Further Study into Portfolios in the Classroom

Elbow, Peter and Pat Belanoff. “Portfolios as a Substitute for Proficiency Examinations."

            NCTE 37.3 (1986): 336-39.

Elbow and Belanoff go after standardized grading by accusing testing of being contradictory to good teaching and enforcing a concept that, “proficient writing means having a serious topic sprung on you…and writing one draft ‘ (336).  They argue for a collaborative grading process to review portfolios and create a more unified standard of assessment.  The collaboration is used to determine only if a portfolio meets a C standard and the remaining assessment is still determined by the instructor.  Creating a community to exchange value judgments, they argue, strengthens both the teaching and makes the “C line” more uniform thereby reducing student perception that grades are arbitrary (338). 

Altering the role of teacher by adding another voice in the grading allows the teacher to serve as advocate.  Teacher becomes, “someone who can help the student overcome an obstacle” (337).  Insinuated is that otherwise the teacher is perceived as an obstacle or adversary to the process.  Elbow and Belanoff do not define how traditional assessments hinder learning other than to say that proficiency exams do not reflect student ability and only reviewing a broader scope of work can this be achieved. 

This article is very clear about how the faculty at SUNY Stony Brook conduct the process of grading, but the staff also attend a “calibration session” to help determine a baseline that is not discussed (336).  What constitutes a good teacher/student interaction is not defined, but it is argued the portfolio process improves the relationship.  Key concepts here resonate with my purpose of determining how to give students agency.  They determine their grade based on revision opportunities and building a strong piece so evaluation shifts to a more formative purpose of feedback. 

 

Berryman, Lizabeth and David R. Russell. “Portfolios across the Curriculum:  Whole

            School Assessment in Kentucky.” NCTE 90.6 (2001): 76-83.

Teachers of English often profess the value of writing beyond the confines of an English classroom and if we truly believe this the writing portfolio must include topics beyond that classroom.  Writing across the curriculum is critical to connecting learning for students and Berryman uses this idea to explore a mandatory portfolio requirement in Kentucky.  Seniors must compile portfolios for graduation, but it is the school being assessed rather than the student.  The schools are rewarded or sanctioned based on student improvement, stasis, or decline.  After three years of stagnant results Berryman suggested her high school combine efforts of all departments.

Traditionally English teachers review the portfolios, but involving teachers from all disciplines brought about a sense of unity of purpose for the school and also gave a fresh perspective on writing.  They were failing not in mechanics, but in execution of process.  Russell, a researcher, helped synthesize the results citing Moffett’s “universe of discourse” and noting the value of meaningful application and variety of purpose in writing (81).  Instructors of science, math, and art changed writing from a method of testing to a tool for learning (77).  Collaborating on the process helped reduce the tension between departments and the traditional blame that one department fails to teach.   Another result not mentioned is that students often believe that science, math, and English have few intersections and this attitude is mirrored in how curriculum is taught.  Writing in a science class as a means to understanding proteins enforces these connections.  The portfolio does include two pieces written in another discipline outside of English. 

The result of this study is that most portfolios improved to the level of proficiency.  Both Berryman and Russell note that not all teachers support the program.  Russell simply notes that not all buy in and Berryman suggests teachers resist believing portfolios bring them additional work and are unfamiliar with the writing process.  Many staff did receive professional development on how to effectively use a writing process, but this was not explained in depth.  The authors do not cite one specific concern opposed to the process, but quote only advocates of the program.  This research does suggest writing can be an effective link to connect disciplines.  Creating these connections raises data from the level of trivia to one of personal meaning for students and is a component to assessing how to implement portfolios effectively into a secondary classroom. 

 

McCollister, Sandra.  “Developing Criteria Rubrics in the Art Classroom.” Art Education

            55.4 (2002): 46-52.

Writing is often considered a craft, a technical skill, and an art.  These multiple facets are shared by any art form and McCollister looks at how to use rubrics and a standardized method of evaluation for the visual arts.  She struggles with many of the same obstacles as writing teachers, how does one assess creativity or place value judgments on skill?  Artists traditionally use portfolios as well, but all in public education must ultimately have a summative assessment when grades are due each six weeks.

McCollister looks at a rubric as a more fluid form as students contribute their input to define the qualities to be reviewed regarding classroom behaviors and a standard criterion to strive for.  She does acknowledge that students are individually evaluated on this criteria based on personal development, rather than a ranking system (51).  The positives of rubrics applied to a creative process are:  improving work habits, providing a clear definition of standards for students in writing, and “to guide and stimulate artistic and intellectual assessment” (45).  This last piece sounds particularly intriguing, but is not clearly defined, but is left as a hazy idea of something better than using intuition to grade.

It is interesting to see that as rubrics meet with some criticism for not being a one-stop answer, particularly in the application toward a creative process, there is a competing viewpoint to suggest they may help eradicate some of the uncertainty of assessing the creative.  Ultimately all creative pieces and/or processes are judged in a classroom, gallery, publishing house, or hiring manager’s office.  McCollister ultimately raises more questions than are answered, but takes a step forward in attempting to fuse a process to a standard because this is essentially the same struggle of writing instructors in review of portfolios.  

Service Learning in a Composition Course

Here is the annotated bibliography from my progress report last Monday. I don't have a claim yet but I have narrowed down my definition of service learning (SL) or at least of what SL should look like in high school. I need some feedback before I construct a claim so if anyone reads this before Monday please let me know your thoughts.

SL program components:

• should be a subject/subject relationship between student and community members
  
• students should be focused on researching how their SL reveals a larger social issue
• SL should result in an academic research paper
  
• academic research should be focused on the larger social issue and possible solutions (maybe "solutions" is too strong a word?)
  
• the project should consist of a presentation in front of peers, community members, parents etc.

Question: What should the purpose of a service-learning project in a high school composition class be and how can the course be constructed in order to achieve that purpose?

