Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies

by Linda Adler-Kassner, Elizabeth Wardle

Naming What We Know examines the core principles of knowledge in the discipline of writing studies using the lens of “threshold concepts”—concepts that are critical for epistemological participation in a discipline. The first part of the book defines and describes thirty-seven threshold concepts of the discipline in entries written by some of the field’s most active researchers and teachers, all of whom participated in a collaborative wiki discussion guided by the editors. These entries are clear and accessible, written for an audience of writing scholars, students, and colleagues in other disciplines and policy makers outside the academy. Contributors describe the conceptual background of the field and the principles that run throughout practice, whether in research, teaching, assessment, or public work around writing. Chapters in the second part of the book describe the benefits and challenges of using threshold concepts in specific sites—first-year writing programs, WAC/WID programs, writing centers, writing majors—and for professional development to present this framework in action.

Naming What We Know opens a dialogue about the concepts that writing scholars and teachers agree are critical and about why those concepts should and do matter to people outside the field.

Genres: Nonfiction, Teaching, Writing, School, Theory, Language, College

280 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2015

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every so often, scholars out of writing studies, most of them that gather at the yearly Conference on Composition and Communication--under the leadership of one of the best known scholars--as is Adler-Kassner--take a snapshot of a time and try to summarize just what it is "we" believe in writing studies. In the late eighties in Ann Arbor I participated in one such (failed) session, though about a different field, English Education, undermined in part by my teacher David Bloome, who has some anarchist tendencies that rubbed off on me.

Bloome was in my small assigned sub-group, asked by the conference organizers to say what it is "we know" as a field about, say, children's comprehensions of texts. Bloome refused to participate in what seemed to him a ridiculous enterprise and I was one who joined him i the insurrection. Why would Bloome say no to a task like this? He hated the essentialist presumption of that "we" that consisted of certain hand-picked scholars "speaking for" everyone else in the field. He resisted the idea of "knowing" as some kind of assuringly fixed idea. He resisted the process of coming up with lists of things in the way of typical academics to hand down from theorists to practitioners. I have the same principled objection to this book, not that it doesn't capture a lot of what a lot of people believe about writing and the teaching of writing, and not that it has nothing useful to say to practitioners about what I also view might be useful ways to approach the teaching of writing.

This book was created and edited by a couple people who invited a few dozen people to talk online about their ideas of "what writing scholars believe." The main "threshold" or foundational concepts they came up with give an idea of the scope: 1) writing is a social and rhetorical activity; 2) writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms; 3) writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies; 4) all writers have more to learn; 5) writing is (also always) a cognitive activity. Then these concepts are broken down into subcategories and written about in brief summative sections: Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity, Revision is Central to Developing Writing, Writing is Informed by Prior Experience, and so on. Things "we" believe that we hope you will believe and thus guide your practice.

I think to beginning writing teachers in K-College this book can be useful, though it is not written interestingly for anyone, much less the general public. It isn't what "we" "know" for sure, but I think it can be useful for individual writer teachers to use to guide what it is they might embrace for their teaching of writing philosophies, as a guide to their own teaching of writing, and as a basis for future research. So that's potentially useful.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find this a difficult book to rate or review. It is clearly an important book in the field of composition, enlisting several dozen influential scholars to create "a sort of crowd-sourced encyclopedia" of "threshold concepts" in the discipline (3). The driving argument is that composition is a serious subject of study, an academic discipline, and not just something to teach undergrads. As Doug Downes puts it in his chapter, the book argues for a shift from "procedural to declarative knowledge" (114), from a course in writing to one about writing.

I worry about the longing for respectability that animates such a project. What I most like about being a composition teacher is not being subjected to the constraints of a conventional discipline. This is not a book that would draw me to the teaching of writing. It's dull, earnest, catechetical. Indeed, I don't think it's really a book meant to be read in an ordinary sense. It's meant instead to be cited, invoked.

[Blakepatterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The academic approach toward the material can be dry, but Linda Adler-Kassner acknowledges noteworthy tips for writers and how they reflect on their process.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this may not be a book a person reads in one sitting, as a teacher of writing, I found it very thought-provoking and interesting. In one spot, in this book, we can see compiled the things we know about writing that ought to inform our classroom practices. For instance, that "failure can be an important part of writing development." Teachers know that! How do we help students understand failure in that way? There is so much here about the nature of writing (cognitive, social, etc.). The main concepts give an idea of the scope: 1) writing is a social and rhetorical activity; 2) writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms; 3) writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies; 4) all writers have more to learn; 5) writing is (also always) a cognitive activity.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant new approach to composition studies. The authors gather the best of what we have learned over the past 45 years of composition theory and organize it in terms of its key concepts (as opposed to organizing around the dividing lines of theoretical schools of thought). This book is a must-read for all teachers of writing, and it goes to show once again that Elizabeth Wardle remains a vanguard voice in the field of composition study.

[John Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are someone whose livelihood revolves around words, and especially if you are someone who needs to teach others how to improve their writing, this book is fascinating. I work as a copyeditor. Concepts 1, 2, and 3 I see regularly reflected in the authors I work with, and concepts 4 and 5 have given me food for thought in my own writing.

I first read this book in my first year of university and remember being impressed enough with it to buy my own copy years later and read it fresh. What most stood out to me when I first read it were the subconcepts "Writing Is a Knowledge-Making Activity," "Writing Is a Way of Enacting Disciplinarity," "Failure Can Be an Important Part of Writing Development," and "Revision Is Central to Developing Writing."

