Foundational Knowledge/Beliefs

A recent discussion on the WPA-L Listserv about the foundational beliefs of rhetoric has led me to mull over where I fall on that spectrum.

I strongly resist teaching writing as anything that resembles a mechanical formula that involves simply inputting a few words to receive some form of output. I have (and will probably do so again when the situation warrants it) taught some useful structures to guide novice writers. This includes the five-paragraph essay and formal argument structure as well as formal research article structure. I see these formulas as useful stepping stones or frameworks to negotiate specific writing challenges for specific kinds of writers. If they are taught as tools that have benefits and drawbacks then I do not believe I am betraying my rhetorical training. I do believe quite strongly that teaching such formulas as the beginning and end of writing training is wrong and that using such formulas does not make anyone a writer. Writers can, and do, use formulas but they have other tools on their belt to wield as necessary and have the knowledge to choose the correct tool for the job. Sometimes the job calls for a simple hammer so why choose a more precision tool?

In essence, I hold these truths to be self-evident – or at least agreed upon by those who have studied and researched rhetoric and writing:

Writing is a process not a formula. Each writer undergoes multiple processes depending on the context and goal. Writer’s processes change and develop as they grow as writers. Learning to be a writer is a process as well. My job as a writing teacher is to help people become writers. This means helping them develop the confidence and agency as well as the knowledge to select the right tool for the job at hand. My current pedagogical choices focus on those areas but my classes also include teaching certain tools such as contextual and genre awareness.

Writing is contextually situated. Writing is a social activity in that it is written to make something happen whether that something is a thought or an action. Yes, writing shares information but it is more than that. It changes hearts and minds and deeds. Yes, writing can be art, but I hold that art is also meant to invoke some thought or emotion or change. However, effective writing must conform or fit comfortably within the context and meet the expectations of those expected to read it. This is deeper and more complicated than “audience awareness” and must involve not only learning about a community but investigating its boundaries and history. Genres change dependent on the context as each community adapts its own unique genres to serve its own unique purposes. This is a foundational belief of our field and essential knowledge that must be understood before one can become a writer.

It is hard to disentangle composition and rhetoric . Cutting through the Gordian Knot is an even greater challenge when you add in my other field—technical communication. I see both composition and technical communication as falling under the umbrella of rhetoric—the study of human communication—with composition falling more toward the learning to write end of the spectrum (which often falls during education) and technical communication embracing writing that works (not to be confused with writing at work) in life as well as work. I see technical communication as knowledge work that is conducted by communicators. I believe that my work in the field of technical communication can feed my work as a compositionist and vice versa.

What is Community?

I am interested in the idea of “community” from two related but different angles. Not a straight-forward social or geographical community, but a network, such as a community of practice or learning community. This idea of community as a place to grow and learn interests me as a technical communicator and as an educator.

As a technical communicator I am interested in the development of a professional learning community and organization. The project I am embarking on will involve the rhetorical analysis of a community’s documentation (annual reports in particular) to study the community’s transformation from an organization in crisis to a thriving community.

As a teacher, I am interested in the impact of a learning community on the transformation to writer (the focus of my dissertation and classroom research). I have found evidence in some populations that participation in a learning community decreases writing apprehension and increases evidence of self-regulating activity such as agency and self-efficacy. I intend to continue studying the impact of community on writing development and transformation.

The challenge is that the definition of “community” has evolved over time and it is necessary to re-evaluate what defines or makes a community. I am currently conducting a literature review to better understand how “community” is defined in the fields of technical communication and writing studies.

Zucchermaglio & Talamo (2003) argue that because writing is a social activity a writer is always a member of a community. They point out that each community develops specific communicative practices, both oral and written. These practices are affected by the development of the main dimensions that characterize a group as a community of practice: mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire.

Ornatowski and Bekins (2004) agree that “community underpins rhetorical action” but ask what is a “realistic” idea of community today. Communication and transportation innovations have challenged and changed previous notions of community sometimes beyond all recognition. The “diverse contexts” that have resulted from these changes make pinning down a definition of community difficult at best.

Hampton & Wellman (2003) note that the idea of “community” has both persevered and changed over time and is rarely based on local neighboring, densely-knit solidarities, organized groups, or public spaces. They observe that communities consist of far-flung kinship, workplace, friendship, interest groups, and neighborhood ties that concatenate to form networks providing sociability, aid, support, and social control. Communities are usually not groups, but social networks that are sparsely-knit, loosely-bounded and far-flung.

