Devitt, Amy. “Transferability and Genres.” Locations of Composition. Ed. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. Albany: State U of New York P, 2007. 215-27. Print.
A tradition of grumbling and lamenting exists in America where education and writing are concerned. It goes a little something like this. Employers complain that college graduates can’t write because their professors stunk. College professors complain their students can’t write because the students' high school teachers stunk. And so on and so forth until presumably even the kindergarten teacher moans about the quality of a child’s parenting.
What’s going on here?
Composition scholar Amy Devitt provides a possible answer in her essay. She argues that general writing skills don’t exist (cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, whose work I’ve written about recently, would disagree at least slightly), and that writing “is a highly situated act” embedded in specific genres, which are patterns of text developed in response to recurrent social situations (215-16). When student writers fail, it’s often because they are misapplying a previously-learned genre to a new situation. She uses the example of new associates in a law firm who write analytic memos by relying too heavily on their law school genres, with predictably substandard results. However, those associates who wrote the worst memos typically wrote the worst in law school as well, and Devitt attributes their greater failure to not learning the previous genres as well as they should have. She writes, “The genres that writers know constitute their genre repertoires, and writers draw from their repertoires to write in a new situation” (223).
What does this mean for us as college instructors?
Devitt recommends that we focus on teaching a few genres well in our classes, with an eye on how they can be used in the future (that’s the transferability part of the essay), as well as teach students about genres as a concept, so they’ll be better prepared to analyze and utilize a new one when they need to do so. Students will still struggle to learn a new genre, but it’ll likely be more akin to huffing up a San Francisco hill than trying to climb Mt. Everest.
We'll probably never stop employers complaining about us though. Or stop complaining about high school teachers. Nevertheless, now we can do more than throw up our hands in frustration.
The essay collection is available through OhioLINK.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom by Daniel T. Willingham
Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass-Wiley, 2009. Print.
Although aimed at K-12 instructors, Willingham’s book can also be useful for college instructors. In the book, he discusses in detail nine principles supported by years of research, and examines how they might be utilized in the classroom. The principles are: “People are naturally curious, but they are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking” (3), “Factual knowledge must precede skill” (19), “Memory is the residue of thought” (41), “We understand new things in the context of things we already know, and most of what we know is concrete” (67), “It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice” (81), “Cognition early in training is fundamentally different from cognition later in training” (97), “Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn” (113), “Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work” (131), and “Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved” (147). A chapter is then devoted to each principle.
Willingham is an engaging writer, and the book offers good advice on how to improve student learning. Some advice will strike instructors as just plain common sense, but much of the book challenges current pedagogical thinking. For example, Willingham suggests that modifying teaching styles to match the learning styles of students (or “multiple intelligences” as they are sometimes called) has little effect and is probably a waste of energy (120).
The book is available in the Ursuline library.
Although aimed at K-12 instructors, Willingham’s book can also be useful for college instructors. In the book, he discusses in detail nine principles supported by years of research, and examines how they might be utilized in the classroom. The principles are: “People are naturally curious, but they are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking” (3), “Factual knowledge must precede skill” (19), “Memory is the residue of thought” (41), “We understand new things in the context of things we already know, and most of what we know is concrete” (67), “It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice” (81), “Cognition early in training is fundamentally different from cognition later in training” (97), “Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn” (113), “Children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work” (131), and “Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved” (147). A chapter is then devoted to each principle.
Willingham is an engaging writer, and the book offers good advice on how to improve student learning. Some advice will strike instructors as just plain common sense, but much of the book challenges current pedagogical thinking. For example, Willingham suggests that modifying teaching styles to match the learning styles of students (or “multiple intelligences” as they are sometimes called) has little effect and is probably a waste of energy (120).
The book is available in the Ursuline library.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
"The Duke Reader Project: Engaging the University Community in Undergraduate Writing Instruction" by Cary Moskovitz
Moskovitz, Cary. "The Duke Reader Project: Engaging the University Community in Undergraduate Writing Instruction." Liberal Education 97.3/4 (2011): 48-53. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 May 2012.
Many instructors at Ursuline have experienced the following phenomenon: Students turn in their final essays at the end of the semester, but seldom ever return the following semester to pick up the essays and read instructor comments, from which, of course, they could learn and thus write better in the future. Perhaps students just forget and get too caught up in the following semester's classload and activities, but it's likely that many students honestly don't care for feedback other than the grade, which they've already received. Those students are not engaged in their writing. They see it as a hoop to jump through rather than a means for learning that can still be learned from even after the grade has been turned in.
