The Pop Warner Chronicles: A Case Study in Contextual Adaptation and the Transfer of Writing Ability
In his small but comfortable home study, the shelves filled with scholarly books and his diplomas hanging above his Scandinavian style desk, a professor we'll call him Martin sits at his computer as if in suspended animation, the glow from the screen reflecting from his reading glasses. For over one hour, he has been alternating between these moments of paralysis and bursts of typing activity. The frustration shows as he repositions himself in his office chair, glances out at the garden below, drinks fitfully from a bottle of Dasani water, grimaces, and brushes lint from his screen. A well published academic writer, he is stuck unable to complete a seventy five word summary of his son's football game for a local newspaper.Researchers in the field of writing studies are conflicted about the extent to which people like Martin can "transfer" discursive knowledge and abilities from one context to another.1 Most of our faith in general writing instruction assumes the portability of such abilities good writers can adapt easily to new settings and genres. But in spite of large amounts of scholarship on the writing processes of experts and novices across a range of contexts, we know little about the phenomenon of transfer: how fully it happens, the kinds of knowledge writers need to carry it out, and under what circumstances it fails. Over the past decade, scholars have regretted the lack of research on transfer, both generally and in first year composition (Smit; Wardle, "Mutt Genres" and "What Is" Although the phenomenon of transfer is now attracting significant attention in writing studies (see Frazier; Lettner Rust; Nowacek; Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak) prompting a multiyear, multi institutional research institute at Elon University2 (Anson and Moore) and a special issue of Composition Forum, it still remains relatively uncharted territory.Studies of transfer have also focused mainly on novice academic writers as they face different kinds of tasks in different domains of knowledge. Although this focus is important for the continued enhancement of foundational writing curricula, a preoccupation with novices implies that as writers mature, they leave behind the cognitive challenges of transfer, as if those challenges are mainly developmental and not situational that what's "inside" the writer can be refined for success, not that success is often determined, even for skilled writers, by what's "outside."To further our understanding of transfer in experienced writers, I conducted a case study of Martin as he struggled each Sunday for twelve weeks to produce very brief narratives for a public audience. Primary sources of data were Martin's reflections on his experiences, information about his usual practices and history as a writer, and the artifacts of his work, including editorial changes to his newspaper submissions. Of importance to the study of transfer is this skilled academic writer's difficulty composing texts that most people would characterize as simple, in a familiar genre, for a limited audience, and without need for sophisticated rhetorical strategies, extensive prior knowledge, or specialized lexis. An analysis of Martin's struggles demonstrates the universal challenge of transfer regardless of prior experience or meta awareness of rhetorical strategies for writing in new or unfamiliar settings, and argues for a more nuanced understanding of existing ability, disposition, context, and genre in the deployment of knowledge for writing.Team Player Profile of Mar tinMartin is a middle aged faculty member tenured in the English department of a large, research extensive university. In his work, he produces documents familiar to academics: articles for refereed journals, research reports, grant proposals, book reviews, course descriptions and other teaching materials, letters of recommendation, minutes of committee meetings, promotion and tenure evaluations, conference proposals, and the typical plethora of digital texts including abundant emails, contributions to listservs and blogs, and information posted to his course websites.