WS140: Introduction to Women's Studies

Journal of Education, 2008

Pedagogies for teaching high school English and college composition often divide between so-called student-centered approaches and their opposite, variously labeled teacher-centered, traditionalist, or product-based. Where students collaborate in the discovery of knowledge, learning is said to be student-centered. Where teachers impose their knowledge on students, as in the "banking model of education" described by Paulo Freire, the teacher-centered approach holds sway. 1 Implied in this distinction is good will on the part of those who take their students' side, and something less than good will on the part of those who impose their authority on them. Because teachers work for students, every instructor should take his or her students' side; every teacher should ask which assignments in which order will foster the best results; every educator should make the classroom a lively place where students learn to think for themselves. The claim that one approach to teaching is more student-centered than another therefore carries a polemical charge. It sets an educational philosophy that favors the advancement of students against another that holds them back. But what if a misunderstanding arose as to what "student-centered" means, and, as a result, a pedagogy passing for progressive actually inhibited progress? What if this misunderstanding unfolded, like the internally consistent logic of a bad dream, and became policy, ruling high school English and college composition programs across America, gaining dominance over the

Learning outcomes have been at the heart of University life this year. Encouraged by accreditors and by Provost Tim White, OSU departments, programs, and faculty are endeavoring to articulate exactly what learning outcomes we expect of our students and how each outcome will be demonstrated and evaluated. Help for devising outcomes for Writing Intensive (WIC) courses is at hand in Tracy Ann Robinson’s article in this issue of TWW. Originally prepared as a White Paper on Assessment for a graduate project, Robinson’s article offers faculty a primer on assessment and outcomes. From a review of Bloom’s taxonomy of critical thinking to suggestions for locating model outcomes from disciplinary sources online, this article will school us and empower us in outcomes assessment. This article is just one of countless projects Tracy Ann has taken on during her three years as WIC TA. As she completes her thesis and her advanced degree, on behalf of all the WIC faculty and students she has helped ...

Composition Studies, 2016

Transformations: Change Work across Writing Programs, Pedagogies, and Practices, 2021

2023

This section of WRDS 350 is a blended (or 'flipped') class. Tuesdays are mostly your time to use for weekly class readings, coursework, collaborative activities, office hours consultations, and preparation for in-class discussion on Thursdays. Exceptions to this general rule, such as specific in-class Tuesday workshops, are specified in the course schedule below (and on Canvas). Thursday's in-class discussions are not lectures; they are seminar-style discussions based on the class readings, and students will be expected to be prepared for and to contribute to those discussions. This means having, at a bare minimum, read and considered at least one of the week's assigned readings well enough to talk and ask questions about it). The coursework is designed and structured to promote those expectations, but gives you many options for, and quite a lot of control over, how you approach your learning in this course. Project-based Course: There are no tests or quizzes in this course. This section of WRDS 350 is designed to help us learn together actively by doing. This a project-based course comprising two, multi-part and interdependent projects: 1) a Situating Project in which you will be introduced to the study of academic discourse through investigation of the writing and communication practices of professionals in your chosen field of study, and 2) a Research Project that you will design and carry out in order learn something of your choice more focused and specific about the discursive practices of your chosen field of study, and about discourse studies and scholarly discourse (academic writing and communication) more generally.

WAC Journal, 2016

Situated in the literature on threshold concepts and transfer of prior knowledge in WAC/WID and composition studies, with particular emphasis on the scholarship of writing across difference, our article explores the possibility of re-envisioning the role of the composition classroom within the broader literacy ecology of colleges and universities largely comprised of students from socioeconomically and ethnolinguistically underrepresented communities. We recount the pilot of a composition course prompting students to examine their own prior and other literacy values and practices, then transfer that growing meta-awareness to the critical acquisition of academic discourse. Our analysis of students’ self-assessment memos reveals that students apply certain threshold concepts to acquire critical agency as academic writers, and in a manner consistent with Guerra’s concept of transcultural repositioning. We further consider the role collective rubric development plays as a critical incident facilitating transcultural repositioning

The Journal of Competency-Based Education

Our paper offers two cases in which we examine the powerful literacy moves made by both a secondary high school English student and a secondary English preservice teacher. Through the case of the high school student, Reema, a young Iraqi refugee woman now living in Sweden, we show that student narrative writing actually limits teacher understanding of the student while simultaneously giving the semblance of empowering the student. It does so for two reasons: 1) the writing in which Reema is being asked to engage inadvertently privileges a private reflective stance by making it public and in doing so forefronts an affective rather than analytical stance toward a problem; and 2) the semblance of authenticity in the narrative writing masks important contextual and historical experiences which not only backgrounds critical thinking, but also backgrounds the multi-dimensional identity that Reema brings into her school context. Finally, our analysis of classroom academic talk and writing shows that linguistic features of academic and analytical language use are distinct from narrative ones (Schleppegrell, 2004) and are important to address in light of state and national achievement expectations. While Reema’s case illustrates the ways in which the narrative writing requirements promote a problematic effacement of the writer’s self, the case we present of the secondary English preservice teacher illustrates another expression of the writing curriculum in the Unites States: writing for testing. A preservice teacher in an urban teacher residency, Sam learned to teach in a school that required her to tether her entire writing instruction to the ACT, the standardized test intended to measure college readiness. Throughout the year, Sam struggled to find ways to help her students find authenticity in their writing within a context that was largely geared toward students “filling in the bubbles,” an orientation that bled into her students’ approach to writing wherein they routinely asked Sam, “What do you want me to put next?” Taken together, our analysis of these two case studies illustrates a bipolar writing curriculum in American schools--writing as reflection and writing as formula. Neither orientation emphasizes the kinds of critical and analytic thinking that ought to be foregrounded in writing instruction in schools.

