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Teaching research rhetorically.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

At George Washington University, librarians and faculty have partnered to provide an effective introduction to information literacy to all freshmen. The structure of the new writing program promotes goals that are at the intersection of the Council of Writing Program Administrators and Association of College and Research Libraries Furthermore, the structure maintains the collaboration and conversation among the two parties, promoting an on-going and evolving relationship.

Introduction

Just as writing cannot be taught without content, research cannot be taught as an isolated process, it ought to be integrated into the curriculum and specific assignments. James Elmborg (2003) states, "When the search process is defined as an isolated, discrete process built around finding and evaluating information, it is easy to lose sight of the way students experience the larger development of ideas that takes place in the college writing process, the way searching and finding function in the process of composing" (p. 72). To introduce information literacy in a manner that highlights this intersection between writing and research, the George Washington University implemented a new writing program in 2003. Librarians and faculty partner to teach research and writing in a new first-year course, University Writing 20, which then forms a basis for students to take further Writing in the Disciplines courses. Through the collaboration, librarians and faculty promote goals that are at the intersection of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL); furthermore, the structure maintains the collaboration among the two parties, promoting an on-going and evolving relationship.

Epistemic and Recursive

Within the fields of both composition and library studies, professionals often must work against the common misperceptions that writing and research are simple tasks of gathering, organizing, and transferring to paper that which is already known. As Rolf Norgaard (2003) writes, professionals in both fields must confront the misperception that what they teach are "neutral" "skills":

these perceptions ... remain in play regarding information literacy, despite the far more detailed and nuanced conceptions of information literacy in national standards and guidelines.... [Likewise] literacy debates in rhetoric and composition ... [assert] that literacy must also be, perforce, cultural, and that any literacy worthy of the name must also be critical and self aware. As a consequence, literacy studies have taken an 'ecological' approach, and see all forms of literacy as deeply context-bound and as forms of social interaction and social construction. (p. 125-126)

The scholarship of both composition studies and library studies points to the same conclusion: both writing and research should be understood as epistemic and recursive. They are ways of coming to know the world, of becoming conscious about...