Cross-Disciplinary Writing Workshops: Theory and Practice

TAKING THE LEAD FROM James Britton and his London schools research project, a number of high schools and universities in this country have begun to investigate writing-across-the-curriculum workshops for their faculties. Such workshops can be controversial, for they may tap hidden reservoirs of interdisciplinary resentment and frustration. To many of our colleagues outside of English, two points seem obvious. The responsibility for teaching students to write belongs exclusively to English departments, and these departments have generally failed miserably in meeting this responsibility. Add to this fundamental resentment a growing mistrust of writing teachers whose values and pedagogies transcend the basics, and at least this much is clear: If English faculty do not proceed with caution and diplomacy, they can produce results exactly opposite the ones intended. The assignment calls for consummate rhetorical skill; workshop staff must know and be sympathetic to the concerns of their colleagues from other disciplines, and they must operate from a solid theoretical foundation that has been carefully researched and which appeals to the sciences, the social sciences, and engineering as well as the humanities. I think that the appeal necessary to penetrate this reflexive defensiveness rests with the idea that language aids learning. This idea is common enough that one might well question its potential as the critical mass for a successful workshop. But its ultimate power lies in its very commonness. First, it serves as good neutral ground on which to make a beginning, thereby closing the distance between staff and participants. And second, it serves as an excellent springboard into theoretical matters which must be broached if the workshop is to have any credibility. This paper will provide a quick contour drawing of the language and learning theory that has shaped cross-disciplinary workshops which I have helped to organize and run. To accomplish my purpose I will first present a problem in thinking about the function of language, then consider one consequence for students, and finally