If this has happened to you, don't feel bad and don't take it personally. It's a phenomenon that happens nationwide. To counteract this disengagement and make students more invested in their writing and more likely to grow from it, Duke University has developed a program called the Duke Reader Project. Because Duke, like most higher education institutions, considers writing to be of paramount importance for learning, the University wants students to view writing less as a schoolbound activity that one directs to an instructor and performs for a grade, and more as a "contextual act" that has real world consequences and varies from situation to situation, as well as from discipline to discipline, often driven by the needs of different audiences (48).
To teach students the importance of writing and how it functions outside of an individual course, Duke makes students write for an audience beyond the instructor by pairing a student up with a volunteer professional in the student's field. Often, these volunteers are graduates of Duke and eager to interact with students. After being paired up, the student corresponds with the volunteer and then shares drafts of an assignment for feedback. Thus far, the project appears to be very successful with both students and volunteers pleased with the results. Cary Moskovitz, Director of Writing in the Disciplines in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke, reports that "For our students, the project offers the opportunity to get detailed feedback on multiple drafts of their papers from engaged readers who are familiar with the kinds of writing they are attempting. For our alumni and our many non-instructor employees, it offers a valued and interesting way to be directly involved in our educational mission. For our institution, it builds meaningful connections between segments of our community that rarely intersect" (52). Duke's innovative program is one that other institutions such as Ursuline could emulate. In fact, Tiffany Mushrush Mentzer, Director of Alumnae Relations, has indicated that many Ursuline alums would be open to participation in a similar project here, so if you are an instructor wishing to have your students be more engaged in their writing and learn how to write for different audiences, please contact her. She can put you in touch with interested alums, and you can give a similar program a try here. If so, then you might find that students start stopping by to pick up those final papers and see what you think about their work beyond the grade as well.
The article is available through our library's databases.
Many instructors at Ursuline have experienced the following phenomenon: Students turn in their final essays at the end of the semester, but seldom ever return the following semester to pick up the essays and read instructor comments, from which, of course, they could learn and thus write better in the future. Perhaps students just forget and get too caught up in the following semester's classload and activities, but it's likely that many students honestly don't care for feedback other than the grade, which they've already received. Those students are not engaged in their writing. They see it as a hoop to jump through rather than a means for learning that can still be learned from even after the grade has been turned in.
If this has happened to you, don't feel bad and don't take it personally. It's a phenomenon that happens nationwide. To counteract this disengagement and make students more invested in their writing and more likely to grow from it, Duke University has developed a program called the Duke Reader Project. Because Duke, like most higher education institutions, considers writing to be of paramount importance for learning, the University wants students to view writing less as a schoolbound activity that one directs to an instructor and performs for a grade, and more as a "contextual act" that has real world consequences and varies from situation to situation, as well as from discipline to discipline, often driven by the needs of different audiences (48).
To teach students the importance of writing and how it functions outside of an individual course, Duke makes students write for an audience beyond the instructor by pairing a student up with a volunteer professional in the student's field. Often, these volunteers are graduates of Duke and eager to interact with students. After being paired up, the student corresponds with the volunteer and then shares drafts of an assignment for feedback. Thus far, the project appears to be very successful with both students and volunteers pleased with the results. Cary Moskovitz, Director of Writing in the Disciplines in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke, reports that "For our students, the project offers the opportunity to get detailed feedback on multiple drafts of their papers from engaged readers who are familiar with the kinds of writing they are attempting. For our alumni and our many non-instructor employees, it offers a valued and interesting way to be directly involved in our educational mission. For our institution, it builds meaningful connections between segments of our community that rarely intersect" (52). Duke's innovative program is one that other institutions such as Ursuline could emulate. In fact, Tiffany Mushrush Mentzer, Director of Alumnae Relations, has indicated that many Ursuline alums would be open to participation in a similar project here, so if you are an instructor wishing to have your students be more engaged in their writing and learn how to write for different audiences, please contact her. She can put you in touch with interested alums, and you can give a similar program a try here. If so, then you might find that students start stopping by to pick up those final papers and see what you think about their work beyond the grade as well.
The article is available through our library's databases.
Monday, December 5, 2011
"Assessing and Teaching What We Value: The Relationship between College-level Writing and Critical Thinking Abilities" by Condon and Kelly-Riley
Condon, William, and Diane Kelly-Riley. "Assessing and Teaching What We Value: The Relationship between College-level Writing and Critical Thinking Abilities." Assessing Writing 9 (2004): 65-75. OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.