Welch, Nancy “’And Now That I know Them’: Composing Mutuality in a Service-Learning Course” College Composition and Communication. Vol.54, No. 2 (Dec 2002): 243-263

Context: Nancy Welch has developed a service-learning course titled U.S. Literacy Politics at the University of Vermont. She writes this article revealing the socio-economic, cultural, and political problems that occur in subject-object relationship service learning programs. Welch asserts that students must go into the community with the intent of a subject-subject relationship and uses feminist psychoanalytic object-relations theory to support the construction of her course.

Summary: Welch primarily uses the work of two of her students, Janis and Jacqui, to explore the various issues at stake when privileged groups go into underprivileged areas with the intent to create change. Welch sets up the binary subject-object relationship, or the classic anthropological situation, and states that students (anthropologists) may go into a community (strange land) viewing its members (natives) in one of two ways: absolute identification (even though I am privileged we are all the same in the end) or absolute differentiation (because of my privilege we are complete opposites and who am I to ‘empower’ them). Although these views shift the relationship slightly they both conform to the subject-object view and reinforce the impossibility of change. Absolute identification seemingly negates the subject/object relations and yet in its denial of any difference it never allows questions about oppressive structures in play and therefore still objectifies the “others.” Absolute differentiation creates a further gap between subject/object relations and in its cynicism obstructs change. Welch turns to Jessica Benjamin’s and Melanie Klein’s feminist object-relations work to construct a subject/subject service learning program where “a mutuality…allows for and presumes separateness” (255) by ensuring “intersubjective exchange” (257) or a “back-and-forthness” (245) Welch does not however claim that this relieves tension. In fact, she states that it is at tension or conflict that this intersubjective exchange can occur and without tension the relationship turns into subject/object.

Evaluation: Welch has a very persuasive argument in her decision to actively create tension in the relationships between her students and the community and cites several times when these tensions were used to further conversations on social structures concerning the gap between the privileged and underprivileged. One major problem with this article is the conclusion where Welch uses Janis’ final reflection paper to sum up how a subject/subject relationship service-learning program can be effective, however, in her paper Janis uses absolute identification subject/object language. Interestingly enough, Welch never comments on this language weakening her argument.
Green, Ann E. “Difficult Stories: Service-Learning, Race, Class, and Whiteness” College Composition and Communication. Vol. 55, No. 2 (Dec 2003): 276-301

Context: Ann E. Green is an assistant professor at Saint Joseph’s University where she directs the Writing Center and teaches two first year service-learning courses. In this article, she illustrates how her white middle/upper class students refused to discuss racial and class structure issues at a personal level even though they were willing to have this conversation on a theoretical one. Green asserts that this refusal can be overcome through the sharing of personal narratives of racial and class conflicts and that this sharing must start with the teacher.

Summary: The conflict between seeing oppressive race and class structures in the abstract and viewing it as a personal reality, Green confirms is a major obstacle in service learning programs. Green points to several of her white students who did very well in critically analyzing and writing on theoretical work regarding race/class and yet maintained, and in some cases strongly reinforced, racial and class divides on campus and in the community during their service-learning work. Green claims that this division is due to her white student’s inability to view their race as inherently privileged and their belief that it is “impolite to acknowledge race or class directly”(293). According to Green, students “have difficulty applying theory about race and class logically to individual experiences”(291), making the problem twofold: “finding ways for white students to talk about race and then finding ways for white students to analyze race”(292). Green presents two possibilities in confronting the problems. One way is for the teacher to take the risk first. The teacher must model how to talk about race (the white race specifically) by sharing personal narratives of dealing with race. Through this modeling students will learn how to construct their narratives and through in class sharing these narratives can be critically examined as a group. The second way is to insure that the service-learning situation is not top-down. The students are not at the service-learning site to give knowledge to recipients but rather they are there to work with the community. Green requires her students to share their writing to gain feedback from the community members at the service site. Green also asserts that students must maintain a friendship with the community members, claming that “it is through friendships that [students] learn the most about the ways oppressions intersect”(295). Green realizes that these friendships do not always form but she states that by making “power relationships visible and encourage students to develop relationships with the learners at their site that are more mutual and egalitarian”(296).

Evaluation: Green makes some very interesting revelations about her issues with her own whiteness through a story about her first “volunteer” experience. She uses this story to connect the experiences of her students with her experience and then to a pedagogical choice to tell stories in the classroom. In her work she is assuming that all service learning teachers are white with white middle/upper class students and that they choose to do service-learning out of white guilt. The claims she makes about white students needing to analyze their white privilege are valid, however, her ways to encourage this analysis seem either vague or idealistic. This may be a start to understanding how service-learning has thus far been constructed.

Gender and Composition

Flynn, Elizabeth A. “Composing as a Woman.” College Composition and Communication, Vol. 39, No.4, (Dec. 1988), pp.423-435

Writing in 1988, Flynn, a Humanities professor from Michigan Technological University, describes the “new” field of composition studies as a feminization of previous writing theory. She writes that, “In a sense, composition specialists replace the figure of the authoritative father with an image of a nurturing mother.” (423) Flynn identifies many “foremothers” of composition studies: Janet Emig, Mina Shaughnessy, Ann Berthoff, Win Horner, Maxine Hairston, Shirley Heath, Nancy Martin, Linda Flower, Andrea Lunsford, Sondra Perl, Nancy Sommers, Marion Crowhurst, Lisa Ede. The field, she says, has been “shaped by women.” (424) She notes that composition studies is a marginalized field, and links that marginality to the marginality of its constituents, many of whom are women who teach part-time. Flynn traces major theories of gender difference, gives examples from student texts to illuminate gender differences, and gives some suggestions for bringing gender difference into the light of the classroom.



Brody, Miriam. Manly Writing: Gender, Rhetoric, and the Rise of Composition. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.