Network Weaving (2011) defines a “community” as a network of people who share things in common. Others are more specific about those “things” the members of a community share. For example, Grossman et al (2001) and Rovai (2002) define a community as a group of people who share social interdependence, participation in discussion and decision making, and practices that both define the community and are nurtured by it. Grossman and Rovai also agree that the most essential elements of community include a sense of connection and trust, task-driven interactivity, shared interests, meaningful relationships, and overlapping histories among members.

Ornatowski and Bekins (2004) point out that the concept of “community” is typically used as a “god-term” in the sense coined by Kenneth Burke: reified, ubiquitous, always positive, and ultimately unexamined. They question the idea of “shared beliefs and values” that is often noted as a characteristic of (or as the very foundation of) community when any conceptualization of community today must grapple with…the context of diversity and value pluralism. They call for research and theory concerning the complex relationships between rhetorical actions and their impact on communities.

Reflections on the dissertation process

I just completed the final draft of my dissertation and as a teacher who promotes reflection, I should practice what I preach for my own benefit and hopefully others as well. While I will never write another dissertation, it is likely that long-term research projects and writing books based on those projects is in my academic future. I know that a dissertation is not a book and vice versa but enough parallels exist that I should record the lessons I learned from this experience.

Writing a dissertation is exciting and exhilarating and fun – at times. There are also times when it is hard physical and mental labor that leaves you drained and twitchy. Writing a dissertation is a mixture of discovery and drudgery. Even though I received a great deal of advice, I was still unprepared for the process. I don’t know that you can ever be truly prepared. You can receive training and preparation and advice, but in the end you need to get your head in a certain place and no one can control that except you. But enough of the zen and more of the practical.

If I had to sum up the most important lesson that I wish I understood going in one word that would be: recursive. I was told repeatedly that a dissertation is a recursive document but until I understood that writing the dissertation is also recursive I still struggled. It is not a linear experience but rather a tightening spiral with your final dissertation message as the epicenter. I am sure that if I had realized this sooner in my process then the writing and revision of my dissertation would have been much less painful. Think of preparing your reading list and preproposal and taking your qualifying exams as a large loop that then gradually loops inward as you plan your research and craft your proposal. The collection and analysis of your data creates another inward loop until finally you reach the central point, lesson, or finding of your work – your take-away message. After you have worked through your results and analysis and worked out that take-away it is much easier to go back and work through the other chapters. Maybe doing so would save you some of the wheel-spinning and revision that I had to do by thinking too linear.

A more practical (rather than conceptual) piece of advice that I cannot stress enough (and a primary reason I was able to get through this process in a timely fashion) is that timing is everything. Give yourself time. Dissertation writing, in my experience, requires large chunks of prime time, but of course, mileage may vary according to the driver. I needed large chunks of time to read-think-process-write. During course work I frequently had large projects/papers but nothing on this scale and I learned early on that the work habits and practices that moved me through course work would not work for dissertation work. Writing a dissertation is different from writing a paper or article. In my opinion it is better to carve out one or two large time blocks a week than five smaller time blocks a week because I found that in small time block it took me too long to get to the place I needed to get (by reading, thinking etc.) to be productive. Mileage may vary for those who have chunks of time during the day to productively think (runners, for example, or commuters) without distraction, but as family and work demands fill all my waking hours the only time I could really focus was during the dedicated blocks of dissertation time. I aimed for three or four large time blocks a week. Sometimes I got them and some weeks I couldn’t. Fortunately, my family was supportive of this endeavor and I was able to adjust my work schedule to accommodate dissertation time. Finally, as I mentioned early on you should strive for locating those chunks of time for your prime time. When are you most alert, focused, and at your best (mentally and physically)? For me this is morning. As I teach primarily online (at least that is what I requested during this process) I was able to perform most of my teaching functions in the afternoon and evening and could then dedicate my mornings to dissertation work.

I’d love to hear about others’ experiences to see if their recommendations and advice compare or differ.

Fostering Agency and Writing Self-Efficacy: The Making of a Writer

Note: This is the most current version of my dissertation abstract. Dissertation successfully defended May 25.

