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Author Archives: vanderso


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Brearey, Oliver. Two-semester Sequence for FYW. TETYC, March 2015. Posted 05/12/15.

Brearey, Oliver. “Understanding the Relationship between First- and Second-Semester College Writing Courses.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 42.3 (2015): 244-63. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.

Oliver Brearey contends that escalating pressures from such initiatives as competency-based education and the Common Core State Standards risk putting composition scholars and instructors in a “reactionary position” (245); proponents of such initiatives propose standardizing college writing and linking it with outcomes developed outside the university, forcing writing professionals to defend the diverse practices and structures that currently characterize college writing curricula (244-45). For Brearey, clarifying the relationship between first-year writing and writing at other academic levels can allow compositionists to demonstrate the coherence of and need for college writing curricula designed in the service of a rhetorical education as imagined by David Fleming in his 2003 essay, “Becoming Rhetorical: An Education in the Topics” (257).

Brearey especially focuses on the two-semester first-year sequence. His article examines the relationship between these two courses, culminating in proposed “composite description and competency documents” for first- and second-semester writing courses that can serve as “a set of reference materials” for faculty and administrators who may find that broad guidelines help them locate their own local curricula in a broader context (247). This need is particularly intense, he contends, for two-year colleges, which may feel especially strong pressure to streamline their curricula in the name of efficiency (245).

Brearey sees the NCTE/NWP “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” and the “WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition” as initial steps in responding to such pressures, but feels that they, as well as the extant literature on outcomes and writing curricula, fall short of providing the necessary guidance for programs developing a two-course FY sequence and needing to demonstrate the efficacy of such a sequence. Such documents, Brearey contends, see responsibility for designing and articulating the courses as a local responsibility and thus fail to specify how the outcomes can be effectively achieved through choices in course design (248). Other sources similarly fail to offer adequate blueprints for how concepts and learning activities can be ordered and articulated (248). A comprehensive overview of how the two first-year courses can complement each other, moreover, allows educators to tie such introductory courses into “vertical curricula” of writing courses beyond first-year writing. Brearey finds that extant literature on “advanced writing courses” fails to account for the relationship of these later courses to the first-year sequence (249). The literature he examines promotes “theoriz[ing] the design of composition course sequences” but provides no “practical approaches” to doing so (249).

In moving toward his recommendations, Brearey proposes that the terms “horizontal expertise” and “generalization” supplement the idea of a vertical curriculum (250). He argues that, while a second-semester first-year courses is often seen as more advanced or more difficult than the earlier course, the reality is that the relationship between the content of the two courses functions more nearly in “parallel,” with similar abilities developed at different levels of priority through different sets of applications. He writes that generalization does not mean that students “transfer” skills from semester 1 to semester 2; rather, they apply them in new contexts that broaden the concepts’ meaning and rhetorical usefulness (250-51).

To develop his composite curricula for first- and second-semester first-year sequences, Brearey gathered course descriptions, competency documents, and syllabi from “the six highest-enrollment two-year colleges in the U.S.” (252). He coded the language in these documents by comparing it to the language of the NCTE “Framework,” and the “WPA Outcomes Statement,” as well as to language delineating the structure and outcomes of two “vertical curricula”: Appalachian State’s award-winning “WAC Vertical Model for Writing Skills” and IUPUI’s “Goals for the IUPUI’s Writing Courses” (252). Four tables result. Table 1 compares the course materials from the community colleges to the Framework/Outcomes Statement. One finding from this comparison is that the outcomes are similar in the two courses, but vary in the priority the two courses assign to them. Brearey calculates how often an outcome appears in the course materials; he finds that, while the outcome of “[d]eveloping critical thinking through writing, reading, and research” is mentioned most often in both the S1 and S2 course, it is mentioned much more often (39.2 to 62.1%) in the S2 course. In the S1 course, the next most frequently cited outcome is “[d]eveloping flexible writing process,” while in the S2 course this outcome is mentioned by only 6.1% of the documents, and “[d]eveloping rhetorical knowledge” becomes the primary means by which the critical thinking outcome is met. These data ground Brearey’s claim that the tasks of the two courses are not different in kind but rather are practiced and reinforced with different emphases and applications (253-54).

Tables 2 and 3 examine the relationship between outcomes for first-year courses and those for upper-level writing curricula at Appalachian State and IUPUI, respectively. Brearey argues that the outcomes in these “vertical curricula” closely parallel those in the Framework/Outcomes Statement documents; the upper-level courses mirror the S2 curricula he finds in the course materials in significant ways. This finding again demonstrates that more advanced writing classes expand on the range of contexts and the level of detail included in course activities (255-56). Drawing on Fleming, Brearey contends that showing how students’ facility with the concepts develops through the extended practice afforded by a two-course sequence helps to

justify two-year colleges’ S1 and S2 FYW courses not only as discrete entities but also as a two-semester curriculum that emphasizes the development of novice students’ writing and rhetorical abilities. (257-58)

Such justification, he writes, is needed to sustain the authority of writing professionals to design effective writing curricula (257). His composite models include outcomes, methods for achieving those outcomes, and a framework of goals for each part of a two-semester first-year sequence (258-60).