Brody, an associate professor in the Writing Program at Ithaca College, presents a history of composition theory focused on the frequent, pervasive use of gendered metaphor in works of rhetoric and writing advice, tracing a lineage of “manliness” in these texts from classical Rome all the way to Peter Elbow. This tradition serves to value (as masculine) certain writing and to devalue (as feminine) other writing. Plain, forceful, and true writing is valued as the product of those who are productive, coherent, virtuous, and heroic, while other writing, reviled as effeminate, is identified as ornate, unconvincing, and sometimes deceitful, and the product of uncertainty, vagueness, and timidity. “Good” writing is identified in these texts as a masculine virtue, and “weak” writing as “a feminine subversion that undermines a manly enterprise.” (3)

Bedford Bibliography online

But seriously, use this site http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/bb/ for up to date work in composition studies.

progress progress progress

Here is the progress report I will be delivering later today sans formatting:-( .

Morgan Sims

Question: What is the best method for developing student awareness of their composition process?

Moffett, James. “Writing, Inner Speech, and Meditation.” College English 44.3 (1982). JSTOR.
9 March 2008 %3AWISAM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T>.

At once entertaining and thought provoking, this essay explores the use of meditation as a tool for enhancing student composition and is part of Moffett’s larger project to inform the field.

James Moffett’s intriguing essay is an attempt to apply the principals of his meditation practice to the process of composition. Using concepts ranging from those of the Russian psycholinguists to his own guru Swami Sivalingam, Moffett describes how the disordered stream of sense impression, memory, experience, and reflections can be observed, suspended, and ultimately ordered by the writer into authoring for an audience. Moffett explores several techniques he believes can facilitate the authoring process including: Gazing—Rapt absorption in outer object, eyes open; Visualizing—Imagining of inner object, eyes closed; Witnessing Inner Speech—Watching as bystander the inner stream; Focusing Inner Speech—Narrowing down to and developing a subject intensively with all faculties of mind and heart together; and Suspending Inner Speech—Holding the mind on one point until it transcends discourse and culture and merges with cosmos, in trance. These concepts, backed up as they are by Moffett’s careful use of previous studies and anecdotal information, are all tied to the act of reflection, and indeed are meant to guide reflection in a composing subject, whether that subject be a spiritual devotee or a student of composition. The strengths of this essay lie in Moffett’s willingness to explore the subject of meditation freely. He points out that people often conflate meditation with foreign religious practice as well as our culture’s difficulty with intense reflection as barriers to the implementation of meditative study in schools. But his argument for this implementation is based on studies and observations proving the validity of the learning power of gazing and contemplation.





Berthoff, Ann E. The Making of Meaning. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton, 1981.

Berthoff’s assertive style and direct assault on those she considers backwater thinkers has made her work influential to numerous freshly-launched cohorts of composition teachers. Although at times didactic in her assault on those she considers misguided, Berthoff nonetheless makes a convincing case for the pursuit of a philosophy of composition.

In the first essay titled “The Intelligent Eye and the Thinking Hand” from section two of The Making of Meaning titled “Composing is Forming” (to attempt to summarize a larger section of this book would court disaster) Berthoff declares the need for a philosophy of composition to allow for the formation of a working pedagogy. Observation, visualization, and abstraction are all concepts Berthoff shares with Moffett, although she takes issue with the idea of a “ladder of abstraction” a concept Moffett explores positively in Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Imagination coupled with intention creates a process that is not so much visible or measurable as constitutive of concept for Berthoff, who advocates for the recognition of the mind’s power. Thinkers and writers such as I.A. Richards (whose ideas were influential in the development of modern literary criticism) and C.S. Pierce (father of semiotics) are emblematic of the type of conceptualization work Berthoff proposes will reclaim composition theory from “false philosophers” worshipful of the “idols of the laboratory” namely physicalism, mathematization, objectivity, methodology, and jargon. Berthoff’s strengths lie in her ability to proposition (or preposition), a method calling for the contribution of others in order to form a complete approach to teaching. This strength is also a weakness since her “theory of imagination” conceives of “composing as forming and forming as proceeding by means of abstraction,” provides a not altogether clear path of process.

My research and thinking thus far are woefully incomplete, but I do see potential in linking Berthoff with Moffett. Although Berthoff’s firebrand calls to arms establish urgency, Moffett’s work has a greater feeling of concreteness and practical applicability that may provide the necessary partner in a marriage of theory and practice that I hope will emerge out of the tumultuous courtship of this paper.

"Developing Imagination, Creativity and Literacy through Collaborative Storymaking: A Way of Knowing"

"Developing Imagination, Creativity and Literacy through Collaborative Storymaking: A Way of Knowing"
King, Nancy. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 77, No. 2. (Summer 2007). 204-227.

In her article, "Developing Imagination, Creativity, and Literacy through Collaborative Storymaking: A Way of Knowing," Nancy King introduces herself as a teacher and a trickster, a storyteller who engages students and sparks their hearts and thinking through collaborative storymaking. Referencing and focusing on her own experience, she recounts how she has developed and used storymaking in her work with adults, children, and youth. King maintains that, by participating in collaborative storymaking, students expand and improve their oral and written expression. She draws on 50 plus years of storytelling in mental hospitals, camps, prisons, and language and literacy programs to support her claim that collaborative storytelling is a powerful method for helping students connect with their learning. Storytelling offers students the opportunity to communicate their lives, their experiences, and how they make sense of the world. King also emphasizes the power of story and collaboration to create a supportive learning community. Here, people can contemplate, share, enrich, and expand their thinking about different issues, themes, ideas, and points of view.

