Diagram of contextualizing. Options for approaching: situate ideas and arguments into historical and critical contexts. Develop a critical vocabulary for a given conversation. Deploy different types of evidence rhetorically. Understanding social activity that shapes genres (e.g., academic publications). Options for doing: Remix gathered data into an overview of a context. Copyright; responsible sourcing of media; citation practices. Use library technologies; databases.

When students contextualize, they are situating ideas, arguments, or practices in a larger context (e.g., a historical context, a critical context, a cultural context) in order to call their audience’s attention to that context. Contextualizing goes beyond summarizing the relevant information about an author or idea; when students contextualize, they use research in order to construct or bring into view a picture of the broad-scale situation, circumstance(s), or relationships that surround an issue, text, genre, or mode (as opposed to tracing a particular conversation within an issue, as in engaging a conversation).

Information Literacy Threshold Concepts

Authority is constructed and contextual
Information has value

Habits of Mind

Openness
Persistence
Flexibility
Responsibility

Examples

Assignment	Writing Goals	Contextualizing work
Annotated Bibliography	Situate ideas into a historical context - develop a critical vocabulary	Explore what each source shows us about the larger context surrounding a particular issue
Process note	Understand social activity that shapes genres	Reflect on the choices the student made and challenges encountered while working on a project
Genre analysis	Understand social activity that shapes genres	Investigate the history and cultural context of a kind of text (e.g., the political cartoon)
Short documentary	Situate ideas into a historical context - deploy different types of evidence rhetorically	Present an issue at length from multiple perspectives
Infographic	Deploy different types of evidence rhetorically - situate ideas	Remix gathered data on a particular issue into a visual form

Resources

Scholarly Bibliography

Devitt, Amy. “Teaching Critical Genre Awareness.” Genre in a Changing World, edited by Charles Bazerman, et al., The WAC Clearinghouse, 2009, pp. 337-351.

Beaufort, Anne. “Operationalizing the Concept of Discourse Community: A Case Study of One Institutional Site of Composing.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 31, no. 4, 1997, pp. 486–529.

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