First-Year Writing Instructor's Guide

The FYW curriculum is guided by its philosophy of writing as being driven by habits of practice. These are described as representing "layers of mental and physical labor involved in writing and composing" that are "[developed] over time through our actions and habits." This is a marked difference from the commonplaces around writing as being products created through fixed skillsets. Indeed, much of the challenging work of introducing and fostering these habits centers around reframing writing as a life-long activity that everyone does and everyone can always strengthen.

The fuller descriptions of these habits, provided by the FYW program, are provided below:

Collecting and Curating

• Determine principles of selection and organization.
• Create a meaningful assemblage using collected artifacts.

Engaging

• Situate yourself in relationship to a text or texts.
• Utilize a text’s project as a framework to examine an artifact or event.

Contextualizing

• Determine the relevant context for a project (e.g., historical, cultural, philosophical, ideological, research contexts).
• Situate your project, issue, or event within the relevant context.
• Establish the relationship between the context and the project.

Theorizing

• Provide an explanation for how something works or an interpretation of collected data, evidence, or artifacts; speculate on a response to “how is this possible?”
• Determine how you will contribute to, change, or provide new ways of seeing a conversation, topic, or issue.

Circulating

• Experiment with different platforms to determine how audiences might interact with your text on those platforms.
• Negotiate feedback productively through the processes of revision and collaboration.

The ACRL's Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education is a foundational document for conceptualizing the nature and value of information literacy in higher educational and lifelong contexts. As such, it informs and guides the instructional design decisions of librarians and any disciplinary faculty working with students engaging in research and information assessment.

Somewhat analogously to the FYW program's "habits of practice," the Framework's "frames" position information literacy not as static skills but as a set of practices that acknowledge and build upon the information ecosystems and community contexts in which we receive and produce information. Its authors describe the language of frames as reflecting this move towards practices: it "is called a framework intentionally because it is based on a cluster of interconnected core concepts, with flexible options for implementation, rather than on a set of standards or learning outcomes, or any prescriptive enumeration of skills" ("Introduction"). Further, each frame is presented in the full document alongside groups of related "information practices" and "dispositions," reflecting how people effectively interact with information within an ongoing process.

The six frames are presented here:

• Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
• Information Creation as a Process
• Information Has Value
• Research as Inquiry
• Scholarship as Conversation
• Searching as Strategic Exploration

Each section of ENGL 1007 is centered around a shared inquiry: a focus on a common question or problem that allows for both engagement within the broader scholarly conversations of particular fields and the creation of a local community of interest and practice in the classroom.

Using the foundation of inquiry serves the dual impact of establishing a model for both the research process and writing practices for newcomers to the university.

"Research as inquiry" serves as one of the premise frames of the ACRL's Framework. According to its authors, "Experts see inquiry as a process that focuses on problems or questions in a discipline or between disciplines that are open or unresolved" and "recognize the collaborative effort within a discipline to extend the knowledge in that field." Rather than seeing oneself as a bystander to others' efforts, students can engage immediately in pressing issues that are meaningful to them with this frame and dialogue with others who have and are currently attempting to address those issues. Research is thus demonstrated as a vital field of shared human activity.

Writing within a line of shared inquiry emphasizes writing's situatedness as always writing to and with others. An emphasis on the rhetorical situation of any communication and the need for audience analysis shows that we are never writing in isolation. In the classroom, repeated peer-guided revision and reflection underscores the fact that at each stage of the process we must be engaged with others. 

Inquiry serves as a fundamental means of instantiating writing's habits of practice and introducing researching and writing as lifelong, iterative processes for students. Organizing the course in this way invites students to participate in the culture of the university as a place uniquely dedicated to the creation of knowledge and to see how they can serve a role in addressing the needs and problems of wider communities.