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To what extent could student dispositions play a role in writing transfer? Look for literature on that issue both within and outside of writing studies and summarize what you find. As the week progresses, develop arguments about why dispositions may play a role and how one might foster productive dispositions within students in the classroom.
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CF 26: “Beyond Knowledge and Skills” by Dana Lynn Driscoll and Jennifer Wells
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Composition Forum 26, Fall 2012
http://compositionforum.com/issue/26/
Beyond Knowledge and Skills: Writing Transfer and the
Role of Student Dispositions
[http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=compforum]
Dana Lynn Driscoll and Jennifer Wells
Abstract: Previous transfer researchers within writing studies have made tremendous gains in
understanding how social contexts and curricula influence writing behaviors. In this article, we
argue that individual dispositions, such as motivation, value, and self-efficacy, need to occupy a
more central focus in writing transfer research. After describing shifts from focusing on the
educational context to the individual in composition research broadly, we examine previous
writing transfer research, tracing a growing need in better understanding student dispositions. In
the second half of the article, we identify five qualities of student dispositions and describe four
specific dispositions—value, self-efficacy, attribution, and self-regulation—that influence writing
transfer. The article concludes by emphasizing the role of the individual and by articulating new
avenues of research for better understanding student dispositions in writing transfer.
A growing body of research in writing studies has focused on understanding students’ struggles to
transfer writing knowledge from high school to college, from course to course, and from university to
workplace settings. Composition as a field has made tremendous gains in addressing the problem of
transfer through activity-based curricular models and in examining students’ knowledge. However,
less attention has been paid to individual, internal qualities that may impact transfer; these qualities,
which we call dispositions, include what the Framework for Success for Post-Secondary Writing
Instruction calls “habits of mind,” such as persistence, self-efficacy and metacognition. As noted
educational psychologist David Perkins and others have described, dispositions are not knowledge,
skills, or abilities—they are qualities that determine how learners use and adapt their knowledge.
Independently, both authors of this article began dissertations on transfer of learning using
exploratory, grounded, and mixed methods approaches to our data collection and analysis. We
intended to build upon the rich transfer work of David Russell, David Smit, Anne Beaufort, and
Elizabeth Wardle, and to examine curricular interventions for transfer, although our data lead us in a
much different direction. Despite the differences in our geographic locations, the educational levels of
our participants, and our research questions, we discovered surprisingly similar findings concerning
the importance of individual learner dispositions. Our findings suggested that student dispositions
were critical to success in transfer of learning–an emphasis that we had not seen widely addressed in
the literature. While we agree that the emphasis on contexts and curriculum are essential for
understanding writing transfer, we suggest that dispositions play an equally essential role.
In this article, we argue that writing researchers, writing faculty, and writing program administrators
(WPAs) should more explicitly consider the role of learners’ dispositions because this may allow us
to more fully understand and address writing transfer. After briefly describing the ways that
individuals and contexts interact in the broader composition literature, we discuss previous literature
that examines writing transfer. Through this work, we trace a growing emphasis—and need—to better
understand student dispositions. In the second half of the article, we articulate a theory of student
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dispositions that identifies five key qualities of dispositions. Using data from our two studies and
work from education and psychology, we then describe four specific dispositions—value, selfefficacy, attribution, and self-regulation—that influence writing transfer. We conclude by suggesting
future avenues of research concerning dispositions and writing transfer.
Composition’s Turns Toward Integrating the Educational Context
and the Individual
Over the past decade, the gaze of writing transfer researchers has understandably drifted towards
pedagogical interventions and classroom contexts; however, we argue that researchers need to
embrace a more nuanced perspective in which both the role of the instructional context and the role of
the individual and his/her dispositions receive equal consideration. We situate this move toward a
more integrated approach within a long history of similar moves made inside composition studies.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Scott Consigny sought to rectify the divide between Lloyd Bitzer’s
privileging of context and Richard Vatz’s privileging of the individual by arguing that both the
individual and the context were, and still are, essential to understanding the rhetorical situation.
