Wallace and Ewald - Mutuality

 

Wallace, David L. and Helen Rothschild Ewald. “Toward Mutuality in the Classroom: Classroom

Speech Genres, Course Architecture, and Interpretive Agency.” Mutuality in the Rhetoric

and Composition Classroom. Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale, IL. 2000. Print.

Wallace and Ewald begin from the standpoint that it is common to underestimate the power of classroom language to both construct and reflect knowledge as well as the social roles of the classroom (2). They problematize the mode of discussion in which a teacher poses questions seeking “right” answers and mediates discussion by affirming correct statements, arguing that this style brings “together an ideological stance in which teachers control knowledge with a discourse strategy that attempts to reduce” (8)—and not expand—possibilities. The downside to this approach is that it “focuses instruction on ‘correct’ answers and on mastering received ways of thinking and knowing. Knowledge making becomes a matter … of assimilating the constructions of others” (9). As a counterbalance to this dynamic, Wallace and Ewald argue for mutuality, both in a class’ discourse and in its architectural design.

By architecture, Wallace and Ewald mean the management of assignments as well as of class activities. Course architecture that seeks mutuality requires ongoing negotiation between procedures and reconstructions of knowledge subsequently worked out in specific classroom settings. In other words, Wallace and Ewald advocate that teachers share authority over the basic structure of a course and the assignments and daily activities that make it up. The three issues that such an effort bring up are (1) shifting student/teacher roles, in which teachers relinquish a degree of control and students assume it, (2) recognition that both students and teachers will have a range of idiosyncratic responses to shifting roles, and (3) disagreement and resistance must be expected not only because of the destabilizing nature of the effort, but because such pedagogy encourages expression of different perspectives in the first place, and is more conducive to disagreement and conflict than top-down management models are. But it is essential to remember that responding to conflict is, in a classroom geared toward mutuality, not only the teacher’s responsibility, but also the students’.

Concretely, Wallace and Ewald suggest mutuality be enacted in the following categories: use of classtime (how much time devoted to teacher-led discussion? to peer review? to student presentations?); textbooks and reading assignments; kinds and topics of writing assignments; and grading criteria.

Conversation - Writing Poetry in a Composition Class

 

            Raymond was telling me about the ethnographic poems that his students are going to have to write soon for the methods in- / introduction to- ethnography class he’s teaching this semester, and I thought ethnography poems sounded intriguing, but in continuing the conversation I discovered that Raymond has had his composition students write poetry as well—and that he’s done this every time he’s taught comp. Because I am working on this blog, his mention of poetry in composition raised the stakes of the conversation for me (albeit imperceptibly to him, I hope). Why does Raymond have students write poetry in comp? When in the semester do they compose poetry? What prompting or guidelines does he supply? How does he introduce this project, and how extensive a project is it? Here’s the upshot.

            Raymond emphasized that we as instructors never know which of our students are fantastic poets. He was less oriented toward making the case that composition should teach poetry than he was toward underscoring the hiddenness of talent. For Raymond, the fact that he doesn’t ever know which students are going to produce knock-out poems is reason enough to prod them into it. I’m not sure this reasoning suffices—should I give my comp students the opportunity to butcher a moose? So that unknown meatcutter extraordinaires will discover themselves?—but Raymond’s idea here is connected to a basic pedagogical perspective of his, too, which is that research accumulates into knowledge that has an emotional dimension.

In practice, Raymond has assigned introductory poems at the start of the semester, the form of which are already set out (line beginnings/topics, etc.). But it gets more involved with artistry later in the semester: part of his students’ research papers involve a poetic component, partly to revitalize their investment in their topics, and partly to give life to an aspect of their developing knowledge that might not find expression in academic writing. To prep for this, Raymond assigns his students an article by Art Young, “Writing Across and Against the Curriculum.” He then gives no guidelines regarding length or form (although when I pressed him on this he said that yes, free verse is what he exposes them to and expects them to produce, but also that he emphasizes to students that “the form the poem wants to be is the form that [he] want[s] it to take”). Raymond has found further guidelines to be unnecessary: students produce “serious poems” he says, “consistently.” They also have to read their poetry in front of the class, about which Raymond is all smiles—many students slam, or adopt a performance element in some respect, and the class is always stunned by a few of the poems, as well as by which of their classmates produced the truly moving pieces.