Writing is an essential professional skill as well as important life skill. The goal of writing instruction is to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to successfully meet future writing challenges. However, despite years of writing instruction, many writers struggle to transfer skills and knowledge from one context to another. One reason for this struggle is that even after years of instruction most people are highly apprehensive about writing and do not consider themselves writers. In order to overcome the problem of transfer, we must improve our understanding about writing apprehension and the role it plays in the transformation to writer. Writing research and theory has brought us to the current understanding that writing is a set of complex skills that is contextually situated and socially influenced, and yet most writing instruction focuses on general, basic skills. As a result, instruction does little to lessen writing apprehension and foster the transformation to writer. This mixed methods study focused on the transformation into writers of 17 teachers attending a National Writing Project (NWP) Summer Institute and addressed the impact of immersion in this learning community on writing apprehension. This research spanned a year and studied the writing apprehension of the participants before, during, and after their transformation by focusing on the role that agency and self-efficacy played in the transformation to writer.

NWP’s mission is to improve the teaching of writing, and central to that goal is the belief that teachers who write are better writing teachers. This makes the transformation of teacher into writer the primary purpose of the NWP Summer Institute. The Summer Institute is organized as a learning community focused on professional development, research, and leadership as well as writing. Most of the 17 women involved in this learning community experienced a decrease in writing apprehension while undergoing the transformation to writer and maintained that confidence level during the following year. The writers’ reflection journals reveal that as apprehension decreases evidence of self-regulating activity, such as goal setting and metawriting, increases as does agency and self-efficacy. These findings contribute to our understanding of the transformation to writer and how this transformation connects with writing apprehension as well as how this transformation can be fostered in a learning community which attends to agency and writing self-efficacy.

Fostering Agency and Writing Self-Efficacy: The Making of a Writer

Rhetoric, the practice and study of human communication, has existed for millennia and is one of the oldest academic subjects. The study of writing is one of the most universally required subjects from kindergarten through college. Writing research and theory has brought us to the current understanding that writing is a complex set of skills that is contextually situated and socially influenced. Extensive theory and research has focused on the acquisition and teaching of these skills and yet there is much we do not know about the transformation to writer. We do know that writing apprehension hinders this transformation and writing self-efficacy helps it. This mixed methods study focused on the transformation of 17 teachers attending a National Writing Project Summer Institute into writers and addressed the following questions. First, what is the impact of immersion on writing apprehension. Second, how does immersion influence the sources of writing self-efficacy which include mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasions, and physical/emotional state. Third, what other aspects of immersion influence writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy. This study spanned more than a year and includes recording the writing apprehension of the participants before, during, and after their transformation and studying writing reflection journals kept by the participants for the sources of writing self-efficacy and other aspects of writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy.

NWP’s mission is to improve the teaching of writing and central to that goal is the belief that teachers who write are better writing teachers. This makes the transformation of teacher into writer the primary purpose of the NWP Summer Institute. The majority of the teachers immersed in the Summer Institute this research addresses experienced a long-term decrease in writing apprehension. Most significantly, writing apprehension levels remained stable during the year following the Summer Institute. While study of the participants’ references to the sources of writing self-efficacy indicated that mastery experience and their physical/emotional state were the strongest influences, this information did not offer insight into the question of why some participants experienced a greater decrease in writing apprehension than others. Instead, it was participants’ references to goal-setting and discussion of plans to achieve those goals that differentiated between the two groups. My research contributes to our understanding of the process of becoming a writer and the roles of agency and writing self-efficacy in that transformation.

References Handout

PowerPoint Slides

An argument for FYC WAW

We have an institutional imperative to teach for transfer and I believe a moral obligation as well. Most of our students want to become better writers because they know it will help them in future classes and in their career. However, we must pay attention to what our own experience and the research of our field tells us – teaching and requiring the “mutt genres” of academic writing do not transfer. What does transfer? Understanding of how writing works, what shapes genres, and how to understand what drives a particular discourse community. We can teach those things in our classrooms, but until our students really begin to think and reflect on how those elements affect their writing then they won’t transfer either.

That is why we must spend more time treating our students as writers and focus their attention on their own writing rather than reading and writing about topics separate from the focus of a writing class. Reading in other subject areas is a needless distraction and certainly writing about other subjects should not be the focus of a writing classroom. I do not mean that all the reading and writing that takes place in a writing classroom should be a close inspection of their own navels. There is so much worthwhile and compelling research in our field, and most of it is extremely accessible for college students, it begs the question why so many writing students are forced to look outside the field of writing studies for the subject of their reading, writing, and research. If we want them to learn how to be writers then why are they not studying writing?