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Durst, Russel K. James Britton’s Contributions. CCC, Feb. 2015. Posted 05/05/15.

Durst, Russel K. “British Invasion: James Britton, Composition Studies, and Anti-Disciplinarity.” College Composition and Communication 66.3 (2015): 384-401. Print.

Russel K. Durst explores the contributions of James Britton to the field of composition studies during its formative years from the 1960s through the 1980s. Durst posits that although Britton’s work powerfully affected the development of the field as a scholarly discipline, Britton himself did not value the move toward disciplinarity in which he participated. According to Durst, of particular focus in Britton’s resistance to the field’s emergence were the pedagogy/theory dichotomy and the role of personal writing in students’ literacy growth.

Durst aligns Britton’s view of writing with that of “progressive educators” like John Dewey, contrasting that view with the prevailing approaches of Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, who posited “context-independent” theories of language and cognitive growth. According to Durst, Britton emphasized the social nature of writing, drawing on wide reading and research to valorize personal, “expressivist” writing in which students used informal registers to explore personally meaningful topics. Incorporating the work of Lev Vygotsky, Britton argued for the fundamental role of the social uses of language in learning, encouraging pedagogies that allowed students to write for purposes other than evaluation (388-89).

Durst recounts Britton’s role at the 1966 Dartmouth conference, where he represented a break with traditional and classical views of writing instruction (387), and summarizes Britton’s important empirical study, The Development of Writing Abilities (11-18). The premise of Britton and his colleagues in conducting this study was that informal, personal writing to varied audiences and to “the teacher as a trusted adult” would appear frequently in the more than two thousand samples of school writing in Britain that they collected (389-90). However, although the “discourse category” terminology of “transactional,”, “expressive,” and “poetic” writing proved valuable to composition studies, Britton et al.’s research revealed very little writing other than reproducing textbook and lecture material for the teacher to evaluate (390-91). Britton argued that teachers should recognize and more extensively exploit the value of personal and social uses of writing, which he saw as the starting point for writing and learning (390). Studies in the United States based on Britton’s categories by Arthur Applebee and others showed an even greater dearth of meaningful writing in American schools (389-90).

Durst cites four areas in which Britton’s contributions furthered the growth of composition studies (391-93):

  • the use of expressivist writing and talk that continues to inform activities like group work and conferencing;
  • the development of writing across the curriculum as an area of pedagogical focus;
  • the development of “facilitative response” as elaborated by C. H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon to encourage a view of the teacher as a supportive learning collaborator;
  • the legitimation of collaborative research and publication that Durst speculates resulted from Britton’s location in schools of education.

In order to explore the “paradox” of the “anti-disciplinary” attitude of such a major contributor to a solidifying discipline, Durst distinguishes Britton’s sense of the expressive from the type of writing James Berlin categorized as “expressionistic.” For Durst, the focus on the personal that Berlin critiqued was individualistic, in contrast to Britton’s view of a kind of writing that engaged students’ personal interests through social activity (391). Similarly, Durst finds that Britton’s approach differs from that of “figures associated with expressionism” like Peter Elbow, Ken McCrorie, and Donald Murray (395). Britton’s concept of student-centered teaching, which rejected tradition and received knowledge, was similar to the views of these scholars and writers in that it accorded with the spirit of the 1960s: it appealed to the ethos of composition theorists who saw writing and learning as “liberating” activities and who were then breaking free from a limiting relationship with literary studies (394-95). But, Durst contends, Britton’s theories were more firmly grounded in his wide-ranging scholarly explorations, including empirical research (396). Yet Durst spots another crucial similarly between Britton and the expressionist writers. Elbow, McCrorie, and Murray, like Britton, focused on classroom practices and pedagogy in contrast to recent scholars like Sidney Dobrin, who contends that “writing theory must move beyond composition studies’ neurosis of pedagogy, must escape the shackles of classrooms, students, and management” (qtd. in Durst 397). In Durst’s view, the expressionists’ emphasis on students and classrooms makes them less than fully respected members of the current composition community. For Durst, this evidence that the field resists a focus on pedagogy affirms Britton’s sense that composition would not be well served by becoming a traditional academic discipline in which theory and scholarship took center stage (395-96).