Likewise, over the past twenty years, composition researchers have shifted from understanding
literacy development as something that takes place primarily within the educational context of the
classroom, to something impacted by the individual’s experiences outside the classroom.
In the early 1990s, Marilyn Sternglass made a clear case for a “whole person” approach to studying
literate development that includes understanding individual student histories and how non-academic
settings impact academic life (236). Taking up this call in his 2008 article, Kevin Roozen presents an
ethnographic study of one basic writer and demonstrates how this writer’s literate activity and identity
in non-school areas (comedy, poetry, etc.) profoundly shape the writer’s educational activities.
Composition’s understanding of genre, as Bawarshi and Reiff discuss in Genre: An Introduction to
History, Theory, Research and Pedagogy, has evolved from a view of genres as simple textual
categories to one that see genres as complex social actions that include cultural knowledge (4),
intention (4), and motivation (75). In this way, genre theory brings together textual features of
production, contexts of production, tools for production, and—implicitly—individual dispositions that
mitigate that production.
We note these examples to show that, as composition has sought to understand fundamentals like
rhetorical situations, literacy development, and genre theory, it has done so by, first, gravitating
toward context. Only later does it self-correct to include the impact of the individual learner. In the
same way, within composition’s research on transfer we neither advocate abandonment of context nor
a 180-degree turn toward individual dispositions. Rather, we acknowledge both are essential to
understanding transfer.
Transfer of Learning: Seminal Studies
The history of the development of knowledge transfer theory is analogous to the historical shifts in
composition theory described above. On the one hand, most definitions of knowledge transfer involve
three elements: something learned in the past, something applied in the future, and something that
enables what was learned in the past to directly affect or influence what is done in the future (Haskell;
Perkins and Salomon; Royer, Mestre and Dufresne). On the other hand, writing transfer theorists have
not always considered the learner or what the learner brings with him/her to the transfer problem. In
some definitions, the learner is someone to whom or through whom transfer happens rather than being
the agent of transfer.
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Compositionists who have studied knowledge transfer have reflected this theoretical bent by drawing
upon activity theory, and while it accounts for some individual aspects, it largely privileges actions
and contexts. Russell’s “Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction” is frequently
cited to describe the limitations of first-year composition (FYC) in facilitating knowledge transfer.
Using a “general ball” metaphor, Russell explains why “General Writing Skills Instruction” (GSWI)
courses fail to teach students to generalize. He equates a GWSI course to a course in general ball
handling, where students learn how to hold the ball, bounce the ball, throw the ball, etc., but do not
learn those skills inside of contexts where they would actually use them (baseball, football, basketball
etc.). Russell argues that students can’t transfer “general ball” to the disciplines and suggests that we
encourage more writing in the disciplines (WID) and writing across the curriculum (WAC), and use
an activity theory approach.
Russell’s work is based on the research of Terttu Tuomi-Grohn and Yrjo Engestrom, who describe
activity theory as that which emphasizes organizations and movement through activity systems:
The conceptualization of transfer based on socio-cultural views take into account the
changing social situations and individual’s multidirectional movement from one
organization to another, from home to school or from workplace to school and back.
Based on activity theory, this conceptualization expands the basis of transfer from the
actions of individuals to collective organizations. It’s not a matter of individual moves
between school and workplace but of the efforts of school and workplace to create
together new practices. (34)
As they argue, activity systems are structured to include a number of features: rules, division of labor,
community, subjects, objects, instruments, and outcomes. It is through the relationship of each aspect
of this larger activity system that successful boundary crossing (transfer) can occur. Tuomi-Grohn and
Engestrom articulate that transfer in this model is primarily driven by the interaction and resolution of
conflict between different activity systems, such as school and work. While activity theory makes
space for the individual, its emphasis is on the system of activity and the organization.
