Keyword: Expertise

Julianna and I looked to construct a tool that would not necessarily showcase or clearly exhibit theoretical turns  in the discussions of process and cognition, but would serve as a tool to help students and researches construct their own compass to help navigate them through various articles, authors, and theorists their contributions to the discourse being shared. By using our tool, the texts included in our archive would be made available for tracing, comparing, and discovery. Rather than simply organizing the texts by topic, our search feature allows researches to choose their own line of inquiry based on the concepts, keywords, or features they choose. We chose this method to afford researchers more autonomy in their research methods that would help foster learning by way of doing rather than simple reception.

Similar to how we look to create intertextual conversations in theories of composition classroom, we looked to create a tool that would provide a space for researchers to place various texts next to one another in order to find and navigate a conversation of concept and theory, even if at surface the texts chosen do not seem to operating within the same discipline. Because our field encompasses various disciplines and the theories that posed in those disciplines, we wanted to create a space that would do the same and operate under the same methodology. Our tool looks to help researchers create their own guide into creating intertextual conversations in order to find and discuss theoretical turns in seemingly differentiated and divergent discourses and discourse communities. By positioning these texts alongside one another, scholarly discussions can be found or posited to be discovered. As we can see in our texts concerning cognition and process, we can see the influence of the authors' various research methods and knowledge from other disciplines outside of  just composition or pedagogy. Using our tool, researches are able to identify these influences and look to examine how these authors are adding to the discourses for many of other discourse communities rather than just that of which they are positioned within.

We want our tool to be utilized not only to find points of intersection between authors, texts, and theories, but also to position these texts next to one another in order to raise questions based on the assumptions made and conclusions drawn within the texts and how one may respond, diverge, correspond, or negotiate with another. For instance, while Flower and Hayes may look to respond to questions about the writing process and answering the question, "what then are the criteria that govern that choice?" ("A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing"; 365) their conclusions are later critiqued and responded to by authors like Olson who says that theories like that of Flower and Hayes have limitations in that they imagine the writing process in a certain way that can apply to all writing situations (7). While Olson generalizes authors that assume this, it can be asserted that Flower and Hayes are included in his generalizations. While our tool can be utilized to exhibit these types of conversations, we hope that it can be used to go beyond just that. We hope that with our "field" search tool, researches are able to see where it is that the authors featured in our archive conduct most of their research and from what discipline do we see them position themselves. To refer to the above examples and authors, Flower and Hayes could be identified as cognitive theorists, while Olson can be found in disciplines concerned with composition and pedagogical studies.

One of the many reasons that we constructed our tool in this way was to create the type of expertise and follow the model set out by Carter in his "The Idea of Expertise: Exploration of Cognitive and Social Dimensions." By placing students within the community by using our tool, we hope to help student-researchers build both their local and general knowledge in order to attain a level of expertise. Local knowledge, as described by Carter, is "constituted by a community and that writing is a function of a discourse community" (266). Additionally, by supporting student-researchers in their acquisition of general knowledge, we hope to provide students guidance, means to acquire local knowledge, offer strategies to help perform in related domains and for solving atypical problems. We look to follow Carter's pluralistic theory of expertise in our tool's design and features. By offering students the tools to create their own success, the student has autonomy in attaining the aspirations for becoming a member and contributing to various discourse communities.

Carter, Michael. "The IDea of Expertise: An Exploration of Cognitive and Social Dimensions of Writing." CCC 41.3 (Oct. 1990): 265-86.

Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing." CCC 32.4 (Dec. 1981): 365-387. 

Olson, Gary A. “Toward a Post-Process Composition: Abandoning the Rhetoric of Assertion.” Post-Process Theory: New Directions for Composition Research. Ed. Thomas Kent. Carbondale: Souther Illinois UP, 1999. 7-15.