These subconcepts still interest me. (1) The idea that writing could by itself produce knowledge blew my mind. It made me more willing to throw ideas at the wall when brainstorming, plan vaguer outlines, and keep an open mind while jotting notes. (2) As a history major, I became more conscious about how my research papers differed from other work. What did it mean to write history, to think historically? (3 and 4) I tried to avoid being a first draft = final draft student when I could make time for revisions. Sometimes there was too much else going on. When I wrote my honor's thesis, however, I was able to do some self-reflection and get outside feedback to produce a much stronger result. Revision really does matter.

Different threshold concepts stand out now (I dare hope that means my writing has improved such that I am ready to learn new things): "Writing Expresses and Shares Meaning to Be Reconstructed by the Reader," "Texts Get Their Meaning from Other Texts," "Writing Enacts and Creates Identities and Ideologies," and "Assessment Is an Essential Component of Learning to Write."

I can see the influence of my current profession in what stood out to me. (1) When copyediting a work, I as a reader have to put myself in the head of the author sometimes. What did they mean here? How can I explain to an author that the text which makes sense in their head does not make sense to readers? (2) Books are so interrelational. I on-and-off edit academic books, and I know that a complete picture is out of my reach due to my unfamiliarity with the relevant scholarship. There's a whole world of meaning in groupings of books that as readers we can only understand by reading more and more interrelated texts. (3) Most books have a point to make, directly or indirectly. In making those points they reveal a host of assumptions and worldviews and personal experiences. A book is as much a relic of the society an author lives in as it is of themselves. (4) I must find a way to get more external feedback on my writing. Without that my writing is in an echo chamber, and I have no objective standard with which to assess my writing.

[Leslie (updates on SG) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear exposition on the core principles of knowledge in writing studies, and their applications for various aspects of the university, including first year composition, undergraduate and graduate studies, writing centers, and assessment. The 37 concepts are grouped according to 5 categories, which are themselves threshold concepts:

1. Writing is a social and rhetorical activity.
2. Writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms.
3. Writing enacts and creates identies and ideologies.
4. All writers have more to learn.
5. Writing is (also always) a cognitive activity.

I really like how the authors posit that the threshold concepts reflect "final-for-now definitions of only some if what [the] field knows," and look forward to applying some of these concepts in my own teaching.

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is divided into two sections. The first names key terminology and identifies the threshold concepts for writing. I really enjoyed this section as a way of thinking about how writing works and what it does. I thought it was fascinating.

The second section was meant to be more "hands-on" I guess, with strategies for implementing this approach in a university setting. A lot of this part read like meeting minutes, but still lots of amazing things to think about.

[Kris Rafferty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of word salads. So meta my eye glazed. But, lots of interesting information hid between the covers, so I'd recommend.

[Feral Academic · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book for middle career professionals, not graduate students. Full of platitudes and policy discussions and devoid of practical advice and applicable strategies.

[Christa Maurice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding, philosophical and engaging.

[Faith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could be reading the Fine Print. But no I have to do college reading

[Tannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for a class at the end of the semester. It felt like review since it canvassed many of the topics that we'd already covered.

[lex f · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will change your life if you take at ou and dr g makes u hate him and then realize he was right

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a long time, I've been hoping for the compositionist equivalent of Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, Alan Blinder's excellent book on what almost all economics agree about. When Lisa Ede recommended this book, I ordered it right away--an introduction to what we generally agree goes into good composition pedagogy? I couldn't wait to share it with my immediate colleagues, who received their PhDs in other fields and were somewhat baffled by teaching composition, as well as administrators and cross-disciplinary colleagues who questioned whether--not to mention how--writing could be taught. I was Episode One level of excited.

Then I got Jar-Jar Binksed by the writing, which somehow manages to be both boring because of academeze and boring because of simplistic repetition. These are good teachers! These are engaging writers! I'm both-feet-in with this stuff, and I found those feet dragged when it came to finishing the book. There's useful stuff here, especially chapters that may apply to branches of the institution--the writing center one is quite good, and Chris Anson is a gem--but the overall effect is like slogging through a university curriculum-standards document written by committee. This isn't the book I was looking for.

If people have the wrong idea of what composition is about, we need to tell them what we know, and we need to do it in a way at least as engagingas the snarky grammar handbooks and ethereal creative writing guides that misrepresent writing.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a smart and fascinating book for anyone interested in getting a big (and use-able) picture of writing studies/composition research. Divided into two parts, the first does a lovely job of outlining overarching topics that constitute writing knowledge. At times, I wished that the overviews had provided a few more references, but I overall appreciated how these topics were organized and presented clear ideas and language to, as the title says, name what we know. The second part of the book then did a lovely job applying these topics to various contexts, specifying what we know can change elements of our pedagogy, our work in writing centers, our professional development, etc. I liked these chapters most when they reported on actual ways that the concepts were being used to design curriculum, assignments, etc., but all of them--like the rest of this volume--were thought provoking and helpful.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so essential for teaching writing of any kind at any level. The first part of the book breaks down and describes writing in detailed and interconnected concepts -- that's the part that is essential. The second part contains essays about implementing the concepts in different situations, which while helpful, isn't necessary. Some of them were personally irrelevant. But being able to describe the threshold concepts is so important, especially when teaching younger writers and trying to identify where they're getting tripped up. This book is a must-have foundation to writing pedagogy.

[Devan Bierbrauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the most helpful collection I've read on English studies.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Naming What We Know is a seminal piece in writing studies, and I think it's laid the foundation for a rich area of future research. An essential read for writing studies scholars.

[Rachel Holtzclaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

i mean i had to read this for a class and i'm not gonna say i enjoyed it. like it was fine. but i didn't have a good time.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some important stuff in here but mostly, the authors try too hard to produce substance and method.