No. 2015/2

SIG Writing Newsletter

Fall/Winter 2015

New SIG Writing

Coordinator

We welcome our new SIG Writing Co-ordinator Eva Lindgren. She has beenelected at the business meeting dur-ing the EARLI Conference in Limassol(Cyprus) in August. Eva Lindgren is a se-nior lecturer at the Department of Lan-guage Studies at Umeå Universitet inSweden. You can find out more abouther Department and her research onlineathttp://goo.gl/cnxV9s andhttp://goo.gl/Xncxg7.

CfP: 2016 Thomas R.

Watson Conference on

Rhetoric and Composition

The theme of the Eleventh Bien-nial Thomas R. Watson Conference onRhetoric and Composition, to be held atthe University of Louisville, KY (USA) Oc-tober 20 to 22, 2016, is Mobility Workin Composition: Translation, Migration,Transformation. The organizers inviteproposals for presentations exploring therelevance of diverse notions of mobili-ties for the work of rhetoric and com-position (as a discipline, form of labor,and profession): how mobility is andmight be worked—theorized, activated,researched, experienced, imagined—inour teaching, scholarship, and programadministration, with what e�ects, forwhom and on whom.

Topics include but are not limited to:• How might we usefully distinguish

among the kinds of mobility experi-enced and exercised by di�erently po-sitioned actors in our field?

• In what ways might mobility get takenup in practices and rhetorics of ac-tivism in engagements across divides

of institution, discipline, program, loca-tion, and language?

• How might theories of mobility inknowledge, meaning, and identity con-tribute to our approaches to transla-tion, transfer and genre, and such mat-ters as form, medium, text, and stance?

• How might we better conceive of andengage the movement of knowledgeacross boundaries of disciplines, pro-grams, institutions, and routes of pro-duction, circulation, reception, execu-tion?

• How might the problematics of knowl-edge mobilization contribute to or helpus better grasp composition’s perdur-ing history of poor working conditionsand low disciplinary status?

• How does mobility challenge dominantconceptions of and commitments toidentities of ethnicity, gender, sexuality,race, class, language, ability, national-ity, profession, and place? In what waysmight we conceive of and pursue, orresist and challenge, mobilizations ofidentity in and through our composing,teaching, administration, and researchpractices?

SIG Writing Newsletter m http://sig-writing.org Page 1

• How do or might digital and other tech-nologies shape and a�ord forms of mo-bility in composition, of what kind, forwhom, and to what e�ect?

More information on the conference isavailable online athttp://www.watsonconference.com

Please direct questions to Bruce Hornerat watson@louisville.edu.Important dates:

• March 1, 2016: Deadline for proposals• May 1, 2016: Notification of accep-

tance• Octover 20 to 22, 2016: Conference

Event: Summer School on

Didactical Writing Research

The next Summer School on Didac-tical Writing Research (in German) willtake place at the University of Hannover(Germany), June 23 to 25, 2016. Theannual summer school provides a forumfor students and young researchers frompsychology, linguistics, teacher studies,and related disciplines who are con-cerned with the study of writing pro-cesses in educational contexts.

The summer school comprises fourformats:

• workshops on technical or theoreticalaspects of writing research;

• poster presentations of qualificationresearch (master theses, PhD theses);

• individual coaching with selected ex-perts in the related fields; and

• plenary lectures.

In 2016, the general theme of thesummer school is Theory developmentin the area of writing didactics. Invitedlectures will be given by Prof. TobiasRichter (“Theories and models of read-ing and writing research”), Prof. MichaelBecker-Mrotzek (“Towards a theory ofwriting competence”) and Prof. ElfiBillmann-Mahecha (“How qualitative re-search connects to theories”).

Further information will be avail-able online by January 2016 fromhttp://goo.gl/Ti0YVV or fromJoachim Grabowski via e-mail:grabowski@psychologie.uni-hannover.de.

COST: Training School in

Antwerp (March)

The Training School Writing ProcessResearch: Keystroke Logging is to be

held at the University of Antwerp (Bel-gium) from March 16 to 18, 2016.

The main objective is to bring to-gether a group of international PhD stu-dents and post-doc researchers, and in-troduce them to the current methods ofcollecting and analyzing writing processdata. The primary focus will be on theuse of keystroke logging (Inputlog andScriptlog). The training school is partof the COST action Strengthening Eu-ropeans’ Capabilities by Establishing theEuropean Literacy Network (ELN).

Applications should be made online(link at the COST ELN website) and in-clude a letter of interest, a short researchdescription and a support letter fromPhD students’ supervisors. You find allinformation online at the COST ELN web-site http://goo.gl/LRNAK8.Important dates:

• January 15, 2016: Deadline for regis-tration

• February 1, 2016: Confirmation of par-ticipation and grants

• March 16 to 18, 2016: Training School

Project: Improving

Pre-University Students’

Performance in Academic

Synthesis Tasks with Level

up Instructions & Feedback

Tool (LIFT)

In late 2015, the research project LIFT.Improving pre-university students’ per-formance in academic synthesis taskswith Level up Instructions & FeedbackTool (LIFT) started. It is funded by TheNetherlands Organisation for ScientificResearch (NWO), the main investiga-tor is Gert Rijlaarsdam with Huub vanden Bergh and Martine Braaksma as co-applicants. The project, carried out at theUniversity of Antwerp (Belgium), aims toinvestigate the relations between writ-ing processes, writing products, di�erenttypes of feedback and instruction, andcertain learner variables in synthesis writ-ing. The project consists of three sub-projects:

• A baseline study among 800 Dutchstudents (ranging from pre-universitygrade 10 until the second year of aca-demic bachelor) in which the patternof development of synthesis text per-formance across grade 10 to bachelor2 is investigated.