In proposing “doubling down on pedagogy” in composition studies, Durst defines Britton as a scholar for whom writing instruction enabled broad intellectual growth and “liberation from society’s oppressive forces” (397); he sees in Britton’s example the possibility of solidly grounded scholarship specifically aimed at meeting the new challenges faced by students and teachers as diversity increases, technology expands, and the pressure to prepare students for careers escalates (398). Britton’s contributions illustrate that scholarly inquiry and a focus on student-centered pedagogy need not be competing activities; they can function jointly to enrich composition as an academic field.


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New Feature: Contributor Works in Progress

On the “Contributor Works in Progress” page, I’ll look forward to posting a summary of your work in progress or of studies or research you’re conducting, whether or not you plan to submit your work for publication. Summaries should be 1,000 words or fewer. Send me what you would like me to post using the contact form on the page. In posting, I’ll include your contact information so others with similar interests can hook up. You may also leave comments or updates via the “leave a reply” form. Email and usernames are optional on that form, so be sure to include them if you want others to be able to get in touch.


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Gholnecsar E. Muhammad. Self-representation of African American Girls. RTE, Feb. 2015. Posted 04/29/15.

Muhammad, Gholnecsar E. “Searching for Full Vision: Writing Representations of African American Adolescent Girls.” Research in the Teaching of English 49.3 (2015): 224-47. Print.

A comprehensive abstract prefaces Gholnecsar E. Muhammad’s study of African-American adolescent girls working to define themselves against stereotypes and dominant discourses. She writes:

Currently, African American girls are being depicted as overly sexual, violent, or confrontational, are judged by physical features, or are invisible across mainstream media and within school classrooms. Few investigations have explored how they respond to and interpret such imposed representations. Nor, for the most part, have studies examined how girls represent themselves among a society of others pathologizing and defining who they are. , , , Findings show that the girls [in the study] wrote across platforms similar to those African American women have addressed historically, which included writing to represent self, writing to resist or counter ascribed representations, and writing toward social change. (224)

For her qualitative case study, Muhammad gathered eight African American girls, aged 12 to 17, to form a “literacy collaborative” in which they worked together in an “intensive” writing environment for nine hours a week for four weeks in the summer of 2012. The writers, from a variety of school settings, were designated “Sister Authors” and given the opportunity to write a number of different genres, including personal narratives, poems, short stories, “informational pieces,” and “open letters” (230, 232). Muhammad developed lesson plans, provided readings from African American women, and facilitated sharing and feedback sessions (231-32). Data included forty-eight pieces of writing, video-taped observations, and interviews (232-33). Muhammad and a second coder established six themes that appeared in the girls’ self-representations: “community, cultural [ethnicity and gender], individual, intellectual, kinship, and sexual representations” (233). Muhammad provides examples from the girls’ work to illustrate how these themes emerged in the ways the writers constructed themselves and their lives through writing.

Most frequently addressed were gender issues. Muhammad was interested to see kinship emerge spontaneously as a major topic in many of the writings, with intellectual concerns also appearing frequently (233). Thirty-seven of the 48 pieces demonstrated resistance to power structures that the girls encountered in their lives; Muhammad classified these structures as relating to “Physical beauty,” “Education,” “Abuse and violence,” “being portrayed as a monolithic group,” “Sexualizing and objectification,” “Racial stereotypes,” and “Personal self-hood (personal struggles, such as self-confidence)” (235). The girls responded to these power structures by often depicting the need for and possibility of “agency and social change” (239).

Specific examples include Jasmine’s broadside poem and her interview about the content of the poem, in both of which she questioned why Black girls are seen as a homogenous group while White people, who similarly look alike, are seen as individuals (233-37). Violet, writing about issues coded as “sexual representation,” explored the implications of the loss of Black men in the lives of Black women (240-41). Muhammad writes that such expressions of issues important to the girls in her study signal increased agency as the girls use representation of themselves through writing to “bring awareness” to topics that matter in their lives (241).

Muhammad recommends that language-arts educators become more alert to the importance for African-American girls of developing their identities through reflective self-representation, and that teachers refine prompts and assignments to encourage these explorations. Educators must also be aware of the power of dominant discourses to direct their own perceptions of students. More nuanced understanding of the lives and histories of their students will help teachers offer these girls opportunities to develop a sense of self and agency (233-34). Muhammad establishes four goals for students encouraged to participate in such literacy practices:

(1) to advance proficiencies in literacy; (2) to make sense of their identities; (3) to build and nurture intellectual development; and (4) to gain print authority. (229)

Muhammad captures the intent of her study with an image from Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South of an eye partly covered with a bandage so that vision is obscured. Ensuring that African-American women are heard restores the sight so that the eye “sees a circle where before it saw a segment” (qtd. in Muhammad 225). Muhammad’s work envisions similarly restoring such full sight in the lives and selves of African American girls.


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Read and Michaud. Professional Writing as Rhetorical Education. CCC, Feb. 2015. Posted 04/21/15.