The article focuses primarily on King's collaborative storymaking sessions with students of all ages. Storymaking classes open with the reading of a traditional folktale. Following the reading, King typically gives participants one minute each to create an abstract image in clay or paint a telling moment, an idea, or possible character in the story. Making an abstract image in such a brief period of time shortcuts the student's ability to self-censor or plan. Students write down words that came to mind as they formed their images and share those images and words with the class. King then poses one of a variety of prompts to encourage students to write more deeply about their images and thoughts. When a student shares work with the larger group, others are to ask "non-critical questions" that will deepen the presenter’s thinking. King proposes this manner of questioning en lieu of a traditional critique which she believes can demoralize students. Having written down their classmates’ questions, the students revise their work. To describe revising King talks of how she gives her drafts to friends for feedback and questions.

In her work with teachers and some older students King has found that while adults have not lost their “inborn capacity to create,” they may have lost the ability to access it. To regain this access, older students need to let go of personal, social and cultural shibboleths, and learn to separate the making of a story from the evaluation of early efforts: a process encouraged by strategies like time limited sessions with clay and paint.

Evaluation: This article's strength lies in the lively accounts of collaborative storymaking sessions with groups ranging from elementary children to college students and teachers. An appendix offers five concrete examples of storymaking lesson plans designed for different purposes. While the article offers no references to educational theory other than King’s own, the author is an experienced teacher who tells a good story. She provides the reader with amply information and guidelines for employing storymaking sessions with high school and college level students.

Berthoff, Ann E. Forming, Thinking, Writing: The Composing Imagination. Rochelle Park, New Jersey: Hayden, 1978, 248 pp..

Berthoff, Ann E. Forming, Thinking, Writing: The Composing Imagination. Rochelle Park, New Jersey: Hayden, 1978, 248 pp..

In the book Forming, Thinking, Writing: The Composing Imagination (FTW), author Ann E. Berthoff has created a freshman writing text for composition teachers. I say created in the fullest sense of the word, for the book underscores an ongoing relationship between cognative reasoning and affective modes of thinking. Berthoff offers a philosophy and a series of graduated exercises to encourage developing forms then writing and thinking. Her theory of composition is based on the precept that writing arises from the chaos inherent in all meaning. The work of the composer is to observe, study, find forms for and articulate that meaning. Writing is presented as a tool for giving form to meaning and for uncovering and articulating the dialectic of relationships “seeing relationships is the book’s working concept of thinking (6).”

In FTW, forming concepts, writing and thinking are tied closely to observation. To sharpen observation, it is suggested that students start with drawing and then move to keeping a journal about an "organic object" such as a walnut husk or a milkweed pod, studying it closely for several periods over a span of time. To make sentences, students travel the composing "continuum" in a Bloomian fashion moving from observing chaos, to list making, to categorizing and relationship building. "You continually name and define, rename and redefine.....You take a general idea and bring it down to earth with lots of naming--examples, comparisons, demonstrations...just as you convert a generalized figure to a particular object by looking at it in a certain way (79)." Students are given examples of how to form paragraphs by evaluating the relationships between sentences, and structuring and restructuring paragraphs. Although writing is presented as a continuum, the process, and progress is iterative. It is a continuing dialectic, back and forth, from the specific to the general. FTW also offers a model for composing. HDWDWW (How do We Do What We Do) prompts students to organize their writing by naming the agent, action, manner and purpose of their particular chaos of meaning, then making sentences, stating oppositions, drawing up definitions and articulating relationships.

Reading plays an integral part in the writing process. Writing prompts or "invitations" are preceded by paragraphs that range across the curriculum, coming from areas such as philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead; anthropology, Margaret Mead; the bible; and cartoons, Jules Feiffer. Invitations also offer grocery lists and student works.

Evaluation: FTW offers a treasure trove of theory and exercises to enrich the teaching of English 101-102, with strong emphasis on encouraging student to play with their thoughts. The book is definitely heavy reading, packed with philosophy, and sentences and paragraphs that demand rereading. It is also a pure delight to find a text that treats students as individuals capable of higher thinking and deserving of writing by some of the better minds our world has to offer.

Loyola's Progress Report - Monday, April 7, 2008

Loyola Bird/English 538 Progress Report

Question: How does having computers in the classroom help students develop writing skills?

Pandey, Iswari P. "Literate lives across the digital divide." Computers and Composition. Vol. 23 (2006): 246-257.

Context: Pandey presents a literacy narrative which reflect his home country of Nepal’s political, cultural, and linguistic "milieus" which contributed to his own literacy (to include digital literacy) acquisition. Pandey explains how crucial factors such as social status, dollars, state polity, and opposition initially inhibited this same acquisition.

Summary: Pandey argues that it is important for teachers to consider the "politics of culture" (247) in order to better understand a student’s writing practices, acquired literacies (linguistic and technological). Pandey describes Nepal’s important political history beginning in the early 1900's, when the country was ruled by Rana oligarchs. He intertwines the sensitive political climate into the telling of his own family’s literacy acquisition. His first language was Sanskrit. Pandey provides statistics of 1971 census which reports that his father was one of 23.6% adult male literates out of 11.5 million people. In 1978, he transferred to a public school to learn English. Pandey states that entering public school to learn "this foreign language would lay the foundation for my digital literacy and global citizenship" (249). Heading toward the 80's, Nepal is still facing heavy state control which includes the implementation of a "centralized curriculum" meant to continue a status quo ideology. The opposition included protest literature which was being promoted outside of the classroom. Pandey’s initial digital literacy learning consisted of basic skills such as "running spell checkers; moving, replacing, or deleting words and blocks of text on the screen; and slowly typing up short texts and page-making" (250). The 1990's brings a new democratic movement which requires the need for computer use, but "cultural capital" played a big part in purchasing computers and finding people who could properly operate them. Pandey expresses that digital literacy share similar features of "conventional literacy learning: It is highly contextualized, develops in nonacademic settings and is often reappropriated for divergent uses and like technological literacy, is often misconceived as a set of discrete, functional skills separate from the social contexts and cultures in which they are embedded" (253). This further leads to the idea of "cultural ecology" in which electronic technology gets embedded in "many layers of socio-cultural, economic, and similar aspects of local and global politics" (253). This leads us to Pandey’s important point: as individuals struggle to acquire various literacies taking into account the "milieus" and factors that contribute to this, social and cultural practices affect future literacy acquisition and practice in digital technology.