Clinton - Surrealist Games and Knowledge Problems

 

Clinton, Alan Ramón. “Writing is Against Discipline: Three Courses.” Writing Against the

Curriculum: Anti-Disciplinarity in the Writing and Cultural Studies Classroom. Ed. Randi

Gray Kristensen and Ryan Claycomb. Lexington Books: Lanham, Maryland. 2010. Print.

The basic guiding principle of Clinton’s classes is that it is impossible to teach to the composition classroom’s range of majors and disciplines. The argument he makes to his class on the first day is that writing their way out of their disciplines is valuable because this is how one moves beyond repetition to the creation of knowledge. Students write not about topics, but about a “knowledge problem” of interest to them in their fields (this can be as simple as an unanswered question), and they approach this problem using the metaphors and an essential text of another discipline. Students are thus “encouraged to dip into a text that looks interesting to them and make what they can of it, to collide with it (montage) or rip an idea from its original context (collage)” (Clinton 77). Some of the questions asked in this paper assignment are, “how would [this] discipline approach your problem or, for that matter, ‘change the subject’? ” (Clinton 76). Much of Clinton’s preparation for this assignment involves using Surrealist games. His motivation here is that innovation is very often the result of playfulness. Accordingly, Clinton provides us with his adaptations of three of Alastair Brotchie’s Surrealist games: “to what are mutual attractions due?,” “Analogy Cards,” and “One into Another.”

While Clinton uses these games in his Advanced Writing in the Arts and Sciences course, I wonder if a similarly playful approach might be productive in a composition classroom. One of the primary frustrations I have toward the student body I interact with is their (seemingly) collective apathy. Although the exceptions are delightful, overall it is difficult for me to adopt a compassionate stance toward boredom. Perhaps a mindfully-incorporated surrealist game could be used in my class as a way of beginning to bust open assumptions and prejudices—the students’ and the texts’. I am thinking in these terms partly because many of my students don’t yet have majors, and are not very familiar with the research and inquiry norms of fields they have only just chosen. Ultimately, I’m interested in scaling down Clinton’s frame: e.g. instead of requiring students to identify and tackle a knowledge problem from within their own fields (which they may or may not have even chosen), perhaps the notion of a knowledge problem could be brought to bear on an individual reading. My idea here is that the basic conceptual relationship to things encountered in the world has the potential to translate into a critical and inventive stance in other areas as well.

Revision: Fostering Invasive Practices

Pickering, Kristen Walker. “Revising for Activity Purposes: Improving Document Design for

Reader-Oriented Activities.” Writing the Visual: A Practical Guide for Teachers of

Composition and Communication. Ed. Carol David and Anne R. Richards. Parlor Press

LLC: Lafayette, Indiana. 2008. Print.

This article takes activity theory as the foundation of graphic and/or visual examination. The document revision assignment focuses on improving student documents that either do not manage to incorporate both text and graphics or that do so ineffectively. The assignment Pickering outlines is that students must find a public document and revise its images and text. It may be a document that is already effective in general, but that can be revised to address another audience more effectively. Several things are emphasized to the students as they tackle this assignment: first, they are encouraged to analyze readers’ needs. Cultural knowledge is thus essential—the context of likely reading constitutes the matrix, here. From Pickering’s perspective, students don’t need to be trained in ethnographic research in order to understand the context of a particular readership; they do, however, need to inquire and observe enough to understand how to communicate effectively within that context. What I like best about this assignment is that it offers students the freedom to experiment with pretty invasive revisions. Since the original document is not their own and does not represent their own personal best (even if it would only have been their best up to that point), revision does not symbolize backtracking or failing and restarting when it is presented as first a mental exercise (they plan/propose revisions), second a practical exercise (they create and insert their revisions), and only third as a personal/self-reflective practice (this step is not even present in the assignment; presumably invasive creative ambitious revision practices would, however, carry over to students’ own documents).