Many scholars seem to just assume that writing promotes critical thinking, akin to a faithlike belief in a higher, supernatural power, but don't provide compelling evidence and explanations of how that can be done. Fortunately, in a study conducted at Washington State University (WSU), Condon and Kelly-Riley actually investigated the link between critical thinking and writing. Unfortunately, they found bad news for the "If they write it, then they will critically think" crowd. They looked at student writing using a critical thinking rubric called "The WSU Guide to Rating Critical Thinking." Some classes had incorporated the guide into instruction, and, probably not surprisingly, those classes showed better critical thinking than classes which did not use the guide. What was surprising, however, was that the classes that showed better critical thinking also showed worse writing and vice versa. The authors note, "The inverse correlation, [sic] and then the lack of relationship between our writing assessment scores and critical thinking scores point to what anecdotal evidence has long supported. Oftentimes, raters in our Writing Assessment Program comment that the exams seem to show sound writing abilities, but really contain no critical thought, or are vacuous or superficial. Haswell's research (1991) indicates that when writers take risks with new ways of thinking, often their writing breaks down in structure as the student grapples with a new way of thinking" (65-66). The authors thus suggest that writing alone will not promote critical thinking. What will promote critical thinking includes explicitly laying out expectations for students including values and features of the individual discipline being taught (65).
Ultimately, the authors argue that "Writing acts as a vehicle for critical thinking, but writing is not itself critical thinking" (66). They provide helpful advice for how to promote critical thinking in the classroom, most of which involves explicitly clarifying expectations for critical thinking (66). The authors also go on to discuss issues with using timed writing situations to assess anything beyond superficial writing traits (67-68). Though writing clearly has a place in using courses to promote critical thinking, writing by itself isn't a substitute for the critical thinking, and instructors should be careful to assess the thinking and not just the writing.
The article is available in the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center.
Many scholars seem to just assume that writing promotes critical thinking, akin to a faithlike belief in a higher, supernatural power, but don't provide compelling evidence and explanations of how that can be done. Fortunately, in a study conducted at Washington State University (WSU), Condon and Kelly-Riley actually investigated the link between critical thinking and writing. Unfortunately, they found bad news for the "If they write it, then they will critically think" crowd. They looked at student writing using a critical thinking rubric called "The WSU Guide to Rating Critical Thinking." Some classes had incorporated the guide into instruction, and, probably not surprisingly, those classes showed better critical thinking than classes which did not use the guide. What was surprising, however, was that the classes that showed better critical thinking also showed worse writing and vice versa. The authors note, "The inverse correlation, [sic] and then the lack of relationship between our writing assessment scores and critical thinking scores point to what anecdotal evidence has long supported. Oftentimes, raters in our Writing Assessment Program comment that the exams seem to show sound writing abilities, but really contain no critical thought, or are vacuous or superficial. Haswell's research (1991) indicates that when writers take risks with new ways of thinking, often their writing breaks down in structure as the student grapples with a new way of thinking" (65-66). The authors thus suggest that writing alone will not promote critical thinking. What will promote critical thinking includes explicitly laying out expectations for students including values and features of the individual discipline being taught (65).
Ultimately, the authors argue that "Writing acts as a vehicle for critical thinking, but writing is not itself critical thinking" (66). They provide helpful advice for how to promote critical thinking in the classroom, most of which involves explicitly clarifying expectations for critical thinking (66). The authors also go on to discuss issues with using timed writing situations to assess anything beyond superficial writing traits (67-68). Though writing clearly has a place in using courses to promote critical thinking, writing by itself isn't a substitute for the critical thinking, and instructors should be careful to assess the thinking and not just the writing.
The article is available in the OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Overall Writing Instruction Guidelines
If one were looking for some quick and general guidance on teaching writing, then the National Council of Teachers of English's (NCTE) beliefs would be a good place to find it.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
National Day on Writing
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has named October 20th as this year's National Day on Writing, a day that celebrates the importance of the written word. This will mark the third year that NCTE has had this event. Ursuline participated in the first National Day on Writing by having our own gallery as part of NCTE's National Gallery of Writing. The galleries were initially supposed to be closed down after a few months, but the entire event was such a success that they remained open. So if anyone has anything they would like to contribute to showcase the many types of writing done at Ursuline on a daily basis, please contact me via the information on the sidebar.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy by Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff
Bawarshi, Anis S., and Mary Jo Reiff. Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2010. WAC Clearinghouse. Web. 29 Aug. 2011.
