“The Hardest Thing With Writing is not Getting Enough Instruction”

This chapter discusses research findings that illustrate some of the challenges that students face as they write across their college courses. It considers some of the factors that make writing tasks challenging for students, what constrains them from drawing on prior knowledge and effectively using it to engage those challenges, and what affordances assist students in this work. To illustrate the constraints and affordances of writing and transferring writing skills and knowledge across college classrooms, the authors will draw on an ongoing longitudinal case study of Nicolette Mercer Clement, a nursing student at the University of Central Florida and coauthor of this chapter. They will consider particular writing-related challenges that Nicolette encountered that required her to engage in active repurposing of prior knowledge to learn something new and complete the task at hand. They will examine the affordances and constraints that affected Nicolette's abilities to move effectively through her zones of proximal development.