Read, Sarah, and Michael J. Michaud. “Writing about Writing and the Multimajor Professional Writing Course.” College Composition and Communication 66.3 (2015): 427-57. Print.

Sarah Read and Michael J. Michaud propose an enriched version of the undergraduate professional writing course that will allow students to become more rhetorically “savvy” (432) in negotiating workplace writing contexts and to more successfully transition from school writing to writing in other environments.

Their approach incorporates the tenets of writing-about-writing (WAW), which they argue will move students beyond reproducing the standard forms of more traditional “business writing” courses, such as memos and letters. In order to function successfully in the rhetorical environments they will encounter beyond college, writers must be able to analyze how writing works in specific situations among specific audiences and stakeholders and to adjust their responses across changing contexts. Drawing on the work of Doug Brent and Doug Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, Read and Michaud posit that such rhetorical flexibility demands that learning shift from “skill transfer,” in which students can produce a particular written artifact, to “learning transformation,” in which the focus is on learning about learning: learning how to study and respond to new contexts as they occur (429, 434). Read and Michaud write that students’ ability to take what they learn in writing classes beyond the classroom is an important outcome for the field of composition studies; they argue that making the study of professional writing a study of how writing accomplishes tasks across diverse environments renders it “a rich pedagogical practice uniquely suited to the [multimajor professional writing] classroom” (429).

In order to develop their proposal for enhancing students’ rhetorical fluency in professional-writing situations, Read and Michaud review two extant models for fostering recognition of the rhetorical nature of professional writing and enabling the transfer of learning across the school/work interface. The “genre-based” model positions students as researchers of professional writing artifacts and how they function socioculturally in use outside the classroom. This model must overcome drawbacks in that analyzing genres in classrooms as isolated objects differs from studying them in authentic contexts, where they are used to accomplish “strictly instrumental” goals (432). Moreover, students may not understand the dynamics of the particular contexts well enough to recognize the nuances of genre use in a given location (432). Genre-based models overcome these obstacles by incorporating activity theory in order to locate the genre in actual use and by incorporating “structured reflection” to draw out students’ awareness of “what they have learned about learning to write” (434; emphasis original).

In “client-based” approaches, in contrast, students occupy a “protoprofessional” role in which they work on specific projects within a workplace context (435). While this approach allows students to experience writing as an authentic professional activity, it must incorporate strategies to make the experience “generalizable” beyond the specific application (435). A strength of this approach is that it allows students to share in a sociocultural interaction that develops rhetorical awareness (436). Read and Michaud argue that WAW integrates the strengths of both these approaches.

They use as a primary source Doug Downs’s “seven rationales for WAW” developed for first-year courses. Of these, the most relevant are those that emphasize “transfer” and “authentic” experiences (436-37). They each provide an overview of a course they have designed that draws on WAW to expand the rhetorical content of a professional writing curriculum.

Read’s course “teach[es] professional writing as a research activity” (438). Students choose a participant in a specific workplace site to study in depth over a semester. They are taught analytical tools used in writing studies as well as field research practices such as interviewing and data collection (440). Read provides them with an online tool, GEMviz, in order to create “genre ecology models” mapping the rhetorical context in which their participant works (441-43). Students are encouraged not only to use the analytical and online tools but also to critique and adapt them, even to the point of “abandoning [them] for a better tool” if necessary. This active critical role “foregrounds how knowledge production is a highly dynamic, recursive, and rhetorical process in both academic and professional environments” (443). Read argues that the three most relevant “rationales” from Downs’s list are difficult to teach: understanding that writing is more than “the transcription of language to print” and casting writing as “studyable” confound students’ expectations for a writing course, while designing truly authentic experiences places complex demands on the course itself (439). Similarly, the two course goals exist in tension with each other: developing “[s]trategies for encountering new workplace writing situations” at the same time students learn conventional forms and practices (440). Read finds that a reflection letter asking students to explore the ways in which they have learned the difference between rhetorical strategies and conventions reveals a heightened awareness of “the nature of learning in general” (446).

In Michaud’s course, students acquire “declarative knowledge” that they then “operationalize” through field research of a particular workplace participant and a particular genre of their choice (449). The course is built around the concept of the “knowledge society” and how writing functions in roles students themselves will adopt in such societies (447). Students read work by scholars of knowledge production like Deborah Brandt, then interview their participant and report via informal assignments and two formal reports on their use of this scholarship to learn about the participant as a knowledge worker (447-50). Reflection built into each report allows students to focus on their discoveries about the transition from academic to professional environments (450). Michaud reports that students enter the course unaware of the concept of “knowledge society” and of the importance of writing in that society (449); their reflections reveal learning not only that “there would be writing after college [but also that] there would likely be a good deal of it” (452; emphasis original), they also learn that this writing as well as the contexts in which it will occur will require “new learning” which they must approach through the application of what Doug Brent calls “flexible general knowledge” (qtd. in Read and Michaud 451). This flexible knowledge allows them to “transform” knowledge to meet new needs.

