Source: Michael Carter, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 58, No. 3, pp. 385–418
Tags: metadiscipline, metagenre, problem solving, empirical inquiry, research from sources, performance, postdisciplinarity, WID, writing in the disciplines, disciplinary knowledge, university structure
Carter groups disciplines into four metadisciplines based on which metagenre dominates their ways of doing. He then uses this framework to critique the modern university's emphasis on declarative knowledge, argues for a postdisciplinary perspective that highlights shared ways of doing across fields, and concludes that doing (not content) is the key to connecting writing, knowing, and teaching in the disciplines.
Metadiscipline
A higher-order grouping of disciplines that share an emphasis on the same way of doing (metagenre). Metadisciplines direct attention away from specialised content knowledge toward the shared patterns of knowing, doing, and writing that unite otherwise distinct fields.
Postdisciplinarity / nondisciplinarity
A critique of the modern university's rigid disciplinary structure. Scholars such as Delanty, Ford, Mourad, Readings, and Samuels argue for moving beyond the assumption that disciplines are defined primarily by their content knowledge. Carter's metagenre/metadiscipline framework supports this perspective by foregrounding shared ways of doing rather than separate knowledge domains.
Inquirer-based epistemology (Mourad)
Roger P. Mourad's alternative to the traditional object-based epistemology of disciplines. Rather than assuming knowledge is about a reality independent of the inquirer, Mourad proposes that knowledge is local, dynamic, and shaped by the inquirer. Teaching, research, and knowledge-making become integrated rather than separate activities.
A metadiscipline is a collection of disciplines grouped by their shared emphasis on a particular metagenre. At the centre of each metadiscipline is a shared way of doing; the constituent disciplines differ in their content knowledge but converge on how they do and know.
Metadisciplines are not mutually exclusive. A discipline may belong to more than one. For example, zoology placed empirical research first among its outcomes (as expected for a scientific field) but also included a problem-solving outcome that the faculty considered of near-equal importance, reflecting its programme's focus on fisheries, wildlife management, and environmental studies.
Disciplines included: accounting, agricultural and resource economics, animal science, business management, various engineering majors, food science, forestry management, mathematics, pulp and paper science, psychology.
Unifying way of doing: defining a problem, establishing parameters, generating solutions, evaluating against criteria, justifying a recommended solution.
Variations within this metadiscipline:
Designing a tangible product – common in engineering; the capstone design course acts as a bridge to the profession. The process leads to a tangible output (a product, a roadway model, a piece of machinery).
Applying specialised knowledge to solve field-specific problems – food science students, for instance, are expected to solve problems by applying what they have learned across chemistry, microbiology, nutrition, and other sciences. The outcome emphasis is on application rather than on producing a physical product.
Gathering information from sources to solve practical field problems – similar to the third metagenre (research from sources) but performed in the context of solving a practical problem. Agricultural and resource economics students find, evaluate, and apply standard economic data to problems in their field.
Notable inclusion: Psychology might seem more naturally placed with empirical inquiry (social science). But the psychology outcomes at Carter's university emphasise students' ability to solve problems, reflecting the department's applied focus. This shows that metadiscipline membership is shaped by a programme's priorities, not by conventional assumptions about a field.
Disciplines included: anthropology, biology, chemistry, geology, microbiology, political science, sociology, and other natural and social sciences.
Unifying way of doing: formulating questions, establishing hypotheses, designing investigations, gathering data, analysing data, drawing conclusions.
Three variations:
Hypothetical inquiry – the classic model most people associate with science. Research is driven by a hypothesis and designed to test it. Found in microbiology, political science, and similar fields.
Descriptive empirical inquiry – lab reports that describe phenomena rather than test hypotheses (e.g. geology students describing minerals according to standard parameters, or surveying a geological site). The emphasis is on abstract knowledge of methods of inquiry rather than on the hypothesis-testing cycle.
