Tim Peeples, Associate Dean, Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, recently had published “Techniques, Technologies, and the Deskilling of Rhetoric and Composition: Managing the Knowledge-Intensive Work of Writing Instruction.” The chapter, co-authored with Bill Hart-Davidson, the Co-Director of the WIDE Research Center at Michigan State University, was included in “Labor, Writing Technologies, and the Shaping of Composition in the Academy,” an edited collection dedicated to examining the intersections between academic work and new technologies as they impact composition studies.
Peeples and Hart-Davidson focus on the ways academic administrative practices and networked computer technologies can participate in deskilling writing instructors, especially within the context of two current trends: (a) increased reliance on labor – especially temporary labor – without the necessary expertise to pursue writing instruction as knowledge-intensive work; and (b) increased number of writing courses delivered within networked environments but without attention to the ongoing development that instructors need to be offered and should be expected to actively pursue.
Peeples and Hart-Davidson conclude by offering suggestions about the ways the material contexts of work in writing programs need to change in order to address the eroding status of writing instruction as knowledge-intensive work.