The practices of both courses, Read and Michaud contend, make a professional writing course a “rhetorical education” that functions as “another site within a liberal arts curriculum for enculturating students into the habits of lifelong learning” (454).


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Gallagher, John R. Templates in Web 2.0. C&C, Spring 2015. Posted 04/14/15.

Gallagher, John R. “The Rhetorical Template.” Computers and Composition 35 (2015): 1-11. Web. 25 March 2015.

John R. Gallagher addresses the role of the “template” as a component of the rhetorical situation when writing for Web 2.0, a question with implications for the debate over the relationship between form and content. He bases his claim that Web templates can be used creatively, flexibly, and even subversively on his own experiences as well as the responses of students to an assignment designed to increase attention to the role of templates in guiding writers’ actions. In particular, he focuses on Facebook’s “profile” and “cover” photos to illustrate how users of these standard forms can reinterpret the possibilities they offer.

To situate the template in the form/content debate, Gallagher presents the concerns of Kirsten Arola that as a preordained form, templates allow writers to insert content without consideration of the role of form. The form becomes “invisible” (qtd. in Gallagher 1). To address this claim, Gallagher reviews the scholarship of the rhetorical situation, which has historically revolved around the question of whether the situation or the intentions of the rhetor call forth “rhetorical discourse” (2). Gallagher affirms subsequent scholarship on the rhetorical situation that maintains that rhetor and situation are not discrete entities available for analysis in isolation, but rather are components of a process in which situation and rhetor are constantly repositioned by their interactions with each other and with their contexts (3). In this view, no situation is ever self-contained; its final meaning is always deferred as it awaits “another word or idea with which to create a comparison” (3).

Application of genre theory allows Gallagher to foreground how Web 2.0 contexts develop through social interaction as users of templates share “standardize[d]” processes and options that are nonetheless open to interpretation and multiple iterations (4). Gallagher argues that users participate in the creation of the conventions that characterize Web 2.0 discourse, including the ways templates can be manipulated. Far from being a stable form that dictates particular responses, Gallagher contends, templates, like genres, “are stable only in their historical and temporal contexts” (4), always subject to updates and new uses in which the actions of writers make the form meaningful (8). While the template privileges certain decisions and choices, Gallagher writes that all forms of media require rhetors to work within constraining boundaries and to explore the possibilities within those boundaries for meeting rhetors’ goals (8).

The developers of templates are also actors within the situation of which the template is a part, updating and revising templates in response to user actions (4). Ultimately, although the template does provide “a baseline series of choices” (4), what the template invites depends on the ways writers find to use it: “A template is never complete without a writer” (8). Gallagher disagrees with Arola: the influence of a template only vanishes when writers fail to think of the template as “a rhetorical tool” (5).

Gallagher provides examples of his own use of the Facebook profile and cover photos as well as the status update template to show that the content inserted into these forms can take on varied and unexpected meanings depending on his individual decisions about selection and arrangement of the standard elements (5-7). He includes a classroom assignment, “Examining the Template on the Internet,” which asks students to take explicit notice of the role of the template as they use it: “to see design, layout, and arrangement as part of content” (9). Reflective writing on this assignment generates discussion on how changes to templates alter rhetorical opportunities, how different templates on different sites affect such opportunities, and how the privacy elements in template use affect decisions about audience (10). Gallagher argues that a fuller awareness of templates as an element in rhetorical situations will make visible the ongoing construction of meaning their flexibility and openness to iteration enable (10).


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Williams, Mark Alan. Religious Discourse in Student Writing. CE, March 2015. Posted 04/07/15.

Williams, Mark Alan. “Transformations: Locating Agency and Difference in Student Accounts of Religious Experience.” College English 77.4 (2015): 338-63. Print.

Mark Alan Williams addresses the difficulties religious students face in the academic setting of a college writing classroom. He particularly sees this difficulty as arising from the effects of dominant depictions of religion dispensed by public media and figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (339). These “official” representations insist on dogmatic or monolithic approaches to religion that lead critical scholars in composition studies to endorse a “conflict narrative” that casts religious students in negative terms and limits options for dealing with religion in student texts (341, 344-45).

Williams argues that these dominant approaches may not accord with students’ religions as they themselves see and practice these faiths in their everyday lives (341). Students attempting to position themselves in relation to their religion may feel incapable of challenging such “hegemonic” portrayals, and, Williams contends, may lack a suitable discourse or effective models for crafting a “religious middle” where more varied, even progressive practice may be pursued (340, 342). Efforts of academics to engage students in critical examination of their views often fail to recognize students’ struggles with the ways in which power and culture constrain their agency and ability to express the complex nature of their lived faiths. Williams argues for strategies that will allow students more agency to define their religious positions. Such strategies will address productive “frictions” among various religious discourses and between religious discourses and academic goals (339, 359).

