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A Study of L2 Writing Specialist Identity Across Contexts University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 5-2018 Identity and Transdisciplinarity: A Study of L2 Writing Specialist Identity Across Contexts Joseph Anthony Wilson University of Tennessee Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Recommended Citation Wilson, Joseph Anthony, "Identity and Transdisciplinarity: A Study of L2 Writing Specialist Identity Across Contexts. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2018. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/5024 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Joseph Anthony Wilson entitled "Identity and Transdisciplinarity: A Study of L2 Writing Specialist Identity Across Contexts." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in English. Tanita Saenkhum, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Harriet W. Bowden, Jeff M. Ringer Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Identity and Transdisciplinarity: A Study of L2 Writing Specialist Identity Across Contexts A Thesis Presented for the Master of Arts Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Joseph Anthony Wilson May 2018 ii Dedication To Jim Pierson, whose guidance, encouragement, prayer, and support I will always remember. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Tanita Saenkhum for her guidance throughout this thesis project as well as the countless hours spent in weekly meetings and an independent study to prepare me to conduct this study. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Jeff Ringer and Dr. Harriet Bowden, for their constructive feedback throughout this study as well. I would like to thank my participants, for they took time out of their busy schedules to share honest and frank feedback with me through interviews and/or surveys. I would also like to thank Josie Portz for testing the reliability of my coding schemes and providing methodological advice concerning data analysis for this study. I must also thank Dr. April Kilinski, Dr. Allison Harris and Adam Grogan, Esq. for their continual encouragement, love, support, and feedback. I would not have made it to graduate school or through this program without them. iv Abstract This study investigates the ways that second language (L2) writing specialists construct their identities in relation to the field of L2 writing. While scholarship has employed identity as a theoretical lens to analyze L2 writing specialists’ professional development, teaching philosophies, and/or research practices, such research has been limited to single institutions or teacher education programs. Through the use of a survey as well as eleven (semi-structured) interviews, this study explicates how identities are negotiated as L2 writing specialists research and teach across disciplinary, departmental, geographical, and sociopolitical contexts. I first propose my own operationalized definition of a transdisciplinary identity, which I view as contingent on a variety of factors. These include a specialist’s disciplinary background and experiences in the field as well as her or his definition of what constitutes a multilingual writer. I further demonstrate that teacher and researcher identities in L2 writing need to be viewed symbiotically, for the participants of this study often related the extent to which they considered themselves a language teacher, writing teacher, or L2 writing teacher to their research agendas and practices. This study additionally reveals how L2 writing specialists perceive both their professional identities and the field of L2 writing as sociopolitically steeped and continually negotiated. It illustrates the participants’ descriptions of the field of L2 writing, their networking practices, and their concerns for the field’s future, further explicating how L2 writing specialist identities are discursively constructed. From these results, I argue that L2 writing specialists chart, negotiate, and work across multiple disciplines when performing their identities as both teachers and researchers. v Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Overview of Chapters ........................................................................................................ 4 Chapter Two: Literature Review ............................................................................................. 6 2.1 L2 writing teacher and researcher identity ......................................................................... 7 2.2 Constructing L2 writing identities: Revisiting the division of labor.................................. 10 2.3 Operationalized definition of a “transdisciplinary identity” .............................................. 19 Chapter Three: Method .......................................................................................................... 22 3.1. Participants .................................................................................................................... 22 3.1.1. Survey participants .................................................................................................. 22 3.1.2 Interview participants ............................................................................................... 23 3.2 Data sources .................................................................................................................... 28 3.2.1 Data sources for survey ............................................................................................ 28 3.2.2 Data sources for interviews ....................................................................................... 29 3.3 Data analysis ................................................................................................................... 30 Chapter Four: Teacher and Researcher Identities ................................................................ 35 4.1 L2 writing teacher identity............................................................................................... 36 4.2. L2 writing researcher identity ......................................................................................... 52 4.3 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 63 Chapter Five: Constructing Identities across Disciplines ..................................................... 65 5.1 L2 writing specialists’ perceptions of the relationships between L2 writing and their discipline(s) .......................................................................................................................... 66 5.2 The pursuit of commensurability through networking ...................................................... 79 5.3 Participants’ perspectives of disciplinary and field boundaries......................................... 87 5.4 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter Six: Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 94 6.1 L2 writing teacher and researcher identities: A symbiotic relationship ............................. 95 6.2 L2 writing specialist identities: Negotiation within/against a transdisciplinary field ......... 98 6.3 Limitations and implications for future research ............................................................ 103 References ............................................................................................................................. 105 Appendices ............................................................................................................................ 117 Appendix A: Survey questions ............................................................................................ 118 Appendix B: Interview questions ........................................................................................ 119 Appendix C: Coding scheme for discursive identities (Adapted from Fairclough, 2005)...... 120 Appendix D: Participants’ response to the question, “How long have you considered yourself an L2 writing specialist?” (N = 117):................................................................................... 122 Appendix E: Respondents’ self-identified current departmental situations (N = 117) ........... 123 Appendix F: Respondents’ self-identified geographical contexts (N=124): .......................... 124 Vita ........................................................................................................................................ 125 1 Chapter One: Introduction “A socially shared...field identity—not necessarily one that is defined by its boundaries but by intellectual affinity—can help those individual traditions find a place in a larger conversation happening
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