Writing researchers have built upon Russell’s activity theory approach to focus primarily on
instructional contexts and curricula. In The End of Composition Studies, Smit argues that most
research has not allowed us to understand how transfer occurs and “the only principle we have is that
transfer can be taught if the similarities of the knowledge and skill needed in different contexts are
pointed out” (132). Like Russell, Smit critiques FYC for being a place where writing is taught as a set
of isolated skills and divorced from future writing contexts, his primary concern on how educators can
either make the contexts of their classrooms similar enough for students to generalize from one
classroom to another or how to make similarities more transparent. While he acknowledges that
transfer in large part “depends on the learners’ background and experience,” he dismisses these
factors because he says teachers cannot control them (119). Smit argues that first-year composition
students often do not see how previous learning is relevant to the future, but he does not explore why
this may be the case. So, although Smit does an admirable job describing challenges for transfer in the
context of curriculum and classrooms, he fails to address—or even acknowledge—dispositional
aspects of transfer.
In her ethnographic case study of one student, Beaufort follows Tim as he struggles in moving from
FYC to his coursework in dual majors and later into the workplace. Beaufort grounds her research in a
context-based framework, discourse community theory, which has features in common with activity
theory but is more specific to literate practice. Beaufort finds that Tim had trouble transferring writing
knowledge because of the competing values in Tim’s different discourse communities (FYC and
History) and his lack of awareness about the differences between those communities (66-68). While
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Beaufort’s study focuses on Tim’s perceptions of his discourse communities, she does not focus on
the dispositional aspects Tim has that may be causing those perceptions (such as locus of control,
motivation, etc.). Beaufort also does not discuss anything about Tim as a person outside of the
educational setting. Like Smit, Beaufort’s arguments are based on curricular interventions on the part
of faculty rather than on individual student characteristics. In her concluding sections, Beaufort
critiques the context in which first-year writing is taught and argues that many teachers of writing
consider themselves “generalists” who are mostly concerned with providing students with basic skills.
Drawing on Russell’s ball analogy, she challenges the idea that teaching students basic writing skills
will automatically enable the students to transfer their knowledge to new settings.
Like Smit and Beaufort, Wardle’s “Understanding ‘Transfer’ from FYC: Preliminary Results of a
Longitudinal Study” can be seen both as a product of activity theory as well as the beginning of a new
genealogy that leads to the current scholarship on “Writing About Writing,” a curricular concept that
stems from Douglas Downs and Wardle’s groundbreaking 2007 article. Wardle also addresses the
limitations of trying to understand the role of the individual in the problem of transfer. Unlike Smit,
she argues that researchers would miss crucial information if they only focused on the individual
without understanding the learning context. Additionally, Wardle argues that by focusing on the
individual, “we may be tempted to assign some ‘deficiency’ to students or their previous training
though in fact the students may fulfill the objectives of their next writing activities satisfactorily
without using specific previously-learned writing-related skills (such as revision)” (69). Despite her
concerns, we interpret Wardle’s context-rich findings as having much to do with dispositional aspects
of learning. For example, Wardle found that students generally did not transfer knowledge from their
first-year writing courses, “not because they are unable to or because they did not learn anything in
FYC. Rather, students did not perceive a need to adopt or adapt most of the writing behaviors they
used in FYC for other courses” (76). Wardle explains that while the students felt they were capable of
completing more difficult assignments, they were “unwilling to put forth the effort required” to reflect
on their past learning enough to use what they had learned to solve these more difficult writing
problems (74). Wardle argues that this problem, ultimately, is in the hands of those instructors who do
not create the kinds of conditions that will motivate students to put forth effort in transferring. With
this, Wardle departs from the conclusions drawn by Russell, Smit, and Beaufort. Instead of arguing
that the context of FYC itself fails to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, Wardle suggests that the
FYC context fails to provide students with the motivation to transfer their knowledge—a key
dispositional quality. However, her emphasis is still on the context of FYC, and she is largely locating
the sources of her participants’ motivation outside of themselves.
Writing Transfer and Student Dispositions
It was within this framework that we initially formulated our dissertation research questions. We
began our own studies{1} [#note1] by asking questions about how classroom contexts in high school
and college had affected our participants’ ability to transfer knowledge as they moved through
educational activity systems. Dana was studying whether certain approaches to teaching writing could
foster transfer more successfully than others (such as rhetorical approaches vs. literary ones), while
Jennifer was trying to understand how a seemingly transfer-inhibiting curriculum (the formulaic Jane
Schaffer method) was apparently facilitating successful knowledge transfer. What we both initially
missed in formulating our questions was right in front of us—the impact of students’ dispositions. It
was not until we began collecting and analyzing our data and examining work from outside the field
that we realized the importance of dispositions in writing transfer.
