Disciplined into the Discipline? Influences, Attitudes, and Perspectives on Writing from UMN Students

Abstract

This study explores the attitudes, perceptions, and priorities UMN students have for writing and their self-identified writing influences in relation to several approaches to writing pedagogy through approximately 20 surveys with both multiple choice and open response questions. This inquiry research is intended to provide readers, writing center staff, and writing instructors more broadly with a wide picture of the motivations, attitudes, priorities, and influences clients may be bringing to their consultations, enabling them to better serve the diverse needs of the student clientele.

Students taking this survey largely had a broad view of possible purposes and goals of writing, many different influences on their own writing, and an understanding of writing conventions as conditional, situated guidelines. Most respondents did not express tension between classroom instruction and outside influences or between WID and WtL approaches. Across years and disciplines, students in this survey also primarily expressed agreement with WtL methods through both ranked answers and free-response answers on changes in their writing since beginning postsecondary education. Most respondents sited their largest influences outside of school, though some clearly identified academic enculturation as an influence. Several respondents had significant similarities between disciplinary conventions and their stated idea of good writing, but did not directly identify academics as an influence in their writing. Similarly, many respondents had internalized reasons for ranking rationale that corresponded with academic standards, leading to the question of whether these respondents could have internalized academic norms to an extent that they do not identify academic enculturation despite its effects on their writing.

Further research could be done to find if this holistic approach to writing holds true across different levels of study and even more diverse sets of majors, and the attitudes and perceptions of students who have taken the UMN’s freshman writing course could be compared with those who have not. With a greater understanding of student motivations and backgrounds, writing consultations are better equipped to serve student writers through considering and seeking out more about the variety of writing goals, purposes, and influences a student may bring to their writing.