In the June 2007 issue of College Composition and Communication, Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle made a compelling argument for teaching first-year composition as an introduction to writing studies. They argue that there is no such thing as a “unified academic discourse” and that writing is not a set of basic, fundamental skills which can be learned once and then applied forever after. Writing is a complex activity dependent on context and until we teach our students this fact and introduce them to ways of making sense of these complexities in their infinite variety of contexts then we are not adequately preparing our students to write outside our classrooms.

Every community, both inside and outside academia, uses writing in specialized ways. Even if you restrict your focus to academic writing Downs and Wardle point out that using such an umbrella term as “academic writing” is “dangerously misleading.” Downs and Wardle argue that while transfer may happen (by good luck more often than not) far transfer is extremely difficult and not likely to be fostered by current incarnations of FYC. They then go on to argue for a very specific and new incarnation of FYC which focuses on writing as the subject of student reading, writing, and research in order to teach student writers how writing works and how it is used.

While many within the field have viewed the proposal of writing about writing as some radical form of pedagogy created from whole cloth by Downs and Wardle, in fact their proposal is the most recent in a line of other respected theorists and writing researchers and is well supported by commonly-accepted and research-supported theories of how people learn to write. David Russell’s (1995) “Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction”; Anne Beaufort’s (2007) College Writing and Beyond; and David Smit’s (2004) The End of Composition Studies all make arguments for teaching FYC as a course for learning how to understand and think about writing. While details vary I believe the theory and spirit are the same.

I have joined the Writing-About-Writing movement instigated by Downs and Wardle because of the many benefits I see for my students. As Barbara Bird points out in her 2008 CCC Interchanges response. Reading academic articles rather than the typical FYC reader not only demands more of the FYC student but also provides ready examples of how research and theory are shared and debated among scholars. We are not only telling them that writing and research are a conversation in academia but we are showing them – and by fostering the type of writing and research suggested by Downs and Wardle we are helping them find a way to enter that conversation.

Reading Workshop Still A WIP

For the past two semesters I have struggled with the implementation of a reading workshop for my online writing classes. My institution requires the use of a reader and my writing-about-writing approach also necessitates some reading, but I was resistant to using the old model of reading discussion that I once used. I simply didn't want to devote so much of our semester to reading and, while I consider reading important, I did want to use it primarily as fodder for our writing rather than a large focus of the class.

So I came up with a two-pronged approach to incorporate reading that is my own version of a Reading Workshop. The first part of the workshop is centered around building a class annotated bibliography of our reading lists with each student making three contributions to the annotated bibliography and then reviewing the contributions of other students. We build the class annotated bibliography on our class blog and I like the option of using labels on the individual AB entries so students are able to find readings that connect with their interests. The student contributions include one selection from the book we are required to use by our department and one selection from a list of online readings that I have generated and one peer-reviewed journal article that they locate and then submit for my approval. After we have completed the class AB, I then have students develop discussion questions that connect to their reading and then we hold class discussions using those questions.

I like many things about this assignment. I have always liked including some version of an annotated bibliography assignment in my classes as I think it is an useful skill for students to have and can scaffold their use of citations and summaries. I also like the fact that by cooperating in this way the students can cover a large number of readings in a relatively short amount of time and assemble the AB entries in an usable format that can serve as a resource for future assignments. I also like giving students some choice so they can pick readings to work with that either interest them or serve their writing in some way.

What I don't like is mostly about logistics. Giving students a choice means that there is a lot of back and forth with me and it is a time-consuming nightmare for a few weeks. I need to find a better way to do this for the fall semester. One solution is to push the assignment further into the semester by a week or two at the least. One of the drawbacks of teaching a general education class online is that there is a lot of fluidity to the rosters during the first week or two of classes. Maybe pushing the assignment past the worst of this will make it logistically easier to manage. I think I also need to break the assignment up into smaller bite-sized chunks. Apparently I overwhelmed students with too much information this semester. I also plan to stretch out the time that we work on this assignment. Last semester I had it stretch all the way to midterm but this semester I thought I could get it out of the way sooner. I think the midterm method is better. I think compressing the time was one of the contributors to my logistical nightmare. Honestly the assignment is not so burdensome that students shouldn't be able to finish it in the time I've allotted but clearly their perception is different.

And so my Reading Workshop is still a work-in-progress but hopefully next semester I will have it down pat! Stay tuned...