2013

Call for Submissions 100 2 These authors are represented in two of the required texts for the course, The Norton Book of Composition Studies, and A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. sional writing majors to each group of middle school writers (an initial set, a set after switching groups, and a final set tallied by clickers); we also draw on anecdotal evidence from class discussions of these scores (and the similarities and differences among them). Third, we analyze the actual feedback the groups posted to the wiki for each student writer. Throughout our analysis, we include excerpts from the reflections composed by the college students at the end of the process. In addition, one middle school student's writing, in particular, serves as a provocative point of intersection across the stages of this process. Reframing Responses to Student Writing Paper Jellyfish and Raisin-y Babies: Initial Perceptions of Student Submissions Ted was surprised by the remarkable quality of the writing from the Pennsylvania students. Students submitted detective fiction, dream sequences, fantasy and futuristic fiction, as well as sophisticated memoirs. For example, one student, Grace, from whose text we have permission to quote, submitted a memoir about adjusting to moving and to changes in her family. Her text demonstrates originality and humor as well as trust in her readers. Everyone loved [baby brother]. When we brought him home from the hospital a bunch of people came to see the bright blue eyed baby boy with a crop of pale blond hair and my exhausted mother. Ignoring me in the process, naturally. Just like people always had since they had brought [younger sister] home from the hospital when she was a baby. I didn't care for hospitals. That's where all the babies came from. Some babies were cute and very pretty to look at and adore, like dolls. Others had red, raisin-y, faces and cried too much. They smelled especially undesirable when they needed changing. I never quite understood why my mother loved babies so much. Still don't. She also demonstrated excellent control of syntax in constructing a sophisticated authorial voice: "Later, when I got to Pennsylvania it was still hot but there it was very humid. Sticky hot. Hard-to-breathe-in my-chest hot. Help me, the sun is beating down on me to kill me hot." Most of the texts from this group revealed students who seemed to enjoy writing and who were writing to engage and entertain their readers, not just to earn the approval of a teacher. One student created adult characters of all of the other students in the group and wrote a fictional story of a class reunion gone awry. Another piece ended with a sophisticated reprisal of a beautifully described image from an arts festival of handcrafted jellyfish with candles inside floating up into an evening sky. As one college student would later write in a reflection on the experience, Some of [the students' stories]...I could never think of even if I tried. [One] boy wrote a science fiction short story in which he made up words and mentioned hilarious details that made me chuckle. One writer played well with dialogue and demonstrated its importance in storytelling in general. Another writer used absolutely stunning imagery and captured a scene that I can picture looking at through a photograph from a polaroid camera. In all, Pennsylvania demonstrated some excellent storytelling. The overall quality of the student writing would, we hoped, reframe teacher candidates' idea of what eighth grade writers are capable of, and encourage them to respond to these students as "real writers." NCTE PROMISING YOUNG WRITERS PROGRAM HOLISTIC WRITING EVALUATION SCALE Submissions that receive a 3, 2, or 1 should meet a certain level of effectiveness with regard to organization, content, style, usage, and writing process. Submissions that do not meet this level should receive a 0. 3 Submissions scored as a 3 tend to employ an organizational framework that is especially effective for the topic/genre. The content is particularly effective throughout the piece because of its substance, specificity, or illustrative quality. The work is vivid and precise, with distinguishing characteristics that give the writing an identity of its own within the conventions of the genre/medium, though it may contain an occasional flaw. The work is polished and impressive for the eighth grade. 2 Submissions scored as a 2 are organized effectively for the topic/genre. The content is effective throughout the piece, though the paper may lack the substance, specificity, or illustrative quality of a 3. The stylistic/surface features of the genre/medium are consistently under control, despite occasional lapses. The potential in the writing is realized, though not to the degree that further revision would allow. 1 Submissions scored as a 1 show evidence of the writer's attempt at organization. Content, though effective, tends to be less consistent or less substantive, specific, and illustrative than that found in papers scored as a 3 or 2. The writer generally observes the stylistic conventions of genre/medium but unevenness suggests that the writer is not yet in full command of his/her voice. Some errors are usually present, but they aren't severe enough to interfere significantly with the reader's experience. The potential in the writing is evident, but the work would clearly benefit from further revision.