LEARNING OUTCOMES/OBJECTIVES

In this lesson, tutors will demonstrate the following: 

1. Understand the larger idea of disciplinary values (Mueller 2005; Hyland 1999; Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2022).
2. Explore their own knowledge base in certain disciplines and citation styles.
3. Learn to work with a variety of disciplines and citation styles (Mueller 2005; Hyland 1999; Smith, 2007; Thonney 2011).

MATERIALS NEEDED

INSTRUCTIONAL PLAN

Before Getting Started: This lesson assumes that tutors have training or prior knowledge of in-text vs end-of-text citations, signal phrases, parenthetical references, and narrative references. Tutors may need a refresher on those terms before starting this lesson, or a preceding lesson on those terms may be required.

Introduction 

Context Building & Building on Prior Knowledge (10 minutes)

In this part of the lesson, tutors are introduced to the content of the lesson and are asked to get into pairs and answer questions, which we recommend printing or providing as a document online. A script (in italics) and the questions are provided below. These questions were pulled from Adler-Kassner and Wardle (2022) and Learning Lumens (n.d.).

Administrator's Script: For today’s meeting/training, we will examine and discuss how reading and identifying citations from different citation styles can help us as readers and writers learn more about writing in different disciplines. When we help writers practice learning and identifying how a discipline demonstrates credibility through their citations, it can show us how the discipline shares the knowledge it constructs as well as topics and controversies within a discipline. By doing this, we can help writers understand and develop their membership within a discipline. Remember if disciplines use the same citation style, such as APA, it doesn’t mean that every discipline that uses APA has the same disciplinary values. For this reason, we encourage you to think about the conversations in your major and how the citation style used in your major courses can help you think about writing in that discipline. To start, let’s think about our own knowledge of our own discipline or the major we are studying. Here is a list of questions. Get with a partner to discuss these. You have 10 minutes.

Instructions: Pick 2-3 questions to answer individually that will help you brainstorm about your past experiences of writing in a discipline.

• How would you describe your discipline to someone not in it? 
• What does it mean to study/major in X? 
• What kinds of questions does this discipline ask? 
• What kinds of controversies exist in this discipline? 
• How does this discipline share the knowledge it constructs? 
• How do writers in this discipline demonstrate their credibility? 
• Which citation style does this discipline use? Do you know why? 
• How would different disciplines approach the same topic? 

Body

Part 1: Reading Activity with Partner (20 minutes)

In this part of the lesson, tutors stay with their partners and complete a reading and annotation activity. As before, a script (in italics) and the questions are provided below. We also recommend printing/providing these questions, though these could be printed on the same page/document as the previous questions. 

Administrator's Script: Next, we will read a few sections from two different academic articles, one using MLA citation and another using APA. The content of these isn’t important right now; instead, we’ll focus on the authors’ use of source material and citation style. Look for four components when reading the introduction and literature review: in-text citations, signal-phrases, narrative and/or parenthetical citations, and stacking citations. Feel free to mark up your articles by highlighting, underlining, etc; please apply whatever annotations are helpful for you. Analyze your findings by answering 2-3 of the following questions and then share your results with your partner.

• How are the in-text citations formatted? 
• What information is provided in the text and what’s left for the end of the text? 
• How is the writer introducing source material? 
• What are some signal phrases that are used? When and where do you notice when they are happening? Is there a pattern to where signal phrases are used and when they’re not? 
• What are the writers focusing on (more on the author, more on the findings)? Are the writers talking more about the author or the findings and results? What can this tell us about how authorship is determined in discipline? (Mueller, 2005; Hyland 1999)
• Where do citations appear in each section? Are citations presented first to allow the author to build in their information, or is the writer's information fronted with the citations supporting it? Can you tell? 
• Is source information paraphrased or quoted? Why do you think this is? Do you notice any pattern to this?
• Glance at the end-of-text citations. What kind of sources are more common? Why do you think these sources are the most prominent? 
• Where are there references to time when authors engage with source material? What can that tell us about how a discipline views the age of the source? Does time and its passage matter for the discipline? (Mueller, 2005; Hyland 1999) 
  
  

Part 2: Group Discussion (15 minutes)

In this part of the lesson, partners come back to the larger group to discuss what they noticed in their readings and any important information that came from their dialogue in Part 1. Again, a script (in italics) is provided. During this discussion, the facilitator should write on the board or document. We recommended creating two columns, one for APA and one for MLA. If you specifically want to focus on “authorship” and “time,” then consider adding two rows of “authorship” and “time” (Mueller, 2005). Write tutors’ responses on the whiteboard/document. If they connect to time or authorship, add them under those rows. If you (or they) notice any other potential themes, create a new row, or consider only keeping the columns of APA and MLA. 

