Overview

This title offers ideas of reform to educators in writing studies and science. """"The Idea of a Writing Laboratory"""" is a book about possibilities, about teaching and learning to write in ways that can transform both teachers and students. Author Neal Lerner explores higher education's rich history of writing instruction in classrooms, writing centers, and science laboratories. By tracing the roots of writing and science educators' recognition that the method of the lab - hands-on student activity - is essential to learning, Lerner offers the hope that the idea of a writing laboratory will be fully realized more than a century after both fields began the experiment. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, writing instructors and science teachers recognized that mass instruction was inadequate for a burgeoning, 'nontraditional' student population, and that experimental or laboratory methods could prove to be more effective. Lerner traces the history of writing instruction via laboratory methods and examines its successes and failures through case studies of individual programs and larger reform initiatives. Contrasting the University of Minnesota General College Writing Laboratory with the Dartmouth College Writing Clinic, for example, Lerner offers a cautionary tale of the fine line between experimenting with teaching students to write and 'curing' the students of the disease of bad writing. The history of writing within science education also wends its way through Lerner's engaging work, presenting the pedagogical origins of laboratory methods to offer educators in science, in addition to those in writing studies, possibilities for long-sought after reform. """"The Idea of a Writing Laboratory"""" compels readers and writers to 'don those white coats and safety glasses and discover what works' and asserts that 'teaching writing as an experiment in what is possible, as a way of offering meaning-making opportunities for students no matter the subject matter, is an endeavor worth the struggle'.

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9780809329144

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Reviews

When many today are questioning whether or not study in English is moribund and offering that English should model what takes place in the sciences, The Idea of a Writing Laboratory is a very timely text indeed. Lerner s outstanding research and his clear and engaging style make this an important contribution to the writing center field as well as to the larger field of rhetoric and composition. Albert C. DeCiccio, Southern Vermont College

When many today are questioning whether or not study in English is moribund and offering that English should model what takes place in the sciences, The Idea of a Writing Laboratory is a very timely text indeed. Lerner's outstanding research and his clear and engaging style make this an important contribution to the writing center field as well as to the larger field of rhetoric and composition. --Albert C. DeCiccio, Southern Vermont College

“When many today are questioning whether or not study in English is moribund and offering that English should model what takes place in the sciences, The Idea of a Writing Laboratory is a very timely text indeed. Lerner’s outstanding research and his clear and engaging style make this an important contribution to the writing center field as well as to the larger field of rhetoric and composition.”—Albert C. DeCiccio, Southern Vermont College

When many today are questioning whether or not study in English is moribund and offering that English should model what takes place in the sciences, <i>The Idea of a Writing Laboratory </i>is a very timely text indeed. Lerner s outstanding research and his clear and engaging style make this an important contribution to the writing center field as well as to the larger field of rhetoric and composition. Albert C. DeCiccio, Southern Vermont College</p>

Author Information

Neal Lerner is the director of training in communication instruction for the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published more than twenty-five articles and book chapters about writing centers, writing assessment, the history of teaching writing, and writing across the curriculum.

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