Writing Across the Curriculum: A Hermeneutic Study of Students' Experiences in Writing in Food Science Education

Abstract

Writing can enhance learning by helping students put words to their thinking about course material. The purposes of this study were to assess the influence of a structured academic journal writing exer-cise on student learning in a food science class and to examine student responses to the experience. Hermeneutics, a philosophy of science and qualitative research method, was used to analyze journal data from 48 participating students during a 2-y period and involved 3 steps: (1) describing themes taken from a global reading of student commentaries, (2) reducing or relating themes to specific, verbatim statements found in student writings, and (3) interpret-ing or imposing meaning on the themes and the statements (Lanigan 1988). Hermeneu-tic analysis showed that journal writing was difficult at first but became easier and en-joyable over time, allowed students to re-late course content to other knowledge, ex-posed students to course material multiple times allowing for better information reten-tion, enhanced student understanding, helped students think critically, required students to prepare for class, gave students the opportunity to express opinions, and al-lowed students to experience writing as en-joyable and positive. Several minor themes suggested that most students found the ex-perience useful to their learning. Findings from this study are consistent with neuro-science and cognitive psychology theories regarding learning and the development of reasoning skills.