Connecting Work-Integrated Learning and Writing Transfer: Possibilities and Promise for Writing Studies

This article explores ways that the field of rhetoric and writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement with work-integrated learning (WIL) research and pedagogy in the context of transfer research. Specifically, the article discusses: (1) "redesigning" writing internship pedagogies to align with WIL learning and curriculum theories and practices; (2) "revisiting" threshold concepts of writing by accounting for knowledge, theories, and practices that are central to epistemological participation in a variety of professional writing careers; (3) "reconsidering" notions of vocation to emphasize the ways writers' personal epistemologies and social trajectories interact with the purposes, aims, and values of academic and workplace contexts; and (4) "reconceptualizing writing major curricula" in relation to the conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and dispositions of expert writers in a range of professional contexts. In short, we argue that intentional engagement with WIL can enrich work on writing transfer and the field of rhetoric and writing studies as a whole. In addition to our theoretical discussion of the value of engaging with WIL frameworks in writing studies, we introduce our multi-institutional, transnational study of how WIL affects diverse populations of undergraduate students' recursive transfer of writing knowledge and practices as an example of the kind of generative research on writing transfer and WIL that we are encouraging writing transfer researchers to take up.