Writing as

Problem Solving
FOUNDATIONS FOR WRITING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
14
by Danica Chabot & David
Slomp
Danica is a recent gradute with a combined
Bachelor of Science Education and Biological
Sciences degree.
David Slomp is a former Board of Governors’
Teaching Chair and Assistant Professor in
the Faculty of Education.
Introduction
O ver the past several years, the staff at the
Teaching Centre and the members of
the Teaching Centre Advisory Council have
reported increasing concern by university
faculty about the quality of student writing at
the University of Lethbridge. This concern,
of course, is not unique to our university. The
quality and effectiveness of student writing
ability has long been a topic of concern (1).
The issue underlying this concern is that
traditional approaches to writing instruction
and curriculum have been designed to teach
localized skills and understandings about
writing (2). As a consequence, students in both
the K-12 and the post-secondary systems learn
how to be successful in completing a narrow
set of writing tasks that focus on mastering a
limited set of genres (3,4). When those students
move across contexts, for example from grade
12 to university or from first-year writing to
second-year sociology, what they learned about
writing in the preceding context rarely applies
or transfers to the new context. Sommers and
Saltz’s (5) landmark study, for example, found
that the most important thing students learned
about writing in their first year at Harvard was
that what worked for them in high school did
not work for them in college. Similar findings
have been reported about the limitations
of traditional first-year writing courses for
preparing students for writing in the disciplines.
Danica’s experience as an undergraduate
student at the University of Lethbridge, first in
science and then later in education, reflects this
problem:
Personally, I have been a student for more years
than I would like to admit. Overall, I am a
well-rounded student. I’ll admit that I owe my
general tendency for success to a personality
trait that continues to serve me well beyond
the challenges in education; that trait involves
the belief that every problem has a solution.
Writing is one of those ‘things’ that I was never
really great at, but I got by being good enough,
because I was always capable of finding a fitting
solution to whatever writing problem came my
way.
However, a criticism that I often encountered
in English-Language-Arts (ELA) writing was
that my assignments were well structured
and clearly communicated, but my content
lacked substance; it was often redundant and
borderline shallow. My struggle was rooted in
the way that I was taught to write: I was given
outlines to follow that conveniently instructed
me where to put what. I became very efficient at
filling in the blanks, and all I had to do was rely
on feedback to tell me what I missed and what
needed to be fixed to get it “right.” Although
this method brought me success in meeting
academic standards, I failed to develop a sense
for understanding the purpose of writing
beyond obtaining a praise-worthy grade.
But hey – I am a science major. Why should I
be concerned with developing a deeper sense
of understanding for writing? All I have to
write are lab reports, and those are pretty
straightforward, are they not? Just write down
what happens in an experiment and call it a job
well done. It is mostly true that lab reports are
the most complex writing tasks in science (as
they can go on to become publishable research
papers), and I have been able to get by using the
fill-in-blanks-of-an-outline method; but it took
me several experiences before I figured out the
purpose of all the blanks that I was filling in.
This goes to show that practice does make
perfect, and repetition of a task eventually
should lead to understanding. But, is it
reasonable to make students wait until a fifth
attempt before expecting them to develop an
understanding of their task? I can imagine
that a frustrating failed first attempt would be
enough to guarantee that a student loses the
motivation to even consider a second attempt
wholeheartedly; it’s likely easier to accept
defeat and move on to a different skillset.
Danica’s experiences are all too common.
Many students who drop out of university
or college in their first year do so because of
lack of preparedness in writing and reading
skills needed at the post-secondary level (6).
Successful students eventually figure out
what is required of them, but this journey of
discovery is too often haphazard, marked
by happenstance and inefficiency. A decade
ago, writing researchers began to rethink
how writing is taught in post-secondary
environments (7). The question they focussed
on was: How do we teach for transfer; that is,
how do we help students develop the capacity to
apply knowledge about writing developed in one
context to tasks and rhetorical situations found
in other contexts?
The key to answering that question is
understanding what knowledge and skills
expert writers draw on when they approach
writing tasks that are new to them, and then
building a writing pedagogy that cultivates
that set of knowledge and skills. In 2007, Anne
Beaufort (8) synthesized decades of research
on this question and identified five domains of
knowledge that expert writers draw on when
approaching new writing tasks, which are
explained in detail below. These five domains
are: Discourse community knowledge,
rhetorical knowledge, genre knowledge,
subject matter knowledge, and writing process
knowledge.
