and student perceptions of the composition course in first-year learning communities at Arizona State University (ASU) to determine the potential for structured context in teaching writing. Drawing on situated approaches to writing instruction and learning community history and practice, the study explores whether the perceived conditions for writing in interdisciplinary environments facilitate a contextual form of writing instruction that addresses the theorized complexities of composing. Those conditions are explored through surveys of faculty and student participants in learning communities, interviews with faculty participants, and the examination of documents and material within learning communities regarding writing assignments and instructional philosophy.;The implications of these results focus on the necessity for exploiting the complexity of writing in transdisciplinary endeavors to demonstrate the multiple and influential factors that shape writing. The study concludes that if learning communities are viewed as individual contexts where all courses are developed from within rather than brought together, students and faculty are offered increased opportunity to trace writing's complexity through overt navigation of disciplinary strictures and individual expectations that exist in the learning community environment.;Analysis of the collected data indicate four areas that encompass the conditions for writing instruction: (1) the relationship between ASU's Writing Programs and the learning community composition course; (2) the interdisciplinarity of the learning communities, especially regarding collaboration and integration; (3) the logistics and issues of writing assignment design and evaluation within communities; and (4) the connection among writing instruction, student learning, and student writing performance in learning communities. Analysis of the results within these areas suggest that composition instructors in learning communities maintain loyalties to departmental and institutional requirements that affect the extent to which the composition course is integrated into the learning community context and the ways in which they collaborate with other learning community faculty. Individual faculty conceptions of interaction, disciplinary cultures and expectations, along with their different understandings of writing's role in student learning, create some tension in the development and evaluation of writing assignments and in overall satisfaction with the social and intellectual structure of the learning communities.