Walvoord on Coaching Process: Draft Revision

 

A third area of Walvoord’s process coaching is revision. The problem Walvoord articulates is that students tend to write doggedly. They tend to slog through a paper the night before it is due. They do not then tend to revise in any meaningful spirit of revision; they hunt for and fix errors. Her response to this is to increase pressure to produce a draft, but to decrease pressure regarding the perfection of that draft. The following points are my favorites:

“Helping Students With Drafting and Revising” pp. 85-88

“Structure a draft deadline.” It is interesting to me that Walvoord considers giving credit for the draft as being more important than actually reading, much less commenting, on it.

            “Explain the zero draft.” Walvoord pulls from Lynn Z. Bloom’s ideas here, adopting the perspective that a draft should more resemble a freewrite than a polished paper. Structure, then, goes out the window (as do grammar/punctuation &c.); the primary stricture is that the student stay on topic. Ideas should be expansive, explained, fleshed out. Students can then produce a single sentence expressing the most promising aspect of their paper drafts, and organize, cut, and add material until a coherent outline emerges.

Students need to learn “task definition,” which means that they need to learn to identify different tasks of revision and focus on one at a time, or at least resist incorporating narrowly-focused tasks too early in the revision process. As I understand it, something like defining and expanding key terms and notions would be a task for early revisions. Transitions between paragraphs and refining an argument’s flow would need to come subsequently. Polishing individual sentences is a crucial task as well, but doesn’t make sense until a bit later in the revision process. Walvoord argues rather extensively against first-draft polishing. Much as I don’t want to interact with sloppy student work at any time in the process, I can see how early polish might actually act as a barrier to revision. If a student has already created something she wants to call “good” or “finished,” even if that just means the commas are all in place, then revising might frustrate her writing process rather than enhance it.

“Reward revision.” Here, Walvoord articulates advice I encounter on an ongoing basis, and that I find eye-opening and invaluable. She stresses that comments on early drafts receive attention and grades on final drafts receive attention. Comments on final drafts, however, are overshadowed by the grade, and often seem like “treatment prescribed for a patient already dead” (87). Walvoord suggests allowing final drafts to be revised. She uses a two-week window rule: if a student wants a higher grade, they have two weeks to hand in a revision. If I were to offer this option, I think I would require another conference—I’m thinking that it doesn’t make sense to comment too extensively on all the final drafts, but I’d like for a student who is revising to formulate an approved and worthwhile plan and to have a clear direction at the outset. I like the idea of combining requirement and agency, here. I like the idea of building in the necessity of revision to an assignment (I already to this, or at least I attempt to, in all my major assignments), but I also like the idea that ultimately the paper belongs to its author and that its author is responsble for making the decision of when it is finished. This final degree of agency appeals to me.

Walvoord on Coaching the Writing Process: Reasoning and Organization

This post piggybacks on the previous one. Here, I’m isolating some of Walvoord’s thoughts on connecting classtime to paperwriting past the thesis. To sum up Walvoord’s intents in my own words: the important idea is that an argument is a thing that unfolds; the important practice is thus to engage ongoingly in the act of unfolding.

From “Helping Students With Reasoning, Evidence, and Organization” pp. 79-80

1. “Present lecture information as though it were a paper.” In other words, identify paper topics when they arise in class discussion. Note them on the board. Note potential ways of then developing said paper topics as discussion develops. Walvoord supplies an additional point here: at the end of class, remind them that the process they’ve just undergone is something they can and should repeat independently; in other words, remind students that the progression of that day’s class corresponds directly to the path they need to follow in completing paper assignments.

2. “Have students write plans.” That is, have students make a list of possible paper topics. Have students make a list of possible points / outline their arguments.

3. “Scramble a reading.” Here, Walvoord advocates cutting up the paragraphs of a well-organized article/essay and handing them out for the students to arrange. I can also see this happening on the sentence level within a single paragraph in order to stress mindfulness regarding the order in which information appears along the arc of the argument.

I am omitting numbers 4-6 and leaping to...

