|
Second Biennial 2008 Writing~Critical Thinking Conference Friday, November 21 to Saturday, November 22, 2008
Quinnipiac University, College of Liberal Arts, Hamden, CT
Call for Papers: (Notification of acceptance sent by July 25, 2008)
"Writing Across a Critical Thinking Continuum"
Quinnipiac University¡¦s College of Liberal Arts announces its second biennial Conference on ¡§Writing Across a Critical Thinking Continuum.¡¨ The 2008 conference investigates the relationship between critical and creative thinking strategies to writing processes across curricular and disciplinary domains.
The Critical Thinking community argues that students must internalize universal intellectual standards of reasoning as they progress in their academic and professional lives. Remarkably, as the WAC movement seeks greater integration between critical thinking and writing activity, many CT proponents make almost no mention of writing¡¦s role in meeting intellectual goals. Because thinking and writing are not separable, but instead mutually contain and continuously stretch our teaching and students¡¦ learning, this conference explores the dynamic possibilities of assessing and promoting writing and thinking across a Continuum.
Given the dynamic possibilities of teaching, learning and assessing our practices of writing and thinking across a Continuum, we encourage participants to propose presentations in the instructive, yet provocative spirit suggested by our conference keynote speaker, Jonathan Monroe, of Cornell University. His address is titled: Is Critical Thinking a Liberal Art?: Writing in the Disciplines and Contemporary Poetry in (as) "Higher Education."
We invite individual and panel proposals from every institutional, disciplinary, curricular, pedagogical and programmatic formation that would investigate, question, experiment with, and celebrate the critical stretch and creative tension between Thinking and Writing. Proposals might focus specifically on a particular community as they offer existing or emerging WAC and WID connections to CT.
Faculties
Students and Majors
Administrators
Participants should also consider the following questions as they craft their proposals:
1. If teaching and curricular practices are informed by WAC methods or training, what then is the extent of the pedagogical continuity between ¡§writing to learn¡¨ and ¡§writing to communicate¡¨ assignments? How do we measure, if not assure, ¡§critical¡¨ thinking within a ¡§WAC¡¨ or ¡§WID¡¨ Continuum established over time? What issues of (dis)continuity prevail between teachers and departmental colleagues, or between teaching and a curriculum in need of a new metaphor for critically rethinking its mission and major?
2. Conversely, if pedagogical practices are less informed, even un-informed, by the WAC movement, and take their lead instead from CT, how do we ensure a continuous expression of such thinking? What are the central curricular features of our pedagogical deployments and assessment if ¡§writing¡¨ isn¡¦t the necessary measure of critical or creative thinkers? And how do collegial and departmental commitments advance or impede our sense of a critical and creative thinking continuum?
3. Outside of our departmental and immediate collegial communities, what independent¡Xor interdependent¡Xrole does the Writing Center, the Learning Center, the Faculty Collaborative, or the WPA play in our sense of a University Continuum? Do the various entities and organizations devoted to more creative and critical teaching and learning hang together by virtue of consensual tenets drawn from WAC, from CT, or from hybridized standards from both movements? If instead, a given institution struggles to achieve some logical or pedagogical continuity¡Xsome critical-creative tension¡Xacross all ongoing initiatives, presenters might entertain how this might be achieved through a review and re-adaptation of tenets from both movements.
Participants are welcome to fit their sense of the conference thematic, along with any of the many suggestive leads suggested by Monroe¡¦s keynote address title, into some of the familiar and prevailing areas where a Critical and Creative Thinking Continuum continues to demand innovation:
Developmental Literacies and Cognitive Stages
Communicative Forms and Disciplinary Genres
Program Development, Faculty Training, Assessing Continuity
Cross-Institutional or Cross-Cultural Initiatives
WEB Based, Distance, or Hybrid Learning
Portfolios, Partnerships, and Capstones
Professional and Service Learning;
On Discontinuities and Discontinuations
Both the framing questions and the proposed areas only begin to delineate the possibilities for proposing individual or collaborative findings. Feel free to stretch both the tenets and the tendencies suggested by the theme and the call. While we are most interested in proposals that are practical, we welcome more theoretical proposals¡Xas long as they address pedagogical or programmatic issues of developing and assessing the conference theme.
Accepted presentations should plan for interaction and provide ¡§take away¡¨ materials for participating colleagues. Please consider students¡¦ work¡Xand their actual presence¡X when planning your proposals.
We reserve the right to group presenters who explore or share a similar approach, and we are eager to join WAC types with CT types into panels yet to be envisioned by ourselves or the presenters. The final session of the conference will feature roundtable discussions relevant to the keynote address, and representative of issues, problems, and new directions established during break-out sessions.
Proposals should include: Full Name(s); Institutional Affiliation(s); email; and type of Presentation: Individual; Panel. Please note technology needs. Please make clear, specific reference in your proposal to areas and questions outlined in the call, and how and why your proposal advances our conference theme.
Proposal deadline is June 18, 2008.
Email proposals--maximum length of one page (250 words)-- as an MS Word attachment to Valerie Boyle at valerie.boyle@quinnipiac.edu.
Your subject line must feature: QUWAC 2008 Conference Proposal
Questions:valerie.boyle@quinnipiac.edu
| 