Evaluation: I think it is a given for any person in the world that the consideration of social, political, and cultural practices will affect one’s acquisition of literacy. Pandey’s experience consists of a dramatic version as his home country ideologies affect much in its people’s lives to include what is learned and how it is learned. Sharing this experience is crucial to understanding how the use of computers provides a country’s opposition to modernity, with many of its inhabitants struggling to overcome the illiteracy which is a result of this opposition. Understanding Pandey’s uses of the computer helps to gain a better understanding of how computers can work for or against us. In addition, Pandey is able to incorporate the sensitive, yet rigid nature of his country’s political structure into a narrative which presents his family’s literacy backgrounds, while still incorporating contributions of well-known scholars such as Deborah Brandt and Cynthia Selfe, into his work.


Loyola Bird/English 538 Progress Report

Question: How does having computers in the classroom help students develop writing skills?

Hawisher, Gail E., and Cynthia L. Selfe. "The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class." College Composition and Communication. Vol. 42 No. 1 (1991): 55-65.

Context: Through Hawisher’s and Selfe’s roles as editors for the journal, Computers and Composition, they decide to study computer based classes to find out why when teachers were asked the questions, "Do you prefer teaching with traditional methods or with computers? Why?", how most teachers don’t stop to consider the negative aspects of using computers in the classroom.

Summary: Hawisher and Selfe argue that teachers must critically examine not only the positive benefits associated with using computers in the classroom, but also address the negatives in order to avoid "rigid authority structures." After receiving thousands of potential submissions on computer use in the classroom for the journal they edit, they became tired of hearing the same old stories of how computers help students and teachers in the classroom. For further study, they examined the use of electronic bulletin boards/conferences. Teacher claims presented focused on how using computers improved writing skills for students. For example, one teacher claimed that first year students (randomly thrown together) for a pilot project in using an electronic conference for writing instruction, brought instructors and students closer together. Students scheduled meetings in the library, came early, stayed late, made plans for the following semester, and exchanged addresses. All of this brought about a closer community in a very large university. More interestingly, another teacher claimed that once people have computer access, status and power/prestige are "communicated neither contextually...nor dynamically..." (57). Thus, these types of people have less influence, allowing group members to participate more freely. Hawisher and Selfe do admit their studies were limited, but felt that their observations concluded that in most cases, using computers in the classroom brought about "sharing" in the classroom, but the effects of this sharing resulted in a more teacher-centered, teacher dominated environment. So, instead of just talking about how computers work for our classrooms, we "must begin to identify the ways in which technology can fail us, by acknowledging high costs of software/hardware, recognizing that computers can "support instruction that is repressive, and "computers can be used to "dampen creativity, writing, intellectual exchanges, rather than to encourage them" (61). Lastly, the authors stress becoming and staying aware of the discrepancies in constructing a "complete image" of how computers can be used positively and negatively.

Evaluation: I think in regard to my own research it was necessary to explore what these authors had to say about the "negatives" associated with computer use and our students. Becoming more aware of these negatives, will help to critically discern what positives will work for our students. I think that this article could have been more extensive, and the authors’ do admit that their studies were limited. I agree. Providing more results and information on this subject would help establish their observations and suggestions.

Shearer, Allan W. "Applying Burke's Dramatic Pentad to Scenarios." Futures. Vol. 36 No. 8 (Oct 2004).

Summary: Constructing future scenarios as part of the decision making process is a common practice in professional and technical situations. Because we already think in narrative terms, looking at scenario construction as storytelling means tapping a resource we already understand and know how to use. But many people, particularly those in the technical fields, are far better at taking in stories than creating them, so Shearer suggests using Burke's pentad as a model for understanding past situations and creating future scenarios. The pentad defines a situation by analyzing five aspects—act, agent, agency, scene and purpose—and analyzes it by comparing these aspects in different ratios.

Evaluation: Like Baake's article, this one explains how thinking and writing narratively can be useful in professional and technical situations. And the addition of the pentad provides a simple, concrete way of applying such thinking. But Burke's pentad is really meant to analyze situations that are already defined—that have already happened or that have been fictionally created—so I'm not sure how effective it would be as a tool for creating future scenarios.

Baake, Ken. "Decision-Making in a Quasi-Rational World: Teaching Technical, Narratological and Rhetorical Discourse in Report Writing (Tutorial)." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol. 50 No. 2 (June 2007).

Summary: Economics and decision science suggest that we base our decisions on a blend of rational, quasi-rational and irrational preferences. So, while technical writing teachers present students with ways of evaluating technical, professional and ethical situations that are systematic, they can also use narrative and myth to show how decision-makers are affected by cultural beliefs and circumstance. This latter strategy illustrates the complexity of decision-making and the ways in which a society's controlling narratives—its myths—act as guiding forces.

Evaluation: Baake is working against a tendency in the technical professions to look at all situations as quantifiable and subject to distillation into tables, graphs and charts, which strikes me as admirable, even necessary. But I wonder if asking students to read such widely varying genres in what is essentially a writing course will be confusing. Also, his method demands that the instructor find technical documents and works of fictions whose subjects match. He gives one or two good suggestions, but leaves it at that.

Updated Summary and handout...

Johnstone, Douglas B. "College at Work: Partnerships and the Rebuilding of American Competence." The Journal of Higher Education 65 (1994): 168-182.

