Topic: Rethinking our Narratives of “Development”

Location: York University, Winters College Dining Hall

Date: December 11, 2018

More information can be found here.

 

The Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, invites applications for a tenure-track position, to begin July 1, 2019, with appointment at the rank of Instructor (in UBC’s Educational Leadership stream). The successful candidate will have primary responsibilities in the Coordinated Arts Program (CAP), teaching Arts Studies (ASTU) 100 and 101, and will be appointed and expected to teach some courses in a department of their disciplinary specialization.

CAP is a learning community program for first-year students that brings together courses in the social sciences, humanities, and visual and performing arts in research streams. Each CAP stream features a seminar, Arts Studies (ASTU) 100, a 6-credit course which addresses academic research and writing through the study of literature (meeting the Faculty of Arts’ degree requirements for both literature and academic writing). The course also fosters multidisciplinary collaborations by foregrounding concepts that recur across the stream’s classes. CAP fosters excellence and innovation in teaching and learning experiences for both students and faculty.

Applicants must have a Ph.D. in literary or cultural studies or a closely related field, open to any national literature or period, and a background in teaching academic writing using an approach that is informed by current theories in writing pedagogy. Applicants will be expected to demonstrate a record of or potential for high-quality educational leadership, especially in the area of curriculum or program development and the first-year experience. The successful candidate will be expected to maintain an active program of excellent teaching, service, and educational leadership; they will play a formative role in the development of this program and its curriculum, and are expected to hold significant administrative responsibility for the program.

Applicants are asked to provide the following:

• A letter of application
• Curriculum vitae
• A teaching dossier that includes the following: a teaching statement related to the teaching of writing and literature; course evaluations and peer-review of teaching reports if available; examples of pedagogical materials; and examples of any published or unpublished scholarship of teaching and learning)
• A statement of past and potential contributions to educational leadership (maximum one page)
• A statement describing past experience in activities that promote diversity and inclusion, broadly understood, and/or plans to make future contributions

Application materials must be submitted electronically as PDFs. Please follow the instructions provided on the application webpage. Review of applications will begin on January 15, 2019 and will continue until the position is filled.

In addition, applicants should arrange for three confidential signed letters of recommendation to be sent separately by the same date to the email address below. Applicants should ensure that referees are aware that this is a position in the Educational Leadership stream and should accordingly provide evidence with a focus on teaching and educational leadership.  Enquiries may be sent to Dr. Laurie McNeill, Chair of the Search Committee, c/o Jennifer Suratos.

This position is subject to final budgetary approval. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Métis, Inuit, or Indigenous person. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Royal Roads University is hiring an academic writing specialist to work in the Writing Centre as a regular, full-time employee. More information can be found here. The competition closes on September 23.

A new podcast series from Roger Graves: “Teaching Writing: Ideas and Strategies”

It is also available through the University of Alberta Writing Across the Curriculum site.

The primary audience for the podcast is post-secondary instructors in all disciplines, but instructors working in other contexts might find it useful, too.

Canadian Journal for the Study of Discourse and Writing Special Section CFP: Writing Instructors, Academic Labour, and Professional Development

As increasing emphasis is placed by post-secondary institutions and employers on the importance of writing skills, this special section considers the gap between what writing instructors need to be effective and the supports currently in place, particularly in light of the disciplinary tensions between English departments and writing studies, the reliance on precariously-employed faculty members, the emergence of teaching-stream faculty roles, and the seemingly perpetual restructuring of writing centre work.

Writing instructors’ working conditions reflect multiple tensions, including the professional formation of most Canadian writing instructors in fields outside rhetoric, composition, writing studies, or applied language studies, and the historical tendency to teach writing through literature (Brooks, 2002; Clary-Lemon, 2009); the way that some “Canadian English departments off-loaded writing instruction to other disciplines, through writing centres and ad hoc arrangements” (Phelps, 2012, p. 16); the challenge of justifying small-class instruction and extensive personalized feedback as signature elements of effective writing studies pedagogy (Horning, 2007); the increasing numbers of multilingual students whose language support needs have only been partially accommodated (Marshall & Walsh Marr, 2018); and the expectation that writing instructors will “fix” students’ writing, ideally in first year, before they undertake advanced work in a specific academic discipline (Giltrow, 2016).

Academic labour issues also play a central role. Canadian college and university instructors of writing are disproportionately graduate students and contract faculty members (Landry, 2016; Graves, 1991) who, much like their American counterparts, have limited institutional power (Samuels, 2017; Bousquet, 2008). Similarly, writing centre work is often carried out by staff who do not have the same job security and institutional status as tenure-track instructors (Graves, 2016) and whose academic credentials are not acknowledged by faculty (Alexander, 2005).