Building on work by A. Suresh Canagarajah, Williams proposes “translingualism” as a fruitful approach to students’ religious discourse when it enters writing classrooms (349-51). Growing out of work on “World Englishes,” Canagarajah’s view of translingualism focuses on the degree to which language is created and determined by the everyday practice and interaction of users, who bear responsibility for the shape it takes (349). In this view, “accommodation” of varied language use allows “code-meshing” that opens the possibility of new codes that permit new social and cultural formations (349-50). Williams parallels this view of language with the “formational perspectives on religion” of anthropologists Bahira Sherif and Talal Asad, for whom religion, like language, only exists in the ways it is practiced in lived experience (351). Williams provides examples of groups within religious contexts meshing official doctrine with lived revisions to destabilize and reinvent received depictions of religious practice (352-54).

To explore translingualism’s effects in a classroom setting, Williams recounts the work of a Muslim woman who drew on different assignments, including a researched problem-analysis paper and an op-ed discussion, to explain her faith to academic readers (355). For Williams, the student’s use of the op-ed format to mesh her personal experiences as a Muslim woman in American society with the academic argumentative register effectively laid the ground for his acceptance of her redefinition of widely disseminated negative terms (357). Illustrating his claim that religion is created and recreated in use, Williams cites the student’s evocation of the personal as a demonstration of how

the religious personal becomes a critical tool enabling writers to more authoritatively flesh out the practical . . . meanings of religious life for academic peers and instructors whose representational context has predisposed them to grant greater legitimacy to monolithic, negative images of religion. (358)

Williams contends that the student’s efforts at defining herself within and against these multifaceted discourses allowed her access to the tensions between her practical enactment of Islam and the more rigid structures within which her enactment had to evolve (358). Thus, he contends, writing invites students to examine the relations between the power formations that work to constrain religion and the individual practice that can reshape it. Through writing, students can be encouraged to find a voice with which to work out their own interpretations of their faiths without sacrificing their commitments, as instructors resist “insulating them from change or . . . forcing change,” instead providing them “the opportunity to examine these relations for themselves” (359).


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Thein, Guise, and Sloan. Emotional Rules in Student Response. RTE, Feb. 2015. Posted 03/31/15

Thein, Amanda Haertling, Megan Guise, and DeAnn Long Sloan. “Examining Emotional Rules in the English Classroom: A Critical Discourse Analysis of One Student’s Literary Responses in Two Academic Contexts.” Research in the Teaching of English 49.3 (2015): 200-23. Print.

Amanda Haertling Thein, Megan Guise, and DeAnn Long Sloan explore the ways in which emotion inevitably pervades classroom environments and argue for more attention to how students understand the “emotional rules” of different learning situations. They focus on pedagogy in literature with a call for similar research in writing, drama, or other language-arts coursework (219).

The authors draw from a broader qualitative project a case study of a “focal” student, Nina, enrolled in Sloan’s 10th-grade course. They chose such students as examples of a diverse range of “reading interests, abilities, and levels of engagement” (205). Nina, an able student who reads widely, is studied as she engages in two learning contexts, a whole-class seminar circle discussing Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and a three-student “literature circle” focusing on Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina in which the students can interact without the direct oversight of a teacher (206). The researchers supplemented transcripts of discussion in each context with interviews with Nina. Thein, Guise, and Sloan examine Nina’s very different rhetorical choices as she responds to literature in the two different environments (205).

The authors’ focus emanates from their contention that emotion has often been theorized as an individual response that should be bracketed because it interferes with the analytical mindset necessary for true critical engagement. On the contrary, they maintain that emotion always underlies students’ construction of the proper way to respond in any given learning environment and, if ignored, can constrain the kinds of learning possible (205). They characterize the rules for incorporating emotion into academic environments and for displaying emotion as “circulating and sticking” through sociocultural processes in which people learn what is expected in each situation (203). Unless such “emotional rules” are “unstuck,” they close off certain interpretive options and allow important issues to be elided (213, 217-18).

The authors’ observations and interviews lead them to characterize Nina’s in-class responses as largely directed to Sloan as the teacher and structured to accord with the attitudes and ideologies Nina believes Sloan values. These include emotionally restrained expressions of tolerance and analytical contextualization of characters’ behavior. In contrast, in the relatively unsupervised literature-circle setting, Nina and her classmates reveal immediate, even visceral, emotional reactions to events in Bastard Out of Carolina. Drawing on the model of critical discourse analysis presented by N. Fairclough, the authors contrast these two sets of responses through examination of “genre,” “style,” and “discourse.” Genre relates to the socially transmitted emotional rules that determine appropriate emotional expression in different contexts; style allows analysis of modes of expression such as tone, voice level, use of metaphor, and phrasing. Discourse involves an account of the “themes” and “ideologies” that appear in the different environments (207-08).