Expert writers recognize that discourse
communities are groups that share a common
purpose or interest and that these communities
use specific types of texts to communicate
amongst themselves as they work to achieve
the purpose of the group. Expert writers are
able to analyze discourse communities, to
determine what values they share, what texts
or genres they use to communicate amongst
themselves, and how those texts are designed
to reflect those purposes and values. They
recognize, for example, that a successful
history paper is necessarily different from
a philosophy paper, because the discourse
communities of historians and philosophers
bring different values and expectations to the
texts that are valued within their communities,
differences that are manifested in the features
and structures of the texts themselves.
Genre knowledge involves the capacity to
understand that genres are tools used by
discourse communities to achieve the purposes
of those communities and that they are both
context specific and complex. Recognizing this,
expert writers can identify how the genres used
by discourse communities reflect the values
and purposes of those communities and how
they are able to apply those understandings to
their writing.
When drawing on rhetorical knowledge, expert
writers also recognize that each text they
are crafting is designed to achieve a specific
purpose. They know that there are multiple
ways that they can achieve that purpose in
each text, and they recognize that effectiveness
of rhetorical choices or tools they employ
is mediated by the values and beliefs of the
discourse community for whom they are
writing.
Expert writers draw on writing process
knowledge when they recognize that they have
a range of processes and strategies available to
them as they complete the writing task. They
understand that the effectiveness of these
processes and strategies varies based on the
contexts in which they are writing.
Subject matter knowledge involves the ability to
gather and use information needed to achieve
the intention of a text. Expert writers recognize
that discourse communities may understand
content differently from one another, and so the
task of the writer is to employ that information
in a manner that reflects the perspectives
and understandings of the community one is
writing for.
15
 Writing for Life
In 2008, when David was Special Advisor
on the Writing Initiative to the Deans of Arts
and Education at the University of Alberta,
he worked with the University of Alberta’s
Writing Task Force to develop a vision for
writing program development and support that
would help students develop the transferrable
knowledge about writing that seemed to be
lacking. An important piece of this puzzle was
the development of a new first-year writing
course, Exploring Writing, designed to help
students develop awareness of and capacity
for each of the five knowledge domains
described above. In 2014, the Conference on
College Composition and Communication
recognized this course with a writing program
certificate of excellence, making it one of only
three Canadian programs to have received
this distinction. This same year, David began
working with high school teachers in Southern
Alberta to develop a writing-as-problem-
solving pedagogy, focussed on helping students
learn to independently analyze and complete
new writing tasks. The goal of this approach
is to help students develop and apply the
knowledge on which expert writers draw when
creating text, thereby positioning students for
greater success when faced with new writing
tasks in post-secondary or workplace writing
contexts. In 2017, David adapted this writing-
as-problem-solving pedagogy for the post-
secondary context, creating an applied studies
course titled Writing for Life.
The goal of Writing for Life was to help students
learn how to analyze writing tasks that are new
to them so that they can independently and
successfully complete these tasks. The course
was structured around students developing
strategies for acquiring and applying knowledge
and skills related to each of the five knowledge
domains discussed above.
The core activity in this course was for
students to write a grant proposal for a
community agency with which they were
partnered. Students conducted an analysis
of both the grant agency and the community
group, examined sample grant proposals,
deconstructed the rhetorical structure of grant
proposals, and crafted their own proposal for
submission to the granting agency.
Writing for Life: A Student’s
Experience
Admittedly, I enrolled in the Writing for Life
course to meet elective requirements for my
undergraduate degrees, and I was intrigued
by the hands-on nature of an applied study.
Initially, I saw it as an opportunity to gain
competency in teaching writing should I
ever have to teach an ELA class in my future
career. I was especially drawn to the proposed
16
critical-thinking approach, because I strongly
believe in the power of enhancing student
engagement and quality of learning through
critical-thinking skills. Little did I know that I
was going to be just as much of a student in this
course as I was a student-teacher.
The objective was clear: Learn how to analyze
and successfully complete writing tasks never-
before encountered, specifically grant writing.
A unique twist to this course involved linking
the task to a community organization, which
enabled me to quickly forget that the purpose
of completing this course was to gain credit.
My motivation for completion instead became
driven by a desire to succeed on behalf of
the organization. This real-life application
provided the kind of purpose to the task that
I think students (myself included) are often
searching for when learning, but it is not often
met with much discovery.