Administrator's Script: Let’s come back together to discuss what you shared with your partner. Think about how some of your analysis relates to which information is included or excluded when comparing MLA to APA. You can think about this in terms of “authorship,” “time,” and/or other observations.

Time and authorship are just two components of how citations can reflect disciplinary values. Now let's look at some of the other things you noticed in your analysis of these two articles. This is also a good time to bring in your own experiences from your major, classes, and/or tutorials with students. Keep in mind that you’ve been working with disciplinary values throughout college. 

Conclusion

Group Discussion & Reflection on Writing Center Application (10 minutes)

In this final part of the lesson, tutors are asked to reflect on what they’ve learned from this lesson and consider how they’ll apply it to their tutoring session. Guiding questions are provided below. 

Administrator's Script: Now let’s think about how we can apply what we have learned today to our writing center sessions. When we encounter a session that focuses on citations, this can be an opportunity to work with a writer in raising their awareness of disciplinary knowledge. To help us make this connection, let’s end the meeting today by answering the following questions as a group and incorporating our prior knowledge and what we learned from the annotation activity.

• What general advice would you give to writers writing in APA or MLA? 
• What general advice would you give writers writing in your major? 
• What types of questions could you ask students to help them better understand disciplinary values? 
• After doing this analysis, consider what you would tell a student visiting the center about the values of the discipline they are writing in or expectations in terms of research and citation.

ASSESSING FOR UNDERSTANDING

• Learning Outcome 1: Assessed in Body Part 1 

• Learning Outcome 2: Assessed in Introduction

• Learning Outcome 3: Assessed in Conclusion

EXTENSIONS AND ADAPTATIONS

• For accessibility purposes, materials and readings from this lesson can be provided for tutors to read and annotate beforehand instead of in real time. This can also shorten the lesson time if needed. 

• Ways to extend or alter this lesson consist of breaking this lesson into two lessons or creating a series. 

• Depending on the time limit of a training session, facilitators could divide this lesson into exploring and discussing disciplinary knowledge in the first lesson and then build on analyzing citations in the following lesson. 

• Scaffolding concepts from readings could begin with Swales’s (2017) or Melzer’s (2020) articles on discourse communities, Bunn’s (2015) strategies for “reading like a writer,” and more broadly, Thonney’s (2011) components of teaching and writing in academic conventions. 

• An additional source for situating teaching citation styles through disciplinary knowledge can start from a reading in the open-access textbook, Bad Ideas About Writing. Susanmarie Harrington’s “Citating Sources is a Basic Skill Learned Early On” argues to teach citations through disciplinary knowledge so students can learn how to make connections among readers and writers.  

• If facilitators want to focus more on the linguistic aspects of citation, the lesson (or an extension) could focus on signal phrases, reporting verbs, hedging and boosting phrases, and which are used more frequently in certain disciplines. 

• Facilitators can modify this lesson to fit whichever citations styles may be more relevant for their campus, such as American Medical Association, Chicago, etc. We have used it with three styles at once (MLA, APA, and Chicago) in a training, and it worked well.   

• The questions in the Introduction section of the lesson plan can be used by tutors in the beginning of their sessions to help gain prior knowledge and context of the writer’s understanding in the class/discipline they are writing in.

REFERENCES

Hyland, K. (1999). Academic attribution: Citation and the construction of disciplinary knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 20, 341–367. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/20.3.341 

Lumen Learning. (n.d.). Exploring academic disciplines. College Writing Handbook.  https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-jeffersoncc-styleguide/chapter/exploring-academic-disciplines/

Mueller, S. (2005). Documentation style and discipline-specific values. The Writing Lab Newsletter, 29(6), 6 –9. https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/wln/v29/29.6.pdf 

Swales, J. M. (2017). The concept of discourse community. Composition Forum, 37. https://compositionforum.com/issue/37/swales-retrospective.php 

Thonney, T. (2011). Teaching the conventions of academic discourse. Teaching English at the Two-Year College, 38(4), 347–362.