For this assignment you will write a 4 - 5 page (double spaced) discussion and report on your analysis of at least 2 of your course syllabi for the current semester to examine their various theoretical perspectives and assumptions of knowledge construction and pedagogy within their various academic fields. Your report must demonstrate an in-depth analysis of the syllabi, interviews with the authors of the syllabi, and interviews with audiences for the syllabi.

As a methodology, I suggest that you first examine each syllabus as an individual document, identifying specific aspects of knowledge construction, acquisition, and teaching within the document that seem to indicate a) its genre as an academic syllabus b) institutional values and assumptions, c) disciplinary values and assumptions d) individual instructor values and assumptions.

Note that "disciplinary values" does not refer to punishment in that sense of the word, but to the schools of thought and scholarly inquiry that define subjects of study and approaches to those subjects of study. A field is an area of specialization within a dscipline.

To get full credit for this assignment, you are required to formally interview all of the authors of the syllabi to get their observations on the 4 sets of criteria suggested above. It is also required that you formally interview an intended audience member for each of the syllabi, i.e. a student in that course, to gain additional data from another perspective.

Finally, I suggest that you examine and analyze your data by doing a comparative analysis of the syllabi using these questions:

• How are these documents similar in terms of format, content, writer intent, and reader response? What allows you to view these professional documents as examples of a genre we term syllabi?
• What is a syllabus? How do these documents fulfill your tacit expectations for this genre? What do these documents suggest about expectations of an educational process and subject learning in the ASU environment? Where & how do you think you acquired/learned your knowledge of such documents? What does a syllabus mean to you?
• What do you notice are obvious and subtle differences between the documents? How do such factors as learning goals, terminologies, assessment methods, document formatting, etc., indicate variation in professional specialization?
• How does you analysis of these documents and the reader & writer responses help you to begin thinking about the major questions that this particular course is based on: What is academic writing? What does it mean to write in a particular academic context?

Please attach copies of the syllabi to your analysis paper. You may want to devise a system for clearly identifying references to these attachments in your text.

Updated 23 January, 2002