While students’ experiences writing for their discipline certainly have similarities between psy- chology and chemistry, there are important differences between the disciplines that are worth explor- ing. The first major and arguably most important difference is in their perception of the assigned writing tasks. In psychology, students seem to perceive of writing tasks as isolated assignments. While students
are more likely to make connections between assignments within a course, they seem reluctant to draw associations beyond the boundaries of a specific class. Because of this, students expect to be given ex- planations and examples of major writing assignments. They also feel that for some assignments they have to learn by “trial and error.” Students will assume they understand what the instructor expects and students learn how close they were when they receive their grades. When students find they did not match their instructor’s expectations, they reported positive experiences meeting with the instruc- tors to discuss their work in more detail. In these meetings, students felt the professors were very clear and gave specific instructions for improvement. The students interviewed did not seem to consider writ- ing as situated in a discipline until they took Advanced Research Design and Analysis (Psyc 3530). Many of them consider this course the turning point in understanding the purposes behind writing for psy- chology. After taking this class, students discussed drawing on their awareness of psychology writing developed in Psyc 3530 in subsequent (and concurrent) classes.
Chemistry students, on the other hand, perceive of their writing assignments as basically the same type across all their classes, with good reason as the assignments all fall under the umbrella term lab report. They also seem to consider the writing discipline specific, generalizable perhaps to physical sciences. The apparent similarity across writing belies the differences both nuanced and overt that may exist between assignments. Students tend to run headlong into these differences when submitting lab reports without fully considering the context of the course and requirements of the instructor. Because the assignments are essentially from the same category, students do not expect detailed explanations or assignment guides from their instructors. Some students interviewed expressed frustration with expec- tations, finding them idiosyncratic. Students did not find meeting with instructors as easy or helpful as the psychology students described.
A second meaningful difference between the experiences of students in psychology and chemis- try was their own perception of their writing experience. In psychology, students tended to describe
themselves as inexperienced writers. Several claimed they had never written a paper before taking Psyc 3530 and point out that writing is rarely required in their courses before their third year of study. This may reflect the students’ beliefs about what qualifies as an academic paper. Most, if not all, of the stu- dents interviewed had taken freshman composition and all had taken courses that have writing assign- ments. In fact, they were able to describe the writing assignment in classes other than Psyc 3530. On the whole, however, students felt they did not have a lot of experience with writing for psychology. The stu- dents interviewed had all taken, or were in the process of taking, Psyc 3530, a course which seems to cause an eye-opening paradigm shift in students’ perceptions of writing for psychology. After taking this course, students seem to develop an acutely different idea of what it means to write for psychology, and may classify all previous writing as poor or uninformed.
Chemistry students, conversely, tend to self-describe as experienced at writing for chemistry, finding the writing they do for their courses analogous to the physical science writing they did in high school. Students overall felt that their writing improved in style and sophistication as a result of working with a student mentor in their research lab classes more so than in their CTW classes. This is the exact opposite of what Amelia experienced in the psychology lab. She found her lab mentor’s suggestions for writing up her research confusing, while she had a very positive experience with writing instruction in her CTW class.
This finding might be reflective of epistemological differences between the way chemists and psychologist view the role and relative importance of writing in their disciplines. In psychology, as will be discussed in detail in the next section, instructors recognize writing as being central to the field, though not necessarily the top priority for undergraduates. They expect to have to explicitly teach students how to write for psychology at some point in their undergraduate program. Psyc 3530 reflects this expecta- tion by focusing on explicit teaching of the disciplinary method for writing up psychology research. Chemistry instructors, on the other hand, based on our discussions, do not seem to consider writing an
essential part of their discipline. They expect that students have some experience writing lab reports before they begin their course of study. Chem 4000 (the chemistry equivalent of Psyc 3530) is designed to give students practice and feedback through the quantity of writing, but does not have an explicit focus on teaching students how chemistry research is written-up. Writing is taught in this course, but not to the extent it is taught in psychology. Students, therefore, get more individualized and explicit dis- ciplinary writing instruction through their graduate mentors in the lab.