Writing in the Discipline: Relationship to the Ways of Knowing and Doing
Writing in the Discipline: Relationship to the Ways of Knowing and Doing Writing in the discipline is founded on a relationship between knowing, doing, and writing. It is important that we understand the two categories creating disciplines: domains of knowledge and the ways of knowing. The domains of knowledge suggest declarative or conceptual knowledge and the knowing infers procedural or process knowledge. Michael Carter addresses this relationship in his article Ways of Doing, Knowing, and Writing in the Disciplines. Carter emphasizes that “writing is a way of knowing in the discipline”, meaning there is a link between the knowing inside our discipline and the ways of writing. He is not incorrect in his argument that the ways of knowing and doing affect the ways of writing in the disciplines, but it can also be argued that the ways of writing and doing influence the knowing in the discipline. Based on that idea we must view the ways of writing writing as a chronological process involving the knowing and the doing as influencing the ways of writing. Rather, we must understand how they are interconnected within our disciplines. For example, Carter argues that the knowledge and ways of knowing in the science metadiscipline influence the ways of doing a lab and writing the lab report. My argument is that this relationship can also function in the opposite direction. The way of doing the lab and writing the lab report can influence the knowing in the discipline of science. The purpose of this piece will be to develop an understanding of how the ways of doing bridge the gap between the ways of knowing and writing inside or across disciplines. The University of Maine’s Persuasive and Analytical Writing course has been redesigned to emphasize this relationship between the ways of knowing, doing, and writing inside and across disciplines using a curriculum based on the concept of genres. The ENG 212 Syllabus helps us to understand that genres are “not simply ways