Comparing Student and Instructor Perspectives on Writing: Empirical Results from the Social Work Discipline

Studies examining student writing challenges often fail to consider how instructors' perspectives align with students' perspectives. The present study is designed to help improve writing instruction and support by analyzing comparative data on student (n=244) and instructor (n=44) perceptions of writing assignments and process activities within one social-work department. Results indicate that students and instructors differ in how they label and understand primary writing genres, creating potential challenges for successful instruction, and that they also differ in how they use or recommend writing process activities. By recommending outside support resources rather than integrating writing into in-class activities, instructors may be unintentionally inhibiting students' writing abilities by encouraging a grade-driven instrumental attitude toward writing. Further interdisciplinary writing instruction and resources and enhanced instructor preparation may help improve how effectively students enact primary social work genres. For several decades now, instructors and administrators in the discipline of social work have recognized a unique need for effective writing, since social-work students exit their academic studies directly into a career involving high-stakes communication on behalf of highly vulnerable clients, who face issues that may threaten their lives or livelihoods. To that end, social-work departments have begun embracing interventions modeled on a Writing in the Disciplines (WID) approach, integrating writing more thoroughly into the curriculum, and offering additional discipline-specific writing support. Such interdisciplinary writing initiatives stand at the nexus of multiple perspectives on writing—the student, the classroom instructor, and the writing specialist. And yet, although some studies within the first-year composition (FYC) setting have examined students' attitudes (e.g. Leki, 2006; Lindenman, 2015; Lucas, Cox, Croudace, & Milford, 2004), the convergence (or divergence) of student and instructor perspectives on writing in discipline-specific settings is an area seldom studied in detail (see the most recent review of the literature on the subject, by Usher & Pajares [2008]). A recent study by Corcelles, Oliva, Castelló, and Milian (2015) sketches out a possible avenue of investigation. Following a path begun in other contexts by Melzer (2009) and Gardner and Nesi (2013), they set out to explore what rhetorical genres are used in several Spanish universities. Unlike the previous studies, however, they assess not only the curriculum and instructors' reports, but also students' own selfreported genre use, and even sample student texts, comparing the material side-by-side to see whether student and instructor perspectives match up. The present study follows a similar line of inquiry, and is designed to help improve writing instruction and support in social work and kindred disciplines, by analyzing comparative data on student and instructor perceptions of what students are writing (assignment genres), and what process activities they use or recommend. We argue that a clearer understanding of areas