ABSTRACT
This chapter, written by colleagues in the same institution but housed in different writing programs and prepared in different ways to work with multilingual writers, describes two faculty professional development groups that they created during a wave of significant institutional change: an Academic Writing Group and an Inclusive Reading Pedagogies Group. Each group, while led by one of the authors, included participants from both writing programs. This chapter describes the institutional conditions that led to the authors’ decision to cross disciplinary boundaries for these discussions of writing pedagogy. Following that description, the authors provide evidence of how productive these conversations can be by including excerpts from the transcript of one of those reading group meetings and by dedicating a portion of the chapter to one of the authors’ reflections on his own transformation from a deficit-based to an asset-based approach toward students’ writing practices. The authors helpfully provide a list of specific recommendations for reading groups at other institutions, as well as a list of suggested readings for motivating the adoption of a plurilingual perspective.