I chose to be paired with Kids Help Phone
(KHP). Kids Help Phone provides a free 24-
hour counselling service to children. Children
can access KHP either by phone or online
through a chat feature. Because I believe in the
value of the KHP, and because I wanted to see
them get the funding, I was given meaningful
motivation for successful completion of my
writing task.
That’s not to say that the writing I did in school
and university wasn’t meaningful. I was very
conscious of my academic standing; however,
I was just as happy with a grade of 80% as I was
with a grade of 90%, so my effort level relied
on which grade I was more in the mood for.
More often than not, I just wanted to meet the
deadline and get it over with. In other words,
the meaningfulness in many of my writing
assignments was not deep enough to truly
motivate me.
When we finally do get to writing outside the
confines of our institutional walls, meaningful
writing is what we are faced with: Our tasks are
no longer linked to a summative grade but to
an outcome that affects our personal lives. At
that point, we likely find ourselves questioning
whether or not we actually have the skills to
successfully complete the writing task: Who is
going to confirm our uncertainties? How will we
determine criteria for success? And: How will we
enact a plan to meet those criteria?
It seems that as students, we get so used to
being told what to do and how to do it that we
seldom learn to ask why it should be done a
certain way. The ‘why’ matters, though, because
it guides our understanding of purpose in the
things we learn.
A Student’s Experience: The Process
What surprised me most about the Writing
for Life course was the magnitude of the
preliminary writing process through which
we were guided. Its stages were paramount
to my developing an in-depth understanding
of a task that I had never encountered before.
The pre-writing process was metacognitive,
and through it I learned to think about the
task even before attempting to complete it. It
involved four key stages:
1) Discourse Analysis – determine the values
of my community group and the agency
I would be applying to, and consider how
those values were reflected in the way they
used language;
2) Genre Analysis – identify how grant
applications are structured;
3) Rhetorical Analysis – determine what the
purpose of a grant application is, and
how authors of grant applications achieve
those purposes in the way they shape their
proposals;
4) Core Content Outline – identify the core
content of a grant proposal through a
review of the previous three analyses.
For me, this was a very different approach to
learning a new writing style. Rather than being
handed an outline, much of the preliminary
work involved the analysis of sample grant
applications. The focus of the analyses was
discourse, structure, and content of grant
proposals. Deconstructing these facets of
the task made it possible to identify the key
elements of the content, and how the they
could be structurally organized to best serve
the intention of the writing task.
Discourse Analysis
As an athlete, I was taught to learn the rules,
terminologies, and acceptable behaviour of a
sport just as much as I was taught to develop
the sport-specific skills; therefore, as a writer,
learning the values and expectations embedded
in a writing task was just as important as
learning how to put the words together to
complete it. And so, the first step in grant
writing involved the analysis of two discourse
communities: The community organization
itself and the targeted granting agency.
It was crucial for me to sufficiently familiarize
myself with my partner organization so that
I could appropriately represent it through
writing. Therefore, I analyzed all available
information associated with the organization
to get to know KHP in terms of its purpose, its
history, and its values and ambitions. I also had
to familiarize myself with the granting agency
to which I was applying. Both of these analyses
involved identifying the types of language
each party used, the types of information
they provided, and the values each one held.
The purpose of this was to ensure alignment

Big Argument: You should fund KHP so we can help kids’ needs.
Says-Does Analysis
Says
1. KHP is there for kids who are
suffering.
2. ONLY professional counselling
support lines.
3. 24/7 connects kids to community.
4. Only 1/2 kids in Canada know
what KHP is.
between the organization and the granting
agency; it was about making the shoe fit the
foot, not the foot fit the shoe. Furthermore, it
served to identify the foundation on which to
build the argument that ‘this agency should
fund this community organization.’
Genre Analysis
The next step was to understand how to
develop the above-mentioned argument in
the context of a grant application; to do this,
samples of successful grant applications were
analyzed. As I mentioned earlier, instead of
being given a specific outline to follow, I was
taught how to create one myself, which was
paramount to my overall understanding of the
task’s intent. It is one thing to be told that the
purpose of writing a grant proposal is to try to
convince the agency to fund you, but it is so
much more to have to figure out for yourself
how a grant proposal functions. Understanding
the ‘how’ set the foundation for the confident
development of my own request.
