Genre-based approaches to teaching writing have made important strides in heightening students' awareness of audience and purpose but have paid less attention to the ways in which expectations for written performance in school context are embedded in expectations for certain kinds of discipline-based thinking. In this paper we present a study that explored how a group of high school students studying history and literature within an interdisciplinary framework experience the thinking demands associated with a particular kind of writing characteristic of both subjects: analytic exposition. We found that the task of articulating interpretive thematic statements is a significant challenge for these students, in some cases because the nature of interpretative understanding remains elusive to them and in others because they struggle with finding the language to express this understanding in a concise form. A separate but related finding has to do with opportunities for interpretive insight that arose from writing in genres other than conventional analytic exposition, for example, narrative, descriptive, and imaginative writing. We conclude our discussion by recommending further investigation of ways in which alternatives to analytic exposition may be used as bridges to mastery of this important academic genre.
AndersonL. W.KrathwohlD. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.
3.
ApplemanD.GreenD. E. (1993). Mapping the elusive boundary between high school and college writing. College Composition and Communication,44, 191–199.
4.
BereiterC.ScardamaliaM. (1987). The psychology of written composition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
5.
BerkenkotterC.HuckinT. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication: Cognition/culture/power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
6.
ChristieF. (1986). Writing in schools: Generic structures as ways of meaning. In CoutureB. (Ed.), Functional approaches to writing: Research perspectives (pp. 221–239). London: Frances Pinter.
7.
ChristieF. (2002). The development of abstraction in adolescence in subject English. In SchleppegrellM.ColumbiM. C. (Eds.), Developing advanced literacy in first and second languages: Meaning with power (pp. 45–66). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
8.
CoffinC. (1997). Constructing and giving value to the past: An investigation into secondary school history. In ChristieF.MartinJ. R. (Eds.), Genre and institutions: Social processes in the workplace and school (pp. 196–230). London: Cassell.
9.
CoffinC. (2002). The voices of history: Theorizing the interpersonal semantics of historical discourse. Text,22, 503–528.
10.
CoffinC. (2004). Learning to write history: The role of causality. Written Communication,21, 261–289.
11.
CopeB.KalantzisM. (Eds.). (1993). The powers of literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh.
12.
DillonD.MojeE. (1998). Listening to the talk of adolescent girls: Lessons about literacy, school and life. In AlvermannD.HinchmanK.MooreD.PhelpsS.WaffD. (Eds.), Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents' lives (pp. 193–223). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
13.
FlowerL. (1990). Negotiating academic discourse. In FlowerL.SteinV.AckermanJ.KantzM. J.McCormickK.PeckW. C. (Eds.), Reading-to-write (pp. 221–252). New York: Oxford University Press.
14.
FranklinS. (1998). Writing, the novel and genres—An English perspective. English in Education,32, 25–34.
15.
FulwilerT.YoungA. (1982). Language connections: Writing and reading across the curriculum. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
16.
GarnerR. (1982). Verbal-report data on reading strategies. Journal of Reading Behavior,14, 159–167.
17.
GrabeW.KaplanR. B. (1996). Theory and practice of writing: An applied linguistic perspective. New York: Longman.
18.
GrantS. G. (2001). It's just the facts, or is it? The relationship between teachers' practices and students' understandings of history. Theory and Research in Social Education,29, 65–108.
19.
GreeneS.HigginsL. (1994). “Once upon a time”: The use of retrospective accounts in building theory in composition. In SmagorinskyP. (Ed.), Speaking about writing: Reflections on research methodology (pp. 115–140). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
20.
GuthrieJ. (2004). Teaching for literacy engagement. Journal of Literacy Research,36, 1–30.
21.
HallidayM. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.
22.
HayesJ. R. (1996). A new framework for understanding cognition and affect in writing. In LevyC. M.RansdellS. (Eds.), The science of writing (pp. 1–27). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
23.
HenningsD. G. (1993). On knowing and reading history. Journal of Reading,36, 362–370.
24.
JacobsH. H. (1989). Interdisciplinary curriculum: Design and implementation. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
25.
JefferyJ. V. (2009). Constructs of writing proficiency in U.S. state and national writing assessments: Exploring variability. Assessing Writing,14, 3–24.
26.
KamberelisG. (1999). Genre development: Children writing stories, science reports and poems. Research in the Teaching of English,33, 403–460.
27.
LangerJ.ApplebeeA. (1987). How writing shapes thinking: A study of teaching and learning. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
28.
LangerJ. A. (1995). Envisioning literature: Literary understanding and literature instruction. New York: Teachers College Press.
29.
LeeP. J.DickinsonA. K.AshbyR. (1996). “There were no facts in those days”: Children's ideas about historical explanation. In HughesM. (Ed.), Teaching and learning in changing times (pp. 169–192). Oxford: Blackwell.
30.
LemkeJ. (1988). Genres, semantics and classroom education. Linguistics and Education,1, 81–99.
31.
LevstikL. S.BartonK. C. (2001). Committing acts of history: Mediated action, humanistic education, and participatory democracy. In StanleyW. (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies research for the 21st century (pp. 119–147). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
32.
LincolnY.GubaE. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. New York: Sage.
33.
MartinJ. R. (2000). Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
34.
MartinJ. R.RotheryJ. (1993). Grammar: Making meaning in writing. In CopeB.KalantzisM. (Eds.), The powers of literacy: A genre approach to teaching writing (pp. 137–153). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh.
35.
MartinJ. R.ChristieF.RotheryJ. (1987). Social processes in education: A reply to Sawyer and Watson (and others). In ReidI. (Ed.), The place of genre in learning: Current Debates (pp. 46–57). Deakin, Australia: Centre for Studies in Literacy Education, Deakin University.
36.
MenandL. (2007, June 4). The aesthete: The novel and Michael Ondaatje. The New Yorker,83, 90–93.
MunceyD.McQuillanP. (1996). Reform and resistance in schools and classrooms. An ethnographic view of the coalition of essential schools. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
39.
NogueraP. (2003). City schools and the American dream. New York: Teachers College Press.
40.
PerkinsD.SalamonG. (1988). Teaching for transfer. Educational Leadership,46(1), 22–32.
41.
PeskinJ. (1998). Constructing meaning when reading poetry: An expert-novice study. Cognition and Instruction,16, 235–263.
42.
ProbstR. (2004). Response and analysis: Teaching literature in secondary school (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
43.
RosenblattL. M. (1995). Literature as exploration (5th ed.). New York: The Modern Language Association of America.
44.
Salahu-DinD.PerskyH.MillerJ. (2008). The nation's report card: Writing 2007 (National Assessment of Educational Progress No. NCES 2008468). Washington DC: U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved July 1, 2008, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008468.
45.
SchleppegrellM. (2004). The language of schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
46.
ScholesR. (1985). Textual power: Literary theory and the teaching of English. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
47.
SeixasP. (1996). Conceptualizing the growth of historical understanding. In OlsonD.TorranceN. (Eds.), The handbook of education and human development (pp. 765–783). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
48.
StraussA.CorbinJ. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
49.
WilhelmJ. (1997). You gotta BE the book. New York: Teachers College Press.
50.
WilliamsJ. P.LauerK.HallK.LordK.GuggaS.BakS. (2002). Teaching elementary school students to identify story themes. Journal of Educational Psychology,94, 235–248.
51.
WineburgS. S. (1991). Historical problem solving: A study of the cognitive processes used in the evaluation of documentary and pictorial evidence. Journal of Educational Psychology,83, 73–87.
52.
YoungK. M.LeinhardtG. (1998). Writing from primary documents: A way of knowing in history. Written Communication,15, 25–86.
