Students’ views on their own learning: what do students come to know about writing during their college years?

Scholars in the field of writing studies have come to appreciate that writing as an activity system is vastly more complex than is usually understood in collegiate settings (e.g., Beaufort, 2007; Roozen & Erickson, 2017; Russell, 1995). Exploring the consequences of this gap—between systemic complexity and curricular simplification—is an overarching aim of this study. Its more particular aim is to contribute evidence supportive of arguments for major curricular and pedagogical reform in college writing instruction (Downs & Wardle, 2007; Driscoll & Wells, 2012; Rounsaville et al., 2022; Yancey et al., 2014). This study is based at a research-intensive U.S. university where explicit writing instruction is taught early as a foundational set of literacy skills and later as an advanced set of rhetorical skills tailored to the making and communication of knowledge in specific academic disciplines. The curriculum assumes that discipline-specific rhetorical skills build on foundational literacy skills in ways that are obvious to student writers. This curriculum persists despite mounting criticism of its core assumption. This study bolsters extant criticism by supplying nuanced evidence of the sort that can only be gleaned from longitudinal case-study inquiry. Drawing on 126 semi-structured interviews with eight undergraduates across academic standings and majors, this study offers a close, fine-grained view of how undergraduates navigate college learning through and around writing, examining the processes, contexts, and relationships that shape their writing practices, as well as how their evolving academic and professional identities influence their engagement with writing across disciplinary settings.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Zhang, Dan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mortensen, Peter
• McCarthey, Sarah
• Prior, Paul
• Wisniewski, Carolyn

• College Writing
• Writing Transfer
• First-year Composition
• Developmental Learning
• Writing Ecologies
• Writing Assessment

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Dan Zhang

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129846

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129846