In his 2012 piece, “Challenges in Assessing the Development of Writing Ability: Theories, Constructs
and Methods,” David Slomp seemingly describes our initial approach when he explains that “failure
to consider the role that intrapersonal factors play in the transfer process can cloud our ability to
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assess underlying barriers to transfer” (84). He argues that activity-based theories of transfer do not
clearly account for individual factors because they privilege the social interactions, institutional
contexts, and participation in activities. To address his critique of the limitations in current writing
transfer research, Slomp suggests that transfer researchers draw upon Urie Bronfenbrenner and
Pamela Morris’s bioecological model of human development, which we next describe.
Defining Dispositions
Although student dispositions have not been widely addressed in writing transfer research, substantial
work on dispositions and their impact on learning and transfer has been conducted in the fields of
education and psychology. Once we delved into this literature in our own work, it became obvious
that this was the crucial piece of the transfer puzzle we had been missing. In this section, we begin by
identifying five key features that define dispositions and their relationship to transfer; we follow with
specific examples of dispositions supported by data from our two studies.
1. Dispositions are a critical part of a larger system that includes the
person, the context, the process through which learning happens, and
time.
Slomp argues that a bioecological model of transfer assessment, based on the work of Bronfenbrenner
and Morris, allows us to balance individual and contextual understandings of transfer and to seek new
means of assessment. Slomp writes, “framing their work through the lens of this theory, researchers
will be able to examine not only how a student’s writing ability is developing, but also…the array of
intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional factors that either support or inhibit that
development” (86). Building upon his suggestion, we use Bronfenbrenner and Morris’s model to
articulate the relationship of individual dispositions to contexts and processes.
The Bioecological Model of Human Development, inspired by living ecological systems, has four
parts: process, person, time, and context. Process is an interaction between a person and his/her
context over time—it is this interaction that produces human development—or in the case of writing
studies, writerly development. Person, context, and time substantially impact processes;
Bronfenbrenner and Morris argue that these areas interact to encourage or discourage development
(795). Of particular importance to understanding dispositions, the “person” aspects of the
bioecological model include: dispositions (personal characteristics such as motivation and
persistence), resources (knowledge, skill, ability), and demand (influences from a context that
encourage/discourage a person’s reaction) (795-796; 810).
2. Dispositions are not intellectual traits like knowledge, skills, or aptitude,
but rather determine how those intellectual traits are used or applied.
Perkins et al argue that most views of learning and transfer focus on the intellectual traits with which
individuals are equipped—their knowledge, skills, and aptitudes—rather than what dispositional
features individuals may use to access, adapt, and employ intellectual traits (270). They also argue
that while researchers often try to explain behavior in terms of skills, knowledge, or aptitude,
dispositions can greatly help explain student behaviors concerning transfer. Bronfenbrenner and
Morris likewise split dispositions from resources (which include knowledge and skills) as described
above, seeing the two as clearly distinct.
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3. Dispositions determine students’ sensitivity toward and willingness to
engage in transfer.
Bronfenbrenner and Morris argue that while most research treats dispositions or “cognitive and
socioemotional characteristics of the person as dependent variables; that is as measures of
developmental outcomes,” their model instead treats them as “precursors and producers of later
development” (810). Bronfenbrenner and Morris argue that dispositional qualities are so important
that they don’t just interact with the development, but rather they determine and/or prevent later
development, in that they begin, sustain or otherwise prevent the start of processes (795; 810). This
point is critical to understanding the role of student dispositions in writing transfer. While activity
theorists Tuomi-Grohn and Engestrom view the “subject” as having an equal role in the activity
system (and do not appear to address that subject’s dispositions at length), Bronfenbrenner and Morris
and Perkins et al. see dispositions not just as contributing pieces in development but also as features
that allow or prevent successful development from taking place.
