Mathematics, Writing, and Rhetoric: Deep Thinking in First-Year Learning Communities

Through the process of combining two seemingly unlikely bedfellows, mathematics and composition, two instructors explain how rhetoric connects the art of writing and the art of doing mathematics in an inquiry-based learning community. Combining these two courses in a learning community enables students and instructors to practice the deep thinking valued by each instructor and by a traditional liberal arts education while challenging both our and our students' individual, disciplinary, and rhetorical conventions and beliefs. Using student writing from our course, our assignments from mathematics and composition, and survey evaluation results, we demonstrate how engaging in inquiry-based education provides unconventional (and conventional) learning opportunities for both students and instructors. Furthermore, through our discussions of the four iterations of our Learning Community, we examine some ways interdisciplinary learning challenges structural, individual, and disciplinary expectations, conventions, and learning.