In the article College at Work: Partnership and the Rebuilding of American Competence, Douglas B Johnstone’s focus is on how we can make critical literacy available for high school graduates who are about to enter the workforce. He believes that “our schools are not preparing students to be effective citizens” (170); to combat this, he argues for work towards literacy, and a rebuilding of our educational paradigm through a corporate and college collaboration so that our students and employees can learn necessary skills while both studying and working. To achieve this, Johnstone, as Dean of SUNY’s Empire College collaborated with NY Telephone to give the new employees of NY Telephone a non traditional college education with the hopes of improving critical literacy skills.

Beginning in January of 1991, NY Telephone and Empire College began a case study “aimed at the development of functional workplace competencies” (173) which would enable employees to work towards a college degree from SUNY Empire College while also working for NY Telephone. After recruiting 100 students from NY City schools, as well as twenty recruits from outside of the company, and 30 from within it[1] (173), the case study began. One of the most important aspects of the study was combining working and going to classes, so students often carried a “light academic load—usually four credits” (175). Seminars students took “drew on students’ actual workday experience for such things as essay writing, for practice in oral communication, for study of stress and how to manage it, and for illustrations of cross-cultural issues” (175). There have been many positive results from this case study: students are passing employment tests, are becoming better sales people, and are actually developing hidden talents; moreover, some are enrolling in advanced degrees.

Evaluation: Not only was this an interesting text, and an interesting case study, the most important aspect of this text was that corporations are actually taking steps to help educate their employees, especially employees who may not have been able to obtain a traditional college degree. A limitation of this text is that the case study does happen to include non-traditional learners, and while the case study does offer a look into possibly changes in educational strategy, it does not look at students enrolled in a traditional 2 year or 4 year college. It would be interesting to see the results now, since this study was conducted over 10 years ago (which may well also be another aspect that deems a limitation), and since it continued even after Johnstone published this piece.

Smith M Cecil, Larry Mikulecky, Michael W. Kibby, Mariam Jean Dreher, Janice A. Dole. “RRQ Snippet: What Will Be the Demands of Literacy in the Workplace in the Next Millennium? Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3. (Jul. - Aug. – Sep., 2000). 378-383.

This snippet offers the opinions of five different academics on what the 21^st century will demand from workers. Each of these authors is concerned about literacy in connection to composition studies via the necessity of critical thinking, of good problem solving skills, as well as good analytical skills. By offering a diverse group of opinions, readers are able to glean what may possibly be the more important issues of the millennium, especially in regards to composition and college education. All of the authors are interested in identifying what students will need to learn and what skills they will need in order to perform well in the workforce once they are out of college.

Cecil argues that the demands for the millennium will include technological literacy, effective communication both within the job itself and with clients, as well as “evaluate information for accuracy and validity, apply and produce usable knowledge” (379), and argues that under prepared “persons tend to be poor, of color, immigrants, and those for whom English is a second language” (379), asserting that we need to tend to the needs of these students so as to prepare them for the workforce; for Mikulecky, the millennium will bring about a need for more training in “specialized vocabularies and concepts” (379), and that skill demand will increase for the worker, especially in regard to “top paying” (380) jobs, which she claims will be fewer. Kibby, on the other hand, argues that we will need to become multiliterate so that we can succeed, which “will require accessing numerous knowledge bases” (380). Dreher argues work place demands will require “problem solving” (381), and that “there will be more literacy demands and those demands will be increasingly complex” (381). Finally, Dole emphasizes the expansion of literacy and of critical thinking.

One of the strengths of this article is that it offers 5 concise view points from 5 different academics, and most likely produced much intellectual conversation in response. Reading different view points in one article made the topic rich, and though each response was relatively short, the article offered more than one view point in response to it, and thus showed the subject to be diverse as well as complex. Of course, the shortness of each article could be cited as a shortcoming, and there is the issue that not each one of the snippets offers thoughts on the very same subject. Yet reading it was certainly invaluable as it has now helped me to consider the topic from different angles that I had not previously considered.

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[1] It is interesting and important to note that, “Ninety-two percent of the new employees came from minority groups – including 69% African American, 20 % Hispanic, and 3% Asian” (Johnsotne 173).

Atonement and update...

Greetings, all. I want to apologize for the egregious typographical errors that are on my handout from the other day: I did not print out the edited version, and am mortified that I gave you what I did. I would also further like to apologize for what I think was a poor presentation--
and as Wanda expressed a desire to know about the study Johnstone wrote about more, I am going to blog a much better summary later this evening.

For now, I am going to post up a bibliography in case anyone is interested in reading any of the other articles I came across, though I am adding an extra (from Wanda). They may prove to be interesting articles; either way, enjoy.

Karin also sent me an article as well, but I have not had a chance to read it yet; however, I will include circulate it via email.

More later--
J

Works Cited & Bibliography

Cushman, Ellen. “Sustainable Service Learning Programs.” College Composition and
Communication, Vol. 54, No. 1. (Sep., 2002). 40-65.

Davies, Chris, and Maria Birbili. "What Do People Need to Know About Writing in Order to
Write in Their Jobs?" British Journal of Educational Studies 48 (2000): 429-445.

Darvin, Jacqueline. “Beyond Filling out Forms: A More Powerful Version of Workplace
Literacy.” The English Journal, Vol. 91, No. 2. (Nov., 2001). 35-40.

Duffy, John. “Letters from the Fair City: A Rhetorical Conception of Literacy.” College
Composition and Communication, Vol. 56, No. 2. (Dec., 2004). 223-250.

Hart, Peter D. "How Should Colleges Assess and Inprove Student Learning." AACU. 09 Jan. 2008. 01 Apr. 2008
.

Hughes, Christina. “Developing Conceptual Literacy in Lifelong Learning Research: A Case of
Responsibility?” British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 27, No. 5. (Dec., 2001).
601-614.

Johnstone, Douglas B. "College At Work: Partnerships and the Rebuilding of American
Competence." The Journal of Higher Education 65 (1994): 168-182.

