Abstract
Previous research suggests that although college students are developmentally ready to transform knowledge according to the constraints of specific rhetorical situations, they often don't do so. In this exploratory study, I ask if students in a business and professional writing course can transform knowledge when cued to do so in an invention activity—collaborative planning sessions—but are given no other instruc tional help. Further, I ask what kinds of instructional scaffolding students provide for each other in their planning sessions.
Collaborative planning sessions for two pairs of students on three different business writing assignments were recorded and transcribed. Detailed descriptive analyses of these transcripts suggest that the students transformed knowledge when they faced rhetorically complex tasks, when the writer showed commitment to the topic, when they engaged in extended discussion, and when they focused on rhetori cal issues. Further, the students provided each other with both relatively simple instructional scaffolds (active listening, identification of simple problems, and providing opportunities for extended elaboration) and more sophisticated, situation-specific prompts to transform knowledge (posing specific questions based on explicit rhetorical concerns and challenging each other to completely reconsider how they were approaching a writing task). Implications for pedagogy and research are briefly considered.
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