In addition, new types of permanent and tenure-track teaching-stream positions have become increasingly associated with writing instruction in Canada; these positions often include heavy teaching loads that limit professional development or research time. The teaching of writing is female-dominated, both reflecting and contributing to diminished status in the academy (Alexander, 2005). Further, pedagogical training and ongoing faculty development have not been evenly available to permanent or sessional instructors of writing (Smith, 2006).

The guest editors for this special section invite contributions of short articles (including theory-based analysis, empirical research, narrative, and opinion-style pieces) that explore these issues, as well as related topics. Our goal is to work with authors to develop articles that are in dialogue with one another and that further the conversation about professional formation and identities.

Questions that could be explored:

• How does location (by type of institution, within a particular faculty, department, or program, in a writing centre) affect the status and pedagogical support of writing instructors?
• How do writing instructors who move between institutions or programs negotiate differing (and sometimes conflicting) administrative and pedagogical imperatives?
• How are the specific needs of multilingual, Indigenous, and international students contemplated and addressed in the professional development of writing instructors, and what is missing?
• How can writing instructors be supported in accommodating diverse student learning needs, including disabilities, in a changing legal and human rights landscape?
• How does online writing instruction affect the requirements for faculty preparation and development?
• In light of the precarious status of many writing instructors, how can faculty development be inclusive, democratic, and participatory rather than managerial?
• How do writing instructors’ own identities–particularly in the context of the feminization of writing studies, the eurocentrism of the field, and the limited number of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized scholars in Canadian writing studies–affect faculty development needs and shape the institutional status of writing instruction?
• How can instructors outside writing studies be prepared and supported in writing instruction needs within their own disciplines?
• What are the institutional and pedagogical effects of the low status of writing instruction and writing instructors, particularly within research universities, and how can this status be challenged?
• What are the effects (on students, on faculty members and in departments/institutions) of a growing group of instructors teaching primarily in a field they did not train in, especially with little time and support for professional development?

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should be in the range of 2,000-4,000 words (including references and appendices), and should be submitted electronically in MSword (.doc or .docx format). Please refer to the APA Handbook (6th edition) for style guidelines. Manuscripts that do not follow these guidelines will not be considered suitable for review. Please note: The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2019.

Please feel free to contact the section editors if you have questions: Sara Humphreys, Micaela Maftei, Katja Thieme, and Heidi Tiedemann Darroch.

References

Alexander, K. (2005). Liminal identities and institutional positioning: On becoming a ‘writing lady’ in the academy. Inkshed: Newsletter of the Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning, 22(3), 5-16.

Bousquet, M. (2008). How the university works: Higher education and the low-wage nation. New York: New York University Press.

Brooks, K. (2002). National culture and the first-year English curriculum: A historical study of “Composition” in Canadian universities. American Review of Canadian Studies, 32(4), 673–694. https://doi.org/10.1080/02722010209481679

Clary-Lemon, J. (2009). Shifting tradition: Writing research in Canada. American Review of Canadian Studies, 39(2), 94–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/02722010902848128

Giltrow, J. (2016). Writing at the centre: A sketch of the Canadian history. Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie, 26, 11–24.

Graves, R. C. W. (1991). Writing instruction in Canadian universities (PhD Dissertation). The Ohio State University.

Horning, A. (2007). The definitive article on class size. WPA: Writing Program Administration, 31(1–2), 11–34.

Landry, D. L. (2016). Writing studies in Canada : A people’s history (PhD Dissertation). University of British Columbia. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0308778

Marshall, S., & Walsh Marr, J. (2018). Teaching multilingual learners in Canadian writing-intensive classrooms: Pedagogy, binaries, and conflicting identities. Journal of Second Language Writing, 40, 32–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2018.01.002

Phelps, L. W. (2012). The historical formation of academic identities: Rhetoric and composition, discourse and writing. Canadian Journal for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie, 25(1), 25-Mar.

Samuels, R. (2017). The politics of writing studies: Reinventing our universities from below. University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xts5

Smith, T. S. (2006). Recent trends in undergraduate writing courses and programs in Canadian universities. In R. Graves & H. Graves (Eds.), Writing centres, writing seminars, writing culture: Writing instruction in Anglo-Canadian universities (pp. 319–370). Winnipeg: Inkshed Press.