Naming What We Know - Linda Adler-Kassner & Elizabeth Wardle

Adler-Kassner, Linda and Elizabeth Wardle, eds. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2016.

This volume collects threshold concepts, rather than learning objectives, related to writing studies, rhetoric, and composition with the meta-concept that writing is an activity and a subject of study. The experts in the field are fundamentally opposed to the idea that writing is a basic, neutral skill for individual expression and inscription to be learned and mastered once for all according to a model of transmission pedagogy. The five other main concepts and subareas are included below for easy reference:

1.0 Writing is a social and rhetorical activity.
1.1 Writing is a knowledge-making activity.
1.2 Writing addresses, invokes, and/or creates audiences.
1.3 Writing expresses and shares meaning to be reconstructed by the reader.
1.4 Words get their meaning from other words.
1.5 Writing mediates activity.
1.6 Writing is not natural.
1.7 Assessing writing shapes contexts and instruction.
1.8 Writing involves making ethical choices.
1.9 Writing is a technology through which writers create and recreate meaning.

2.0 Writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms.
2.1 Writing represents the world, events, ideas, and feelings.
2.2 Genres are enacted by writers and readers.
2.3 Writing is a way of enacting disciplinarity.
2.4 All writing is multimodal.
2.5 All writing is performative.
2.6 Texts get their meaning from other texts.

3.0 Writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies.
3.1 Writing is linked to identity.
3.2 Writers' histories, processes, and identities vary.
3.3 Writing is informed by prior experience.
3.4 Disciplinary and Professional identities are constructed through writing.
3.5 Writing provides a representation of ideologies and identities.

4.0 All writers have more to learn.
4.1 Text is an object outside of oneself that can be improved and developed.
4.2 Failure can be an important part of writing development.
4.3 Learning to write effectively requires different kinds of practice, time, and effort.
4.4 Revision is central to developing writing.
4.5 Assessment is an essential component of learning to write.
4.6 Writing involves the negotiation of language differences.

5.0 Writing is (also always) a cognitive activity.
5.1 Writing is an expression of embodied cognition.
5.2 Metacognition is not cognition.
5.3 Habituated practice can lead to entrenchment.
5.4 Reflection is critical for writers' development.