• Intervention studies aimed at inves-tigating the e�ects of varying thefeedback object (text/process) and in-formation (absolute/relative), and the

additional e�ect of adaptive writing-strategy instruction (text/process).

• A modelling study in which the rela-tions between text process, text quality,feedback, instruction, and learner vari-ables are assessed.

The research team for this project in-cludes Nina Vandermeulen, Brenda vanden Broek, Elke van Steendam, MariëlleLeijten, Luuk van Waes, and Gert Rijlaars-dam.

Book Series: Research

Literacies and Writing

Pedagogies for Masters

and Doctoral Writers

Cecile Badenhorst (Memorial Uni-versity, Canada) and Cally Guerin (Uni-versity of Adelaide, Australia) editedthe Studies in Writing volume 31 onResearch Literacies and Writing Peda-gogies for Masters and Doctoral Writ-ers. Debates about researcher educa-tion emphasize the dramatic changesfacing higher education in the twenty-first century. Post/graduate studentsmust learn often-hidden research litera-cies with very limited support. This bookexplores the challenges students facewhen engaging in research writing. Thechapters o�er insights into e�ective ped-agogies, ranging from direct, sca�oldedinstruction to peer learning, in face-to-face and online interventions. Themesextend from genre approaches, thresh-old concepts, and publishing pedago-gies through to the emotional aspectsof post/graduate writing, writing groups,peer learning and relational collabora-tions, employing both online and digi-tal technologies. Throughout, authorshave revealed how research literaciesand writing pedagogies, in situated con-texts around the globe, demonstrate

SIG Writing Newsletter m http://sig-writing.org Page 2

practices that are constantly changingin the face of personal, institutional, andbroader influences.

See also http://goo.gl/e8IurK.

Book Series: Writing for

Professional Development

Giulia Ortoleva (University of Geneva,Switzerland), Mireille Bétrancourt (Uni-versity of Geneva, Switzerland), andStephen Billett (Gri�th University, Aus-tralia) edited the Studies in Writing vol-ume 32 on Writing for Professional De-velopment. The book provides a rangeof contributions in which empirical re-search, instructional models, and educa-tional practice are used to explore andilluminate how the task and process ofwriting can be used as tools for profes-sional development.

Throughout the volume, two mainperspectives are considered: learning towrite professionally and writing to learnthe profession, both for initial occupa-tional preparation and ongoing develop-ment within them. The contributions con-sider a range of fields of professionalpractice, across sectors of education,starting from the premises that the roleof writing as evolved in all occupationaldomains, becoming a key activity in mostworkplaces.

Publication: Books

Charles A. MacArthur, Steve Gra-ham, and Jill Fitzgerald published the sec-ond edition of their Handbook on Writ-ing Resarch. The definitive reference inthe field, this volume synthesizes currentknowledge on writing development andinstruction at all grade levels. Promi-nent scholars examine numerous facetsof writing from sociocultural, cognitive,linguistic, neuroscience, and new liter-acy/technological perspectives. The vol-ume reviews the evidence base for widelyused instructional approaches, includ-ing those targeting particular compo-nents of writing. Issues in teaching spe-cific populations—including students withdisabilities and English learners—are ad-dressed. Innovative research methodsand analytic tools are clearly explained,and key directions for future investiga-tion identified.

See also http://goo.gl/yrov2y.

Member: Yamin Qian

Yamin Qian recently joint SIG Writing.She is very interested in EFL academicwriting, language identities, and socialspaces for language use. Yamin Qian re-ceived her Ph.D degree from the Univer-sity of Toronto (Canada). She is currently

working at the School of English and Edu-cation, Guangdong University of ForeignStudies (China). Her research focuses onacademic writing in EFL classes, in par-ticular peer feedbacks, EFL students’ en-gagement/disengagement, and the con-struction of social spaces in class and on-line for academic writing. Yamin Qian isinterested in discussions on the theoriesof world Englishes and multilingualism inEFL academic writing context.

How to join SIG Writing

Not a member yet? You do writing-related research? You enjoy exchangingideas, findings, and data about writing?Then come and join us! Find all informa-tion about SIG Writing on our website:http://www.sig-writing.org.

SIG Writing is a special interestgroup of EARLI, the European Associ-ation for Research on Learning and In-struction (http://www.earli.org).To become a member of SIG Writ-ing, please first join EARLI (all informa-tion about EARLI membership can befound at http://www.earli.org/membership). Membership of the SIGsis open to all EARLI members. A list of allSIGs appears on the membership applica-tion form. To become a member of SIGWriting, tick the check-box. Of courseyou can join other EARLI SIGs as well.

Thanks to C. Badenhorst, B. Horner, J. Grabowski,E. Lindgren, Ch. MacArthur, Th. Olive, Y. Qian, B.Van den Broek, and L. van Waes who contributedto this edition of the newsletter.Please send your contributions for the next edi-tion (Spring 2016) by e-mail to the editor CerstinMahlow (cerstin@mahlow.ch). Please include yourcontribution in the mail text, do not send Word doc-uments!Image Coyprights by Eva Lindgren and CerstinMahlow. Graphics Copyright by Brill, EARLI, Guil-ford, and SIG Writing.December 6, 2015

European Association forResearch on Learning andInstruction

SIG Writing Newsletter m http://sig-writing.org Page 3