Lankshear, Colin, and Peter O'connor. "Response to "Adult Literacy: the Next Generation'" Educational Researcher 28 (1999): 30-36.

Purcell-Gates, Victoria, Sophie C. Degener, Erik Jacobson, Marta Soler. “Impact of Authentic Adult Literacy Instruction on Adult Literacy Practices.” Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1. (Jan. - Feb. - Mar., 2002). 70-92.

Robbins, Bruce. “Weaving Workplace Writing into the English Classroom.” The English
Journal, Vol. 91, No. 2. (Nov., 2001). 41-45.

Smith M Cecil, Larry Mikulecky, Michael W. Kibby, Mariam Jean Dreher, Janice A. Dole. “RRQ Snippet: What Will Be the Demands of Literacy in the Workplace in the Next
Millennium? Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3. (Jul. - Aug. – Sep., 2000)
378-383.

“When Timing Isn’t Everything: Resisting the Use of Timed Tests to Assess Writing Ability”

Principe, Ann Del and Janine Graziano-King.  Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Vol 35, No 3 (March 2008), pp. 297-311.

This article focuses on a study comparing five elements of a timed writing assignment contrasted with essays available for revision each three weeks and turned in as part of a portfolio at the term's end.  The five traits tracked were organization, focus, elaboration, evidence, and mechanics.  Both authors reviewed the essays and scored them according to a rubric.  Disparity of less than one interval was determined by the mean while disparity of more than one point was negotiated between both authors until they reached consensus.  Students did score higher on the workshop-based pieces than the timed essays and the authors purport than an environment allowing revision is a more accurate reflection of the classroom experience.  Furthermore, it is a more accurate judge of how effective classroom teaching strategies are because students have the ability to incorporate newly acquired data into the revisions.  

The strength of the article lies in the attempt to offer quantitative date for interpretation that could indicate concise areas most benefiting from specified approaches.  That the grading is inherently subjective complicates the ability to classify the study as objective.  Also, the authors evaluated the student work and inherent bias could exist as they may skew toward an anticipated outcome.  Perhaps the study would benefit from an outside evaluator of the assignments to curb bias.

Again, this article reinforced the concept of portfolio as a process to inform writing.  Students in high school cannot be assumed to have the desire to become good writers.  Often students write as a requirement to the class or take a class, such as creative writing, with the anticipation that it is easier.  A concern stemming from the portfolio is that this assumption is inherent.  While students will benefit from the process, how to keep students engaged and committed to their own development remains critical to success.  A goal of writing is to further critical thinking and the ability to self assess and analyze.  

"Toward a New Discourse of Assessment for the College Writing Classroom."

Brian Huot.  College English, Vol 65, No2 (November, 2002), pp. 163-180.

Huot is noted as a professor and director of composition at the University of Louisville.  In this article he focuses on how assessment reflects or fails to reflect instructor philosophy.  He questions whether assessment can become a process of learning rather than a summative act.  He challenges that if grading serves only as distraction, or worse as a destructive force, students can be better served.  He looks at the function of portfolios in composition instruction and as a tool for evaluation.  The gap between teacher and student analysis is also brought into play with the suggestion that a portfolio may prompt students reflection in a more meaningful way.

If evaluation is the reflection of classroom values, then does the instructor's evaluative process reinforce or undermine intended modes of learning?  If reflection cuts short the learning process, then it is certainly destructive.  Huot does not explain precisely how "assessment is detrimental to the teaching and learning of writing" (174).  Huot's concept of informative assessment leads directly to portfolio and process learning.

My original focus was to identify how the writing process breaks down through ineffective assessment.  As students are rewarded for diligence they may be encourages at the price of content mastery.  Looking for articles indicating how to evaluate in a productive and informative manner, as Huot discusses, I found a recurring theme of portfolio.  This is shifting my focus to look more directly at how to create student ownership of the process of writing and also how to shift student perception of writing as product to writing as process.  My next step is to evaluate how to balance assessment with a process empowering students, rather than discouraging or defeating them.  

Student Engagement with Writing: Two Sources

Source #1: Ira Shor in Conversation with Paolo Freire
Shor, Ira; Freire, Paolo. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education. Bergin & Garvey Paperback. 1986.

Context: Shor and Freire’s conversations do not focus solely on writing, but rather address teaching as a whole in its potential to liberate individuals. Their dialogues address issues about types of students, ways of teaching, and global issues in teaching; in Chapter 5 specifically, though, they address “first-world” students and ask whether these students too need liberation. Shor is notable in composition studies, so in some ways takes Freire’s work and applies it towards the work we do specifically.

Summary (pages 124 – 137 only): The chapter addresses students in the “first world,” asking whether they, like “third world” students, need to be liberated. The authors’ implicit answer is “yes.” The excerpt I’m using discusses a few ways student alienation can manifest itself, including general passivity (a “Culture of Silence”), irritated aggression (a “Culture of Sabotage”), and development of low expectations towards school. Shor and Freire discuss differences between “reading the words” and “reading the world.” This speaks to the perceived or real divorce between the topics of schoolwork and the real stuff going on in the world, also described by Shor as “school-words versus reality.” This separation, too, has an effect on student engagement or passivity.

Evaluation: For my purposes, the selection is useful because it points out the clear consequence of taking relevance out of schoolwork: removed or disengaged students. It also provides another way for me to discuss the passivity that can grow out of unproductive labor – labor that’s meaningless to the individual, that takes them farther from their “essence,” or that becomes strictly a commodity of exchange (traded for money or for grades, in this case). I found one aspect of the text limiting: aggressive and “sabotaging” students were discussed mainly as a problem. I didn’t feel like the authors recognized all of the potential engagement that can be brought out of active anger or conflict – though they did attempt ways at dealing with the issue in the classroom. At any rate, I felt this was a missed opportunity.