Thein et al. illustrate with coded examples from transcripts and from interviews that Nina intuited “neutral” comments as acceptable within the seminar circle (212), whereas in the small-group student-led literature circle, all three students felt free to judge characters harshly, to address them by name, and even to advocate violent solutions to issues raised in the book (215). Where in the seminar circle, Nina offered her responses in a quiet “academic register,” in the literature circle she raised her voice and risked profane and politically incorrect language in a “street-smart” register that cast her as “someone powerfully able to cope with the fear and violence depicted in the novel” (215). Additionally, in their small group, the students responded to each other rather than to the teacher, as was Nina’s habit in the larger seminar circle (215).

Thein et al. note that Nina may have been drawing on emotional rules from experiences in earlier literature classes rather than accurately interpreting Sloan’s intentions (218). They consider teachers’ attention to students’ reading of such rules as crucial because of the tendency of analytical, academic registers and genres to drive such emotions underground where their implications cannot be part of the discussion. The authors contend that while emotions such as anger and a desire for violent solutions may not be “better” responses (217), they open up new interpretive opportunities that allow students a fuller exploration of their relationship to texts. For example, they argue that for Nina, the examination of varying perspectives she felt was appropriate in Sloan’s class meant trying out only certain approved perspectives; others that she expressed in the less constrained environment were inconsistent with the academic registers and discourses she saw as invited by the class (218). Teachers can help students recognize the existence of these rule sets in order to help them better investigate their responses to a range of emotionally laden situations (218).


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Dryer and Peckham. Social Context of Writing Assessment. WPA, Fall 2014. Posted 3/24/2015.

Dryer, Dylan B., and Irvin Peckham. “Social Contexts of Writing Assessment: Toward an Ecological Construct of the Rater.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 38.1 (2014): 12-41.

Dylan B. Dryer and Irvin Peckham argue for a richer understanding of the factors affecting the validity of writing assessments. A more detailed picture of how the assumptions of organizers and raters as well as the environment itself drive results can lead to more thoughtful design of assessment processes.

Drawing on Stuart MacMillan’s “model of Ecological Inquiry,” Dryer and Peckham conduct an “empirical, qualitative research study” (14), becoming participants in a large-scale assessment organized by a textbook publisher to investigate the effectiveness of the textbook. Nineteen raters including Dryer and Peckham, all experienced college-writing teachers, examined reflective pieces from the portfolios of more than 1800 composition students using the criteria of Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing; Writing Processes; and Knowledge of Conventions from the WPA Outcomes Statement 1.0 (15). In addition to scores on each of these criteria, raters assigned holistic scores that served as the primary data for Dryer and Peckham’s study. Raters were introduced to the purpose of the assessment and to the criteria and benchmark papers by a “chief reader” characterized by the textbook publisher as “a national leader in writing assessment research” (19). The room set-up consisted of four tables with three to four raters and a table leader charged with maintaining the scoring protocols presented by the chief reader. Dryer and Peckham augmented their observations and assessment data with preliminary questionnaires, interviews, exit surveys, and focus groups.

Dryer and Peckham adapted MacMillan’s four-level model by dividing the environment into “social contexts” of field, room, table, and rater (14). Field variables involved the extent to which the raters were attuned to general assumptions common to composition scholarship, such as definitions of concepts and how to prioritize the four criteria (19-22). The “room” system consisted of the expectations established by the chief reader and the degree to which raters worked within those expectations as they applied the criteria (22-24). Table-specific variables were based on the recognition that each table operated with its own microecology growing out of such components as interpersonal interactions among the raters and the interventions of the table leaders (25-30). Finally, the individual-rater system encompassed factors such as how each rater negotiated the space between his or her own responses to the process and the expectations and pressures of the field, room, and table (30-33).

Field-level findings included the observation that most of the raters agreed with the ordered ranking of the criteria that had been chosen by the WPA team that developed the outcomes (20-21). The authors maintain that the ability of their study to identify the outliers (three of seventeen raters) who considered Writing Processes and Knowledge of Conventions most important permits a sense of how widely the field’s values have spread throughout the profession (22). Collecting a complete “scoring history” for each rater, including the number of “overturned” scores, or scores that deviated from the room consensus, allowed the finding that ranking the four criteria differently from the field consensus led to a high percentage of such incorrect scores (21).