Numerous transfer researchers articulate the importance of dispositions as key factors in preventing
and allowing successful transfer to take place. Perkins et al. argue that dispositions are features that
determine how sensitive students are to be motivated and inclined to transfer knowledge to new
learning situations. Anne McKeough, Judy Lee Lupart, and Anthony Marini note, “Even if a learner
has acquired all the resources necessary for a particular transfer task, if he or she cannot easily access
those resources, does not recognize the relevance of prior learning to the task at hand … or has no
desire to take up recognized transfer opportunities, then transfer will not occur” (2; emphasis added).
This is why Perkins and Salomon call “mindful abstraction,” or the willingness to engage in transferfocused thinking, as both crucial and precarious. Likewise, Velda McCune and Noel Entwistle,
describing a particular generative “desire to learn” disposition, argue that dispositions are associated
with particular ways of thinking, ways students approach material, and their willingness to engage
with the subject matter (305).
4. Dispositions can positively or negatively impact the learning
environment; they can be generative or disruptive.
Bronfenbrenner and Morris demonstrate that two kinds of dispositions exist: developmentally
generative (such as curiosity and goal pursuit), allowing for positive human development to take
place; and developmentally disruptive (such as impulsiveness and distractibility), allowing for a
negative impact on the development of the individual (810).
5. Dispositions are dynamic and may be context-specific or broadly
generalized.
Perkins et al. argue that dispositions are not static; learners develop particular dispositions as they
move through activity systems. Research has shown that some dispositions may be context-specific
(e.g., valuing learning in one context but not another) or broadly generalized (underlying value
systems, such that “learning is good”) (Hofer, Driscoll).
These five features describe and define dispositions in very broad terms. However, it is critical to
understand that many different types of dispositions exist and that certain dispositions may be more or
less prevalent within an individual learner. In our own studies of writing transfer, we found four such
specific dispositions (value, self-efficacy, attribution, and self-regulation) that either enabled or
inhibited our participants from successfully transferring their knowledge. All of the four dispositions
we discuss below fall under the umbrella of psychological theories of motivation.
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What Do I Value? Expectancy-Value Theory of Motivation
The expectancy-value theory of motivation (Wigfield and Eccles; Eccles) links students’ motivation,
performance, persistence, and choice- making to the value students place upon a particular task or
learning situation in educational environments. Expectancy-value theory aligns with work of transfer
researchers Salomon and Perkins, who argue that learners must be willing to engage in mindful
abstraction and put forth the mental effort to generalize from past learning to new learning situations.
If students don’t value what they are learning or don’t see how what they are learning will be useful to
them in the future, they will not engage in mindful abstraction. In 2007, composition researchers
Linda Bergmann and Janet Zepernick conducted focus groups with upper-division students
concerning their perceptions of FYC. They found that the “primary obstacle to … transfer is not that
students are unable to recognize situations outside FYC in which those skills can be used, but that
students fail to look for such situations because they believe that skills learned in FYC in particular
have no value in any other setting” (139).
In Dana’s study, the issue of value played a key role in successful transfer. Julie, a sophomore in
animal science, placed a very low value on her rhetorically focused FYC course, which created
problems with transfer and a disconnection between divergent genres at the university. Julie reported
never having to write in her high school classes and being largely inexperienced with college
writing. She expressed negative views concerning the transferability of most of her FYC course
content because she saw it as completely disconnected from her career goals in animal science. She
says:
I tried my best in that class; I turned in every assignment; I came. But, I just didn’t feel
like it was useful to me. … That ethos, pathos, logos—I know I’m never going to use that
again. For example, there’s people over in Africa—you know they’re starving but you
know it had nothing to do with you. You’re not worried about it … it’s not on your mind.
It’s just like [FYC], it doesn’t affect you, so why be worried about it?
The low value that Julie placed on her FYC course essentially blocked her from engaging in the kind
of reflection or “mindful abstraction” that is necessary for transfer to occur. In her interviews and
subsequent science writing the semester after FYC, Julie struggled and yet reported no efforts to
engage in mindful abstraction, to seek external help, or to apply the seemingly useful rhetorical
content of FYC to her writing. Julie, therefore, demonstrated developmentally disruptive dispositions
concerning transfer–characteristics that prevented her from science writing success.