Practical field inquiry – the anthropology case. Faculty say empirical research is critical to the discipline, but acknowledge it is too difficult and time-consuming for undergraduates to do fully. The primary genre for teaching the way of doing is the project proposal rather than the completed study.
Disciplines included: history, literature, multidisciplinary studies, philosophy, religious studies, women and gender studies, and broadly the humanities.
Unifying way of doing: gathering information from existing texts and sources, synthesising, analysing, interpreting, and building a persuasive argument. The research has intrinsic value to the discipline rather than extrinsic practical application.
Key observation: These disciplines are characterised by a general way of doing but distinct ways of knowing. The primary variation within this metadiscipline accords with the distinct ways of knowing in each discipline. Faculty in these fields tend to describe research not as an end in itself but as a means to a specifically disciplinary end – a way of knowing that characterises the discipline.
For example, the goal in religious studies is to enable students to read and understand literature from historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives. Learning to write about reading, in a way that shapes the act of reading, is a way of knowing that marks a literature major. Multidisciplinary studies uses research projects to encourage students to shift perspective across disciplines.
The genres of this metagenre – historical narrative from sources, literary criticism, research paper – may be understood as quintessential academic genres: writing used to promote certain ways of knowing and doing without much pretence to practical application beyond the classroom.
Disciplines included: architecture, art and design, graphic design, industrial design, landscape architecture, language, writing, rhetoric, and (by extension) music, dance, and theatre.
Unifying way of doing: the creation of artefacts or performances that are themselves the primary evidence of learning. The doing is implicit in the object of the doing.
Key variation: The primary variation within this metadiscipline is between the distinct ways of knowing in each discipline. Design values "enduring understanding" of principles, techniques, and relationships among art forms. Rhetoric, writing, and language values a repertoire of skills, proficiency across audiences and purposes, and collaborative ability.
The preponderance of nonwritten performances in art, design, music, dance, and theatre might make WID seem irrelevant to these fields. Carter argues otherwise:
A language-based genre crucial to design students' success is the critique ("crit"), even though it rarely appears as a formal programme outcome.
WID professionals can help make the critique visible, teachable, and assessable.
The critique could also be applied in other performance-based curricula.
Carter connects his framework to broader critiques of the modern research university.
The modern university, with its focus on the delivery of highly specialised declarative knowledge and on writing as something that belongs outside the disciplines, tends to promote a relatively language-poor educational environment. Carter frames the emphasis on knowing, doing, and writing in the disciplines as an attempt to return to the earlier language-rich environment in which writing and speaking were central to education.
From another angle, this same emphasis may be understood as part of a move toward postdisciplinarity or nondisciplinarity:
Delanty argues that teaching would become integral to research, not a separate after-the-fact transmission of its results.
Mourad proposes an inquirer-based epistemology: knowledge is local, dynamic, and shaped by the inquirer rather than universal, static, and independent.
Samuels and others question the strict boundaries between disciplines.
Carter argues that reconceptualising disciplines in terms of metagenres and metadisciplines supports this postdisciplinary challenge:
Disciplines may be seen as based on ways of doing (modes of inquiry) rather than static territories of knowledge.
The shift is from knowledge to knowing – from a fixed body of content to an active, ongoing process.
Metagenres and metadisciplines highlight relationships among disciplines that rigid content-based boundaries obscure.
Disciplinary boundaries themselves are porous and in flux; writing is located neither fully inside nor fully outside the disciplines.
From this perspective, it is not so much writing in or outside the disciplines, but writing of the disciplines.
Carter offers several practical takeaways:
Outcomes-based assessment is a powerful vehicle. Even without a formal assessment process, WID professionals can work with faculty to identify course or programme learning outcomes and help them incorporate writing as a means of both teaching and evaluating those outcomes.
Start with what students should be able to do. This naturally surfaces the connection between doing and writing.
Individual genre analysis is useful, but the metagenre adds strategic value. Shifting focus from the isolated genre to the metagenre helps faculty see the broader ways of doing in their disciplines, enabling them to use individual genres more strategically across the curriculum.