7. “Discuss the development of a main idea.” Walvoord here suggests having students write their main idea or question, to explain it to a peer and to have that peer then list the evidence/arguments/problems they would expect to see addressed.

Something I notice is that connecting classtime to paperwriting is one part practice and one part commentary. Practicing is what occurs during classtime and ought to take different shapes. Commentary is the explicit path an instructor points to so that students perceive paperwriting as a logical extension, and not satellite, of classtime.

Walvoord and Writing Behavior: the Early Stages

 

Walvoord, Barbara E. Fassler. “Planning to Coach the Writing Process.” Helping Students Write

Well. Second Edition. New York: MLA. 1986.

            Walvoord’s writing-as-process thesis is that the instruction of writing is in some significant part instruction in behavior, or, to borrow David Foster Wallace’s term for essentially the same position, instruction in demeanor. In Walvoord’s own words, “if you are to help students write better, you must teach them how to behave when they are trying to produce an effective piece of writing” (29). I find this position compelling in part because my students do tend toward binge-writing, but more importantly, Walvoord’s words resonate with me because they imply something at stake that is larger than paper-writing / college assignments. Casting effective writing as a matter of behavior draws ethics and the universalizable into the project of composition instruction. My instint is that if comp is to be useful to students in all courses of study, then it probably has to zoom out from English, humanities departments, and even college, to respect and celebrate and cohere within the human project of existing. I do think that a good class in anything taps into this dimension, and addresses (even if only tacitly) “the timeless questions” such as how on earth a person ought to hold herself in relation to her world. But my own struggle as an instructor is in building curricula, syllabi, assignments, and activites—practical, concrete manifestations of this attitude—that not only correspond to such a perspective but that cumulatively build it. How can an instructor coach behavior through the lens of composition? Walvoord has ideas. In this posting I will study them. My task here is thus to inventory and examine Walvoord’s practical approaches to instruction in writerly behavior, though my scope here is limited to Walvoord’s suggestions that pertain specifically to the earliest stages of drafting.

Pacing—specifically, slowing the writerly pace—is central to Walvoord’s approach. Helping students pace their work may (but does not have to) require much instructor participation. Walvoord advocates having students bring in a thesis statement or an introduction even if the instructor never looks at them—have students pair up and explain their thesis to a buddy; anyone without a thesis will at least have to explain to someone why they don’t have a thesis yet, and might get feedback or an idea about how to go about crafting one. Walvoord does not advocate the “loosest” level of seriousness in pacing; that is, she points out that offers to look over a draft during office hours are offers rarely taken up and rarer still by students who need the attention most. “A tighter weir will bring more fish to your net” (36), she writes.

One resource Walvoord offers is a two-column list, “Developing a Topic Through Reading” (56-58). These pair questions to ask of a text with associated paper topics. Likely it is worth typing up in its entirety, handing out (properly cited), and devoting classtime to modeling and developing an intentional practice that incoporates text, reader response, questions, and resulting paper topics. Group work could come of this pretty naturally. I envision practicing the basic progression: having students ask a question of the text, identify a tension or grey zone, and taking a stance on it. In writing, this then requires that an aspect of the text be summarized or inventoried, that a problem therein be explained or a question raised, and that that the question then be answered or the problem commented upon.

Generating a thesis is not, for Walvoord, a part of the writing process that ought to be completed and then checked off the list. She points out that a thesis often starts as a list of random thoughts generated by reading, pondering, talking, freewriting (&c.) and goes on to argue that students need to “list ideas more fully and stay longer at the listing stage” (66). Her idea is that the greater the wealth of possible focuses, the better off a student will be in selecting one as a foundation for a strong thesis. It seems to me that the implications here involve the potential for self-critique: if a student has practiced criticizing student writing, identifying strengths in student writing, as well as identifying weaknesses (and mine have/are), then these critical skills can transfer to their own work—but the skills translate more meaningfully if students have more material to work with in the early, early stages of writing, because only through working with multiple options can students practice discerning comparative strengths and weaknesses within their own efforts at thinking through a problem/argument.