Democratic Research in a Post/Modern World

This semester I am taking a research methods course that focuses on "Action Research" or "Community Based Participatory Action Research," among other psudeonyms. One book I have found particularly compelling regarding the functions of history, writing, and research and indigenous communities is Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. She writes,

• Under colonialism indigenous people shave struggled against a Western view of history and yet been complicit in that view. . . . 'Why then has revisiting history been a significant part of decolonization?' The answer, I suggest, lies in the intersection of indigenous approaches to the past, of the modernist history project itself and of the resistance strategies that have been employed. Our colonial experience traps us in the project of modernity. There can be no 'postmodern' for us until we have settled some business of the modern. . . . (Smith 33-34).

Smith's book is an important read for anyone undertaking research in the humanities. While it makes a note to remind readers that the book is intended for indigenous researchers, critics like Konai Thaman, Professor of Pacific Education and Culture, and Unesco Chair of Education, University of the South Pacific, have states, "A book like this is long overdue." In reading through for the first time, I couldn't agree more.

Globalization, Economics, and the University

For those interested in the effects of globalization on economies and institutions, you might find Rector, Universidad Austral, Valdivia, Chile, Manfred Max-Neef's conference speech, published as a chapter titled "ECONOMY, HUMANISM AND NEOLIBERALISM" in People's Participation: Challenges Ahead to be of interest. As an educator, it makes one inevitably wonder about the state of things like higher education institutions. If ever there was an exigency to defend the relevancy of the humanities and social sciences, we may have found it in the emergent dialogues about globalization.

2009 SAT results . . .

Some food for thought: An interesting article from USA Today regarding the disparity in avg. performances along racial, ethnic, gender, and social class lines as determined from graduating high school seniors' 2009 SAT scores.

Pedagogy's "Space" in American Education

To start off dialog this time, I would like to begin with a summary of Robin Alexander's Culture and Pedagogy (2000), a comparative ethnographic study of 5 countries: England, America, India, Russia, and France and their respective educational practices as they relate to local and national culture(s). The aim of his work was to both draw out universalities among educational pedagogy as well as understand the ways in which certain aspects of educational pedagogy are local phenomenon composed largely by cultural distinctions which merit caution when considering the importation/exportation or the borrowing and transmitting of educational practices among international borders.

Of particular interest to me is Alexander's notion of centralized vs. decentralized educational systems. In his book, Alexander notes how “standardized” pedagogies and curriculums of a decentralized educational system like the U.S. are more open to resistance and opposition by teachers at the classroom level; Alexander argues that every act of teaching is an act of curriculum transformation and that, for US classrooms, this transformation is often conscious and more radical than in other school systems. Accordingly, Alexander illuminates how the conflict between standardizing pedagogies (pedagogies of cultural reproduction and nationalism) are always at conflict with pedagogies of critical awareness (563). But the questioning of curriculum and pedagogy seems a caveat currently privy to decentralized systems alone, as Alexander notes the seemingly indifferent or “at face value” opinions of curriculum and pedagogy held by teachers in centralized educational systems like Russia and India (549).

Furthermore, in Chapter 17 Alexander makes an interesting argument that in decentralized educational systems like America, there exists certain "borders" or conflicts between curriculum and pedagogy, in particular that pedagogy is subsidiary to curriculum (550). In systems like Central European education, Alexander argues "pedagogy frames everything else" (550); significant to note is that Alexander favors this latter paradigm. However, it seems that the ideas of resistance and curriculum transformation that Alexander discusses are at conflict with his claim that pedagogy is subsidiary to curriculum in American education. Indeed, for critical pedagogues, it seems pedagogy is everything.

In trying to work out this cognitive dissonance between the revolutionary/resistant teacher and the curriculum-driven US educational system, I would like to pose the following food for thought:

a. Do you see pedagogy as subsidiary to curriculum, or vice versa? Or, do you perhaps see them related in a different way than discussed by Alexander?

b. In what ways do you see RCTE as a program vested in “comparative pedagogy”? If so,
how does that complicate ideas of pedagogy as subsidiary to curriculum in our discipline?

c. If pedagogy is still largely seen as subsidiary to curriculum (and, I think it is possible to argue that is largely is outside our program), how do scholars like us work to perhaps invert, or transform this paradigm? Is that perhaps even necessary?

d. How does pedagogic inquiry, say, comparative pedagogy, open up possibilities for inclusion and democracy in education work, rather than traditionally exclusive and hegemonic practices of learning?

The Political ' S pa ce ' of Self-Reflective Teaching: Or, a Space for Self-Reflective Teachers

As a writing teacher, I find myself pulled in several directions: the study of writing; the study of how to teach writing; the study of teaching... It is with this last constituent of being a writing teacher that I would like to make some space for comment this week.

Admittedly, not everyone that teaches first-year writing is vested in composition (and rhetorical) studies. This is not a judgment on teachers from other fields of interest, but, rather, a reality I am interested in understanding insofar as I believe it creates very real "differences" in writing teaching methodologies that teachers from all corners of the Writing Program can benefit from. *(If nothing else, scholars like Anzaldua and Bakhtin write to open up perceptions about polyphony, hybridity and heteroglossia to help us understand the power that synergy and collaboration, rather than exclusion and individualism, bring to bear on teaching, in this case, writing).