By way of genre analysis, I identified which
elements were commonly present, and how
those elements were strategically organized
within the application. The content of each
sample grant was deconstructed paragraph
by paragraph, and each paragraph was
summarized in a simple phrase or sentence.
Analysis of the paragraph summaries provided
a visualization of what kind of content was
present and how it was structured.
This portion of the writing process concluded
with the production of a core content analysis.
In collaboration with my cohort members,
we deduced that the core content of a grant
application was guided by five major questions:
1) Why the project?
2) Why the organization?
3) What is the project?
Does
1. Establishes need. Established that
KHP helps these kids.
2. Establishes who organization is,
how they address the need, what
makes them unique.
3. Establishes the problem related
to the need that the funding will
address.
4) How is it feasible?
5) What is the value to the donor?
The answers to these five questions provided
the premise for the arguments that the grant
applications were making: ‘X granting agency
should fund Y organization for Z project.’
Rhetorical Analysis
Analysis of the rhetorical features was necessary
for determining how the elements of the core
content were strategically organized to produce
a compelling argument. A says-does-analysis
of each section was conducted. Paragraph by
paragraph, I summarized what the content
‘said’ prima facie and then thought critically
about what purpose the content served (i.e.,
how it was propagating the argument).
Conducting a rhetorical analysis allowed me
to formulate an outline to guide the writing
of my own grant application. At this point, I
discovered what I needed to include and how
to best present it, which lent itself to organizing
the application so that it was conducive to
producing a compelling argument.
Core Content Outline
The final preliminary stage involved outlining
my own core content based on the previous
three analyses. By knowing beforehand what
I needed for the content, I found direction for
examining my KHP documents. The first time
I looked through all the provided documents, I
felt overwhelmed by all the information. Going
through them the second time, knowing what I
needed made it easy to identify both purposeful
and expendable information.
The core content outline also helped me
determine if any important information was
missing. Although KHP willingly provided
me with a plethora of material, my outline
determined that I was still missing key
information, which I was able to obtain for the
benefit of the application. This was better to
discover in the pre-writing process rather than
after the funding request was possibly declined!
Drafting and Revising
By the time I got to actually writing the grant
application, I was not stressed about having
less time to write than I had to prepare. The
key was that I already knew what was going
to constitute the first draft, so the first draft
became a process of organizing, editing, and
enhancing content rather than generating
content. This also meant fewer drafts between
the first one and the final product. Moreover,
edits were much more minor, and they
mostly included spell checking, improving
organization, and enrichment via vocabulary
and/or rhetorical details. In summary, the
work in the preliminary process gave me the
confidence to put together a quality first draft
of something I had never written before.
Writing For Life – Implications for
Writing in the Disciplines
I have this vague memory of a conversation I
had with my organic chemistry professor back
in college; he commented on how I preferred to
work with problems that involved determining
the reactants from the products rather than
vice versa. My response was that I found it
easier to work backwards once I knew where
I needed to end up. Beginning with the end in
mind is a philosophy and a strategy that we
are highly encouraged to incorporate into our
teaching methods. For me, it won’t be a hard
philosophy to adopt, and the problem-solving
writing approach is very conducive to fulfilling
this philosophy in terms of writing.
Gretzky said ‘We miss 100% of the shots we
don’t take.’ In other words, it’s best to take a
shot in the right direction than to not shoot at
all. Generally, it’s a healthy philosophy to live
by, but a masterful coach won’t just train their
players to shoot the puck in the right direction
in hopes of getting it in the net. Instead,
players will be taught to find the sweet spots
of the target; this is where the goalie will have
a harder time cutting off the angle to block the
shot. With this knowledge, players can shoot
with a comprehensive intent to score rather
than with blind hope. Similarly, students need
to understand the sweet spots of their writing
targets, but just like the hockey player must
work at developing the ability to judge the
best shooting angle. The student too needs to
develop the ability to judge the best approach
to a writing task depending on its nature. It isn’t
enough for students to simply see the target to
aim for; students need to understand the target
as well.