Cross-disciplinary workshops become possible. The metadiscipline framework means faculty from different fields within the same metadiscipline can discover shared ways of doing and learn from each other's writing practices.
Faculty are the experts on what counts as good writing in their fields. The WID professional's role is not to tell faculty what good writing looks like, but to help them articulate and teach the writing practices they already value.
⚠️ Be able to name the four metadisciplines and list example disciplines for each. They map directly onto the four metagenres.
⚠️ Metadisciplines are not mutually exclusive. A discipline can belong to more than one (the zoology example is the go-to illustration of this).
⚠️ Carter's argument connects to broader postdisciplinary critiques of the university. Be able to explain how foregrounding ways of doing (rather than content knowledge) challenges traditional disciplinary boundaries.
⚠️ The practical implication for WID work is significant: the framework gives WID professionals a way to work across disciplines by highlighting shared ways of doing, rather than being limited to field-by-field genre analysis.
⚠️ The distinction between writing in or outside the disciplines versus writing of the disciplines captures Carter's final rhetorical move. It reframes the WID disjunction he opened the article with.
Q: What is a metadiscipline, and how does it relate to a metagenre?
A: A metadiscipline is a grouping of disciplines that share an emphasis on the same metagenre (the same broad way of doing). The metagenre is the pattern of doing; the metadiscipline is the cluster of fields organised around that pattern. For example, the empirical inquiry metagenre unites a metadiscipline that includes microbiology, political science, geology, and other sciences.
Q: Why does Carter place psychology in the problem-solving metadiscipline rather than empirical inquiry?
A: Because the psychology programme at his university emphasised students' ability to solve problems as a function of the department's focus on applied psychology. Metadiscipline membership reflects a programme's actual priorities and outcomes, not conventional assumptions about the field.
Q: What are the three variations Carter identifies within the empirical inquiry metadiscipline?
A: Hypothetical inquiry (hypothesis-driven research, the classic model), descriptive empirical inquiry (describing phenomena according to standard parameters, as in geology), and practical field inquiry (where the primary genre is the project proposal rather than a completed study, as in anthropology).
Q: How does Carter's framework relate to postdisciplinary critiques of the modern university?
A: By reframing disciplines as ways of doing rather than static bodies of content knowledge, Carter's framework supports the postdisciplinary argument that disciplinary boundaries are porous and that knowledge is better understood as an active, inquirer-based process than as a fixed, object-based territory. Metagenres and metadisciplines highlight cross-disciplinary connections that content-focused views tend to hide.
Q: What does Carter mean by writing "of" the disciplines, as opposed to writing "in" or "outside" them?
A: The phrase captures the idea that writing is not simply a tool used within a discipline or a skill taught outside it, but something constitutive of how disciplines do and know. Because disciplinary boundaries are porous and knowledge is ongoing, writing belongs to the ongoing activity of the disciplines rather than sitting neatly inside or outside their borders.
Q: What is the key practical takeaway for WID professionals from Carter's framework?
A: The metagenre/metadiscipline framework gives WID professionals a way to work strategically across disciplines by highlighting shared ways of doing, rather than approaching each field's writing conventions one discipline at a time. Faculty are the experts on their own disciplinary writing; the WID professional's role is to help them articulate and teach the connections between doing and writing that they already practise but may not have made explicit.
metadiscipline, metagenre, problem solving, empirical inquiry, research from sources, performance, postdisciplinarity, nondisciplinarity, inquirer-based epistemology, Mourad, Delanty, Samuels, Readings, disciplinary boundaries, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, ways of knowing, ways of doing, WID, WAC, writing in the disciplines, writing across the curriculum, outcomes-based assessment, NC State, genre, genre system, activity theory, cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, language-rich environment, language-poor environment, applied psychology, zoology, anthropology, geology, design critique, composition studies, rhetoric