Source #2: Sean Hawthorne on Barriers to Engagement with Writing

Hawthorne, Sean. “Students’ beliefs about barriers to engagement with writing in secondary school English: A focus group study.” Australian Journal of Language & Literacy. 31.1 (2008): 30 – 42.

Context: Hawthorne discusses students’ approach to writing not only in terms of the writing process, but by considering the literature on student “motivation.” He cites studies on motivation, and refers to students’ falling abilities in writing and increasing dislike of writing (often across Australia and New Zealand); he hopes to address these issues by discovering what aspects of writing make writing assignments engaging or not engaging.

Summary: Hawthorne’s study concerned secondary students divided into two general groups: the “engaged” writing students and the “reluctant” ones. In focus groups, the students discussed six potential reasons for disengagement; the dominant factor was a lack of interest or perceived (or real) relevance in the writing topic, and it was shared across groups. Students also reported the importance of “environmental” factors, including computer vs. paper, home vs. school environments, and, notably, the extent to which writing becomes public in a classroom. Overall, students preferred classrooms in which their writing could be shared with other students.

Evaluation: For my purposes, the selection is useful because it helps me narrow the theoretical perspective I’m coming from towards practical classroom decisions. The study reports specific changes in assignments and assignment contexts that can contribute to student engagement or alienation. For other 538 students, limitations of the piece might include its small sample size (28 students), the age of the students (10th grade), and the country of origin (Australia). I was also concerned that as the study used focus groups rather than surveys – a decision with many strengths, of course – student answers might be swayed or colored by the answers they’d already heard from their peers.

Some Important Works in Composition Theory, Part 1

Some Important Works in Composition Theory
A nowhere near exhaustive list in no particular order


Lev Vygotsky. Thought and Language. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1962

Born in 1896, Vygotsky was a major figure in Soviet-era psychology. Thought and Language¸ first published in 1934 after Vygotsky’s death, presents a comprehensive theory of intellectual development as a consequent of social interaction through language.

Dense and deeply theoretical, this book is not for the faint of heart. It provides a wealth of tools for thinking about how people learn to form and communicate concepts. If you're way into cognitive or developmental psychology, contrast with Piaget.



James Moffett. Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1968.

Working from a structural perspective, Moffett elaborates a theoretical framework that orders different kinds of discourse in terms of their increasing levels of abstraction and the relations among speaker, hearer, and subject. On this basis, Moffett proposes a curriculum that, in his view, corresponds to the natural order of discursive development in children.

Moffett does lots of theoretical heavy lifting to arrive at a discourse taxonomy not very much different from many others, but he provides some food for thought on the question of what is a reasonable order in which to teach language skills. And I particularly like the part of his last chapter titled, “The Case Against Textbooks.”


Ann E. Berthoff The Making of Meaning Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook 1981.

Ann E. Berthoff, who did her graduate work with I. A. Richards, urges composition teachers to think philosophically about their work rather than merely swap recipes for classroom practices. This collection of her lectures and articles (she calls them casual harangues and serious polemics) argues that “if we are to teach writing as a process of making meaning, we will need a philosophy of language that can account for meaning . . . as a plant that has grown” (v). Berthoff engages the work of Tolstory, Vygotsky, Freire, William James, C.S. Peirce in search of ideas to think with.

Berthoff is deliberately arcane and thoroughly cranky. Read “Composing is Forming” and “Reclaiming the Imagination.”




Mike Rose. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educational Underclass. New York: Penguin. 1989.
Rose, a faculty member at UCLA, writes about his work with students deemed “remedial” of “underprepared” in the context of his own life experience, which included a period of being deemed in need of remediation. Makes you think about how we mark of turf and boundaries in the world of schools, and what it really means to be literate.

While we’re on the subject of Mike Rose, see also his Possible Lives, which chronicles visits to a wide range of classrooms, with different problems and different approaches, over a period of years. Read about people working on education in Los Angeles and Calexico; in Mississippi and Montana, at Berea College and the University of Arizona. Get some hope for it.

And I’ve mentioned this article before, also by Rose, also about remediation:
“The Language of Exclusion: Writing Instruction at the University.” College English 47: 4 (April 1885). Pp. 341-359



Hephzibah Roskelly and Kate Ronald, Reason to Believe. SUNY Press. 1998
“How does the history of thinking about education and learning and spiritual understanding in this country . . . connect to the work of teachers now?” Roskelly and Ronald explore how American philosophical pragmatism, as expounded by William James and John Dewey, among others, can work together with the rhetoric of American romanticism (Emerson, Thoreau) to provide a usable framework for teaching writing in the 21st century. Roskelly, a protégé of Ann Berthoff, is also co-author of An Unquiet Pedagogy, an approach to teaching geared to high school students and based in the work of Paulo Freire.

Technical Communication Texts

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, and Michael K. Gilbertson. Signs, Genres and Community in Technical Communication. Amityville: Baywood, 1992.

Three part theory of technical communication, beginning with semiotics, then genre studies, then community studies. The main argument of the communities section of the book is that technical communication is best understood, and best managed, as people in identifiable groups creating documents together for consumption by other groups. This provides a good model for a writing classroom because it is rooted in actual business practices that students will certainly encounter once out of school. But, because the text is focused on professional practices of technical communication, linking it to pedagogy may be difficult.

Miller, Carolyn R. "What's Practical about Technical Writing?" Technical Writing: Theory and Practice. Bertie E. Fearing and W. Keats Sparrow, Eds. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1989.

Miller suggests that, though scholars denigrate the action-centered "bread-and-butter" writing that business relies on, they allow businesses to define what they teach in the classroom while exerting little influence over the practices of the businesses where their students will work. Her definition of practicality provides a good starting point for questioning the aims of the writing class, but her conclusion that rhetoric be understood and taught as a mode of conduct, rather than production, might be a tough sell in a core writing classroom of business and engineering majors.