17
 Core Content Analysis
Information on the organization seeing funding
Need for the organization until 30-level courses in preparation for post-
• Reason for the project that is in need of
funding
• Social or community issue/population
organization addresses
Organization’s impact
• How it addresses the issue/need
population
• Specific evidence detailing impact (stats
or narratives about the successes/services
the organization provides)
History and credibility
• Past projects (ties to impact)
• when/why organization was established
• purpose/vision/mandate/values or the
organization
• recognition received/awards recieved
• Future plans/directions linked to
purpose/vision/mission/mandate
18
KHP only national porfessional counselling
service (FREE)
• 3:1 Live Chat Drop Rate due to lack of
counsellour resources (2015) - (need to
confirm a more recent numbers)
• Youth mental health issues *suicide* &
Youth awareness of available resources
*2017 Stats and summary of long term
significant impact (especially number of crisis
interventions)
• Provides 24hr, Free one-one-one,
ANONYMOUS, professional counselling
services; maintains up-to-date
communications platforms for youth to access
• Evidence: 2017 Alberta Stats AND
Narratives (pre-made from KHP)
http://kidshelphone.ca/about-us
• Evolution of community role
• Focus on content from Fulfilling our Promise
• ACCESS - What other methods has KHP report writing coming out of high school: The
evolved to keep in touch with youth?
• Is there a measurable outcome in terms
of DROP RATE that is trying to be
acheived for next year’s evaluation?
In science, students encounter writing mostly
in the form of lab reports; yet, they don’t appear
to be taught how to properly write one formally
secondary endeavours. However, when students
get to the post-secondary stage, professors
don’t spend time teaching how to write a lab
report as a writing task. It is expected of us to
already know which components are included
in a lab report, and the professor’s job is to help
you enhance each component to achieve post-
secondary-quality end products.
Personally, in high school, I wasn’t made to
understand the components of a lab report; I
was just expected fill them in as instructed to
make sure I got a point for each component
present. And I was only expected to understand
the experiment insofar as it confirmed the
claims made in the textbook. So, when I got to
the post-secondary stage, there was a huge gap
between my lab report writing experience and
the new lab report expectations.
I don’t think it unreasonable to be expected
to have an in-depth understanding of lab
science curriculum includes the development
of inquiry skills that involve planning, data-
recording and analysis, and communication
within the scientific community; all of which
can be accomplished through formal lab
reports.
This presents a cross-curricular opportunity!
If the problem-solving writing approach was
taught as an English skill, it could then be put
into practice as students complete specific
writing tasks in their other subjects. As a result,
students are given meaningful opportunities to
apply a learned writing skill, and their subject-
specific writing tasks can be confidently
completed at higher levels of quality. As an
ideal consequence, literacy in all other subjects
could be improved.
From my experiences, students struggle
to make connections between the sections
of their lab reports; specifically, the results
and analysis sections. This prevents them
from contemplating the implications of the
experimental inquiry beyond the purpose of
confirming what they are told by a textbook.
Students fail to engage in critical thinking,
which diminishes the quality of learning that
is meant to result from experimental inquiry.
By gaining a comprehensive understanding of
each lab report component, students should
be able to find purpose in each step of their
experimental procedure. For example, rather
than just documenting observations to fill
in the section, they can be prepared to make
observations with the intent of applying
them later on in an analysis. Additionally, by
understanding that reporting on an experiment
is not meant to simply confirm proposed theory,
but to test it, students can learn to appreciate those requirements reflect the values and
the value of scientific experimentation to expectations of the disciplines in which they
scientific knowledge. are writing, and to construct and execute a
plan to successfully meet those requirements.
We should remember that language is The writing-as-problem-solving pedagogy
fundamental to all subjects in (western) developed and implemented in the Writing for
education systems. Science could take time to Life course is designed to teach students how
teach students its language so that they can feel to understand the rhetorical problems they
comfortable applying it. Having students go face in new writing tasks and teaches them
through the process of conducting discourse the skills required to independently analyze
analysis, genre analysis, and rhetorical and complete these new tasks. As such, it is a
analysis of lab reports could provide them pedagogical model designed to provide the
with opportunities to develop the necessary foundation for students’ writing across the
understanding of the scientific language. The disciplines; enabling them to be successful
more opportunities students are provided with, in writing tasks faced not only across their
the more experience they will gain with the university programs, but also throughout their
language; likewise, the sooner the opportunities writing lives.
are presented, the more opportunities they
experience and the better prepared they are for
post-secondary transfer.
Implications for Writing Across the
Disciplines and Beyond
Reviewing decades of research into the
cognitive process of student writers, Hayes
(9) observed that many weak writers assign
themselves the wrong rhetorical problem
when faced with a writing task that is new
to them. Often, this struggle is perpetuated,
because rarely are students taught how to
deconstruct a writing task, to determine what
is being required of them, to understand how
19