At Ursuline, we write in genres every day, whether academic essays, emails, lab reports, or lesson plans. How people use genres has been a fascinating question for scholars to explore. In this book, the authors provide an overview of genre theory from several perspectives including linguistics, literary studies, rhetoric, and sociology. Though seemingly abstract at the surface level, the topic of genres is important for pedagogy and our day to day activities in the classroom. Many times, it is precisely genre that students are having difficulty with when writing in a new and unfamiliar discipline, and the authors communicate the insights of several decades of research into genres.
Though not all scholars are in agreement, most who have researched genres suggest that the explicit teaching of genres to students will best assist them in utilizing genres. An interesting approach to teaching genre comes from the Australian-based systemic-functional school, which involves what is called the "teaching-learning cycle" (34). In this cycle, students are first exposed to various examples of a particular genre and invited to analyze them. Next, students and teachers work together to construct an example of the genre. After this collaboration, students create an example of the genre on their own. For example, if I were to teach students how to write a research essay, we would read several examples of research essays first, then we would work together to write a research essay, and, finally, the students would write research essays of their own. This method, though not without its critics, has been implemented successfully at all grade levels including higher education.
Teaching genres seem to be particularly successful if the instructor can communicate to students that genres are not mere formulas but instead "dynamic, situated actions" (17) that "help organize and generate social practices and realities" (20). The authors are critical of the hackneyed teaching of universal modes of writing such as description and narration, feeling that form is typically overemphasized whereas a true understanding of genre always involves content and context as well. To replace such traditional but untheoretically-sound pedagogical approaches, after discussing the theory and research into genres earlier, the authors discuss some interesting pedagogical approaches to teaching writing in Part 3 of the book, which concludes with a handy glossary and annotated bibliography (a genre, incidentally that has been difficult for students at Ursuline).
In conclusion, the book is a valuable primer on genre theory and well worth reading. Even more valuable though is to stop and consider what genres you utilize in your courses and how you expect students to master them. Are you depending too much on tacit knowledge that you hold but the students do not? Or are you explicitly guiding the students through what is for them new rhetorical territory? Getting students to think about genre explicitly can help them to transfer their skills and enable them to recognize and negotiate new genres and situations in the future (190). As the authors vividly demonstrate, genre is worth thinking about for instructors and students alike.
The book is available for free online at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/bawarshi_reiff/.
At Ursuline, we write in genres every day, whether academic essays, emails, lab reports, or lesson plans. How people use genres has been a fascinating question for scholars to explore. In this book, the authors provide an overview of genre theory from several perspectives including linguistics, literary studies, rhetoric, and sociology. Though seemingly abstract at the surface level, the topic of genres is important for pedagogy and our day to day activities in the classroom. Many times, it is precisely genre that students are having difficulty with when writing in a new and unfamiliar discipline, and the authors communicate the insights of several decades of research into genres.
Though not all scholars are in agreement, most who have researched genres suggest that the explicit teaching of genres to students will best assist them in utilizing genres. An interesting approach to teaching genre comes from the Australian-based systemic-functional school, which involves what is called the "teaching-learning cycle" (34). In this cycle, students are first exposed to various examples of a particular genre and invited to analyze them. Next, students and teachers work together to construct an example of the genre. After this collaboration, students create an example of the genre on their own. For example, if I were to teach students how to write a research essay, we would read several examples of research essays first, then we would work together to write a research essay, and, finally, the students would write research essays of their own. This method, though not without its critics, has been implemented successfully at all grade levels including higher education.
Teaching genres seem to be particularly successful if the instructor can communicate to students that genres are not mere formulas but instead "dynamic, situated actions" (17) that "help organize and generate social practices and realities" (20). The authors are critical of the hackneyed teaching of universal modes of writing such as description and narration, feeling that form is typically overemphasized whereas a true understanding of genre always involves content and context as well. To replace such traditional but untheoretically-sound pedagogical approaches, after discussing the theory and research into genres earlier, the authors discuss some interesting pedagogical approaches to teaching writing in Part 3 of the book, which concludes with a handy glossary and annotated bibliography (a genre, incidentally that has been difficult for students at Ursuline).
In conclusion, the book is a valuable primer on genre theory and well worth reading. Even more valuable though is to stop and consider what genres you utilize in your courses and how you expect students to master them. Are you depending too much on tacit knowledge that you hold but the students do not? Or are you explicitly guiding the students through what is for them new rhetorical territory? Getting students to think about genre explicitly can help them to transfer their skills and enable them to recognize and negotiate new genres and situations in the future (190). As the authors vividly demonstrate, genre is worth thinking about for instructors and students alike.
The book is available for free online at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/bawarshi_reiff/.
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