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last.updated 1.7.13

 

Conference Paper/Article


Purpose

As instructors at all levels, and in multiple English Studies contexts, you will be designing pedagogy that responds to various instructional exigencies. Therefore, the design of your pedagogy, the rationale for your design, and how students actually respond to your pedagogy all make important contributions to English Studies pedagogy–both at the local and disciplinary level. You should begin to see this process within a praxis framework and consider how others can benefit from the work you have done.

Conferences and publications give you an opportunity to share this work with other instructors, helping them think about pedagogical designs for their own contexts. This assignment gives you the opportunity to practice articulating the concepts of your pedagogy. Also, the assignment gives you the opportunity to produce a text that you can propose to conferences and journals.


Instructions–Invention

Begin this process by thinking about the contribution you can make to the field or to your local context. You are encouraged to work with the same subject you used for your Pedagogy Project and may choose to address one of the following prompts:

  • what pedagogical exigencies do English Studies instructors at your institution face and how does the scholarship recommend that you respond to these exigencies?
  • what exigencies does a specific field of English Studies currently face? how might the instructional practices at your institution respond to these exigencies? how might another field of inquiry help the field to respond to these exigencies?
  • what gaps are there in English Studies pedagogy or the pedagogy of one of its fields? how would you address this gap? how would others in English Studies respond?
  • what direction is a certain field's pedagogy going? Do a literature review of these trends and develop an informed argument about the current practices.
  • You may want to look at a call for papers in a field relevant to this course and write the article you would publishor an extended conference paper you would present if you were accepted.

Other inquiries related to English Studies pedagogy are also acceptable. However, I would recommend that you do not try to propose universal truths unless you have a broad understanding of the field, as well as the various contexts where your audience may reside.

Instructions–Writing

You will compose an argumentative article that is grounded in the field's scholarship and fulfills the genre conventions of an academic article–you may want to write this for a specific journal you would want to see this publish in. You will all also be required to compose a 250 word (single-spaced) abstract of your paper like you have seen on many of the articles we have read (this abstract is in addition to the page lengths described below).

e-Poster

On the last day of class, you will be given the opportunity to present your pedagogy and scholarship on an e-Poster. At its most fundemental the e-Poster is self-progressing presentation (e.g., PowerPoint, video) that an audience of other students and instructors can stop by, experience, and ask you questions about. As your presentation runs, you will want to be occasionally present to talk about your work with your audience. Students at a distance will email their e-Poster to the instructor and be present through a video chat program, like Skype. Note that the purpose of this part of the project is to give you an opportunity to get feedback on your scholarship before you submit it; therefore take this into consideration as you design your poster.


Criteria

Logistics:

  • 4000-5000 words
  • single-spaced or double-spaced
  • This document is due on April 29 , 2013 as an email attachment sent to the instructor (kdepew@odu.edu) by the end of the day.
  • 150 points

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • a sense of audience–do you understand the range of your audience–from novices to experts, from practitioners to theorists?
  • an informed understanding of English Studies. Does your inquiry demonstrate an understanding of the issues relevant to the teaching of English?
  • an argument that engages with specific fields of study
  • involvement in the academic discussion on your topic. Do you show how your ideas respond to those who have already written about this topic and they have already responded to each other?
  • appropriate use of conventions, including MLA, APA, or an appropriate citation formatting