Exploring Instructor Perceptions and Practices for Public Discourse in First-Year Writing Courses

Oct 15, 2026

This study examines how instructors perceive public discourse and how those beliefs shape (or fail to shape) first-year writing course materials. Public discourse is defined as communicative acts in the public sphere that affect broad demographics. Using a qualitative three-phase research approach—survey response, interviews, and review of policies, syllabi, assignments, and teaching philosophies—the findings test whether instructors value public discourse while providing limited explicit pedagogical implementation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages34

Reading Time1 h 26 min

AccessFree to download

Literature Review

Foundations of civil public discourse in classical rhetoric

Linking public and private spheres through ethos

Exploring Instructor Perceptions of and Practices for Public Discourse in First-Year Writing Courses Jill Parrott, Lucas Green, Courtnie Morin, Jordan Kaiser, Cody Smothers, Sam Rodgers Eastern Kentucky University A long-standing goal of the university in the Western tradition has been to prepare students to enter into a democratic society as informed citizens, but contemporary practices are often aimed at cultivating individuals for specialized careers rather than preparing them for general civil interactions. As James Berlin reminds us in Rhetoric and Reality, the classical rhetors Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine placed rhetoric at the center of learning and emphasized its fundamental role in maintaining democratic ideals (2) . Though the modern academy appears to stray from this principle historical objective, contemporary freshman composition courses (among others) maintain the capacity to do more than “prepare students for the workplace”(Berlin 189) . Compositionists often embrace a humanistic perspective, wherein meaning is created in the material practice of writing and the writers themselves and their audiences are impacted throughout the process, giving purpose to the communicative act beyond a purely utilitarian function (Lindemann 3-8) . Composing is a cultural act; a text is both influenced by and influences the society in which it is constructed (Farris). The first-year composition classroom offers the unique capacity to function as a mock micro-society in which students may practice participating in civil public discourse in a relatively low-stakes environment, teaching both writing skills and democratic acts that may then be transferred and applied into the public sphere (Ervin; Friend; Crisco; Selfe) . A central objective of many writing courses is to prepare students to effectively communicate in their personal, professional, and public lives, but writing instruction can seem disconnected from contemporary societal practices that constitute civil public discourse. This project aims to explore the connections between instructors’ perceptions and understanding of public discourse in relationship to the first-year writing classroom and the manners in which those views manifest (or do not) in course materials. For this study, public discourse is defined as any communicative act that takes place in the public sphere and impacts wide demographics. Public discourse resides in the “community” sphere, and composition courses can provide opportunities to actively investigate public issues relevant to students and their self-identified communities (Farkas 38). Ideally, public discourse would aim to be respectful, logical, participatory, and truthful; it is produced through a variety of modes and media, conventional to contemporary. To collect and chronicle the theories of civil public discourse and its role in the composition classroom, the first-year writing instructors at a regional mid-sized, liberal arts public university were presented an opportunity to participate in part or all of a three-phased research process, which included responding to a survey, engaging in an interview, and submitting course materials for review. The research team hypothesized that instructors would self-report a belief in public discourse as an important goal of first-year writing but that the explicit teaching of public discourse would not be evidenced in course materials such as policies, syllabi, assignments, and teaching philosophies. A qualitative review of our data confirms our hypothesis: while the instructors we spoke with strongly agreed that public discourse should be--and is--an important part of first-year writing courses, the pedagogical materials we reviewed reflected very little practical application of that goal. This discussion poses interesting questions about the ways our values as composition instructors are reflected through our pedagogy to our students’ ability to transfer what they have lea

FAQs

How does the project define public discourse in the first-year writing context?

Public discourse is defined as any communicative act that occurs in the public sphere and impacts wide demographics.

What research phases were used to study instructors’ perceptions and practices?

Instructors participated in a three-phased process including responding to a survey, engaging in an interview, and submitting course materials for review.

What does the qualitative review suggest about public discourse teaching in course materials?

Instructors strongly agreed that public discourse should be an important part of first-year writing, but the reviewed pedagogical materials showed very little practical application of this goal.

Oct 15, 2026

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