Conversely, Carl, a student studying computer information technology and biometrics with a forensics
science minor, demonstrated generative dispositions and was able to engage in mindful abstraction
using material from FYC in his two majors. Not only did Carl value writing and view it as critically
important to his career, he also described and demonstrated through writing how the conciseness,
argument, and outlining skills he learned in FYC directly applied to his speech communications and
forensics science courses:
Dana: Were you able to take the information from your English class here last semester
and transfer it into other classes? In other classes which you have to write?
Carl: The conciseness helped. Also, I was really fortunate to have the instructor I had,
because he was not the easiest grader in the world … every two lines or whatever, he’d
say “So what who cares?” And that really, really helps the [COM] outlines. In [Forensics]
if you have a sentence that is like 3/4 of a line that’s weird. And it sets it off, looks bad .
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… So I think it is really important to be able to say what you have to say in the least
amount of space.
While Carl reported that he still struggled in adapting to widely divergent genres at the university, he
actively sought out ways to connect his knowledge and engage in mindful abstraction and sought help
through the university’s writing center. Data from both of our studies revealed that the value students
placed on tasks directly impacted their motivation to transfer; without value, students generally will
not engage in mindful abstraction and therefore fail to see situations in which transfer of knowledge
could occur. The data revealed that “value” for students was almost entirely based on student beliefs
about future writing contexts. Furthermore, value seemed to have the potential to be, in
Bronfenbrenner and Morris’s terms, either generative or disruptive.
Am I Capable? Self-Efficacy Theory
According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy theory explains the ways in which “people’s beliefs about
their capabilities to produce performances influence events that affect their lives” (434). If someone
believes he is capable of running a marathon, he is more likely to do the things required to complete a
marathon (like maintaining a training schedule) than someone who believes that, no matter what he
does, he won’t be able to complete a marathon. With regards to learners, self-efficacy explains the
relationship between students’ beliefs about their capabilities and the likelihood they will take the
steps needed to achieve their goals. Students with high self-efficacy are more likely than students with
low self-efficacy to self-regulate their own learning (Bandura), to work hard, to be persistent when
faced with obstacles, and to feel less anxious about the work they need to do (Zimmerman). Students
with low self-efficacy may perceive work to be harder than it actually is, which can cause negative
emotions such as stress and depression (Pajares).
In studies of writing and self-efficacy, Patricia McCarthy, Scott Meier, and Regina Rinderer found
that students who held more positive beliefs about their own abilities produced better writing. If the
students who had low self-efficacy held those beliefs because of their past learning experiences, then
“one important step in improving writing would be to strengthen individual’s self-efficacy expectation
about their writing ability” (466). Self-efficacy theory suggests that, in order for students to do the
work that successful transfer requires, they first have to hold developmentally generative beliefs about
their ability to do that work and to accomplish their goals. A learner’s self-efficacy becomes
especially important when faced with a task that at first seems overwhelming or unfamiliar.
For example, in Jennifer’s study, the students who had positive self-efficacy were those who persisted
through writing in unfamiliar genres. Rebecca, a history major, initially panicked when she was asked
to write an essay in which she had to evaluate the arguments of two historians who were attacking
each other’s interpretation of a text. In an email to a former high school teacher, she wrote: “HELP
ME. I really am struggling with this for some reason. I feel like I’m just summarizing their points
rather than analyzing their arguments. What kinds of things should a person consider when
‘evaluating an argument’?” While the amount of anxiety Rebecca exhibited might suggest she had
low self-efficacy, the fact that she reached out for guidance underscored her belief that she would be
able to write in this genre—she just needed more information. Like the runner who trains for a
marathon, Rebecca did what she needed to achieve her goals. Once she understood the purpose of an
argument evaluation, and learned about different ways authors make their arguments (e.g., by
establishing credibility), she was able to adapt what she knew about essay writing (e.g., establishing
her own argument, analyzing her evidence) to complete her assignment.
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