Incorporating Process-Based Writing Pedagogy into First-Year Learning Communities: Strategies and Outcomes

This article reports a study that examines the efforts of one school--Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania--to improve student writing in first-year learning communities by promoting so-called process-based writing pedagogy outside of writing classes. Administrators encouraged instructors of subject-matter classes to integrate the writing pedagogy used in the first-year writing classes, thus improving both the writing and the teaching of writing across the community. Several surveys assessed how Duquesne's learning community program integrated the "process-based" writing pedagogy utilized in the first-year writing classes across all of the courses in each community--and how students and instructors evaluated the resultant improvement in student writing. Results suggest that these efforts were largely unsuccessful. Reasons included faculty overwork, too little attention to writing pedagogy, communication difficulties, and status differences between writing teachers and other faculty members.