Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act

Studies in Writing and Rhetoric

by Rebecca S. Nowacek

The question of how students transfer knowledge is an important one, as it addresses the larger issue of the educational experience. In Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act, Rebecca S. Nowacek explores, through a series of case studies, the issue of transfer by asking what in an educational setting engages students to become “agents of integration”— individuals actively working to perceive, as well as to convey effectively to others, the connections they make. 

While many studies of transfer are longitudinal, with data collected over several years, Nowacek’s is synchronous, a rich cross-section of the writing and classroom discussions produced by a team-taught learning community—three professors and eighteen students enrolled in a one-semester general education interdisciplinary humanities seminar that consisted of three linked courses in history, literature, and religious studies. With extensive field notes, carefully selected student and teacher self-reports in the form of interviews and focus groups, and thorough examinations of recorded classroom discussions, student papers with professor comments, and student notebooks, Nowacek presents a nuanced and engaging analysis that outlines how transfer is not simply a cognitive act but a rhetorical one that involves both seeing connections and presenting them to the instructors who are institutionally positioned to recognize and value them. 

Considering the challenges facing instructors teaching for transfer and the transfer of writing-related knowledge, Nowacek develops and outlines a new theoretical framework and methodological model of transfer and illustrates the practical implications through case studies and other classroom examples. She proposes transfer is best understood as an act of recontextualization, and she builds on this premise throughout the book by drawing from previous work in cognitive psychology, activity theory, and rhetorical genre theory, as well as her own analyses of student work. 

This focused examination complements existing longitudinal studies and will help readers better understand not only the opportunities and challenges confronting students as they work to become agents of integration but also the challenges facing instructors as they seek to support that student work.

Genres: Writing, Research

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 2011

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome. I had to slog through the first chapter (or maybe I just needed coffee), but after that the book was fascinating. There were times when I realized, "Oh, I should know that by now but apparently I didn't. Good thing no one (I hope) caught on." Except now I've just admitted it. Oh well. Anyway, the book is good. I especially appreciated Chapter 3.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific book. Nowacek describes students and teachers working together in a first-year learning community at a large university. Here’s the set-up: Students take a set of three thematically linked courses designed by faculty working together. Nowacek uses this curricular experiment to study the process of transfer—how students take concepts and skills acquired in one course or context and apply them to another.

Except that . . . . Nowacek convincingly shows that this is an impoverished notion of transfer. Rather than viewing transfer as a kind of application—in which students take a skill they’ve learned in one context and use it in another—Nowacek reinterprets it as a more active sort of negotiation. What students need to do, she suggests, is not simply to apply a learned skill but to make a new connection—to show how two different contexts or texts or ideas are linked. To transfer what they’ve learned from one context (or course) to another, that is, students both have to notice a connection and articulate what they’ve seen. They thus need to become, in her terms, agents who argue for a connection, a transfer, rather than disciples who simply apply a concept

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Field Changing book. Redefines transfer by calling on teachers to pay attention to students' decisions in conjunction with the text on the page. What you see may be only a fraction of the learning that's taking place.