That said, even those writing teachers who don't study rhet-comp per se, still have to teach, and for many of them the course is first-year composition (at UofA it is divided into 101 (Fall) and 102 (Spring)). And, at the end of the semester, writing teachers are accountable to both their respective writing programs and their students for qualifying that teaching through quantitative means: assigning grades. Often, I think, teachers can feel pulled by grading; after all, as Richard Straub has eloquently written about here and there, teacher's comments and grades on the page are a reflection of our teaching persona and our success as teachers as much as a reflection of the success of the student's we teach. This is no little statement.


With this in mind, this week I would like to focus on the following questions:
1. Do you consider yourself a good writing teacher?
a. Why or why not?
b. What makes a good writing teacher?

2. Do you make time or space for self-reflection on how, what, and why you teach composition?
a. If yes, what activities encompass this self-reflexivity?
b. If yes, how do you see your personal method of reflection benefiting your teaching praxis?
c. Benefiting your students?

3. Does the writing teacher's job end at the end of the semester?
a. Do you feel convinced you have reached the goals of your class by the 16 wk deadline?
b. What do you do at the end of the semester when you feel you haven't reached those goals with your students?

I think these questions say a lot about who we are as teachers. I know I ask myself these questions repeatedly every semester; my answers aren't always consistent either. But I think it is important that I do ask them, for me anyway, because I feel the critical self-reflectivity keeps me honest and helps me close the gap that may occur between praxis and theory; between my teaching philosophy and what I really teach. It, in other words, constantly puts the "old" me in dialog with the "new" me in ways that I find productive in continuing to shape a space for me as a writing teacher.

What do you think we should teach in first-year writing courses?

First, I want to thank everyone who has openly embraced this collaborative journey. The dialog so far has been quite interesting. I am hoping that, as the weeks continue, more participants will jump on board.

*Those of you following this blog may be interested to know that there have been other responses from writing instructors. These instructors have contributed to the project but asked that I not post their comments here for a variety of reasons; so, as we can see, the participation is deeper and more complicated, and perhaps more political, than it appears even here.

For this week, keeping last week's questions and responses in mind, I would like to shift gears a bit from one's (awareness of their) writing pedagogy to one's personal philosophy regarding the "purpose" of first-year writing courses. Currently, this question is still debated among scholars in the field: from content, and/or more Cultural Studies' based models of writing classrooms (see Bartholomae, hooks, Bizzell, among others) to content-less classrooms where student writing and rhetoric take precedence (see Elbow, Murray, Hairston, and Ede, among others), scholars remain divided as to what purpose first-year writing courses should serve. Even the course's name has been problematic: from English to Basic Writing to Freshman Comp to First-Year Composition, each name implies a whole set of (un)spoken pedagogical and theoretical implications about the reason(s) for writing courses, the way(s) to teach it, and the content such a course should or should not contain. Of course, some writing pedagogies are more flexible than others.

With this in mind, this week I would like participants to focus on their own beliefs as to the "purpose" and "content" of college-level first-year (required) writing courses. So doing, I believe the dialog generated will hint at just how complicated it is to design a curriculum for required writing courses, particularly because, as a course taught by instructors from varying research interests and backgrounds, different things are valued in different ways by different instructors, causing contact zones within our department as to the structuring and standardizing of courses like first-year writing.

As you respond, please consider the following:

1. What purpose do you see required first-year writing courses serving; in other words, why are they required?

2. Do you believe a required first-year writing course should be content based, or content-less? Why? If the former, "what" content?

3. Building off of question two, what do you think should be taught in first-year writing and how would you teach it?

4. What about your current institution's writing curriculum would you like to see changed and why? What would you, of course, replace it with? Why?

How do you teach freshman composition?

In an effort to better understand academic writing pedagogy, and my own space within it as a freshman comp instructor, I am creating this blog as a means of making a discursive space for fellows GATs/Adjuncts/Professors/Instructors from college English departments to voice their views on the ways in which one's discipline informs their approach to the teaching of academic writing (and, of equal importance, their assessment of academic writing).

I want to better understand the dialog emerging from what I call, and what others before me have called, the "4 Corners" of English: Rhet-Comp/Literature/Creative Writing/English Language and Linguistics; Second Language Acquisition Theory. As someone who sees themselves at the crossroads of this polyphonic chaos, I am hoping to use the dialog created here to glean insight into possible caveats of teaching writing that emerge from one's discipline and the way those caveats compete/complement/conflict with other teachers' approaches. I am also interested in the way such approaches are received by our students.

Specifically, I'd like to use this blog as a space for instructors to reflect on their pedagogical approaches to the teaching of freshman composition.

I will post weekly sets of questions and hope to respond to any posts generated throughout the week by participants.

I hope you enjoy this project as much as I believe I will, and that, together, we can learn a little something about our own teaching methodologies, and teaching freshman composition more generally.

The main questions I'd like to focus on this week are:

What are you doing in your first-year writing courses?

How are you doing it?

Why are you doing it that way?

As you post, please make sure and identify your discipline: RCTE/Lit/ELL;SLAT/CW within your respective English department.

Thank you all,

Cassie Wright

1st year PhD student, RCTE

Graduate Associate in Teaching

University of Arizona