The room-level conclusions demonstrated the assumption that there actually is a “real” or correct score for each paper and that the benchmark papers adequately represent how a paper measured against the selected criteria can earn this score. This phenomenon, the authors argue, tends to pervade assessment environments (23). Raters were extolled for bringing “professional” expertise to the process (19); however, raters whose scores deviated too far from the correct score were judged “out of line” (22). Interviews and surveys reveal that raters were concerned with the fit between their own judgments and the “room” score and sometimes struggled to adjust their scores to more closely match the room consensus (e.g., 23-24).

At the table level, observations and interviews revealed the degree to which some raters’ behavior and perceived attitudes influenced other raters’ decisions (e.g., 28). Table leaders’ ability to keep the focus on the specific criteria, redirecting raters away from other, more individual criteria, affected overall table results (25-27): A comparison of the range of table scores with the overall room score enabled the authors to designate some tables as “timid,” unwilling to risk awarding high or low scores, and others as “bold,” able to assign scores across the entire 1-6 range (25). Dryer and Peckham note that some raters consciously opted for a 2 rather than a 1, for example, because they felt that the 2 would be “adjacent” to either a 1 or a 3 and thus “safe” from being declared incorrect (28).

Discussion of the rater-level social system focused on the “surprising degree” to which raters did not actually conform to the approved rubric to make their judgments (31). For example, raters responded to the writer’s perceived gender as well as to suppositions about the English program from which particular papers had been drawn (30-31). Similarly, at the table level, raters veered toward criteria not on the rubric, such as “voice” or “engagement” (24). These raters’ resistance to the room expectations showed up overtly in the exit surveys and interviews but not in the data from the assessment itself.

Dryer and Peckham recommend four adjustments to standard procedures for such assessments. First, awareness of the “ecology of scoring” can suggest protocols to head off the most likely deviations from consistent use of the rubric (33-34). Second, this same awareness can prevent overconfidence in the power of calibration and norming to disrupt individual preconceptions about what constitutes a good paper (34-35). Third, the authors recommend more opportunities to discuss the meaning and value of key terms and to air individual concerns with room and field expectations (35). Fourth, the collection of data like individual and table-level scoring as well as measures of overall and individual alignment with the field should become standard practice. Rather than undercutting the validity of assessments, the authors argue, such data would underscore the complexity of the process and accentuate the need for care and expertise both in evaluating student writing and in applying the results, heading off the assumption that writing assessment is a simple or mechanical task that can easily be outsourced (36).


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Pajares, Frank. Writing Self-Efficacy. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 2003. Posted 3/2/2015.

Pajares, Frank. “Self-Efficacy Beliefs, Motivation, and Achievement in Writing: A Review of the Literature.” Reading and Writing Quarterly 19 (2003): 139-58. Web. Educational researcher Frank Pajares of Emory University, writing in Reading and Writing Quarterly in 2003, reviews twenty years of research into Albert Bandura’s concept of “self-efficacy” as it relates to student writing. Self-efficacy, which measures one’s belief in one’s ability to complete or succeed at tasks, usually in particular areas, has been more widely studied as it affects success in mathematics and science, but Pajares reports increasing interest from language arts researchers since the 1980s as more scholars address the social and emotional aspects of writing (141-42). Findings indicate that self-efficacy, more than any other source of motivation, influences career choices and predicts success at writing, influencing such contributors to overall success as willingness to take on new, challenging tasks; willingness to persevere despite obstacles or failure; and ability to enjoy or value an activity (140). In fact, Pajares reports, individuals’ confidence in their abilities to succeed at a task may more strongly affect whether or not they succeed than their actual competence level (153). People acquire their self-beliefs from four sources: their sense of previously having “mastered” similar tasks; comparisons of their successes with those of others; their perceptions of others’ judgments about their abilities; and their experiences of stress or anxiety in relation to the task (140-41). Pajares cites findings that other kinds of self-belief that are commonly seen as components of motivation become “non-significant” when self-efficacy is included as a variable. These include writing apprehension; the student’s view of writing as a valuable activity; the student’s view of him- or herself as able to “self-regulate” by self-monitoring and independently adopting strategies for improvement; “self-concept,” a more generalized perception of one’s overall “self-worth”; and “achievement goals,” which capture why students want to succeed, such as intrinsic satisfaction from learning itself rather than a desire for the extrinsic satisfaction of being judged favorably by others (146-48). In other words, these factors may be a result of the individual’s level of self-efficacy rather than contributors to it. Only “preperformance assessment”—a measure of such factors as writing aptitude and prior success—equals self-efficacy as a predictor of writing success (148), and Pajares points to evidence that aptitude and prior success themselves are most likely the products of self-efficacy, so that measures of preperformance are in fact indirect measures of self-efficacy (145). Research indicates that self-efficacy in writing is most often assessed in three ways: as confidence in one’s mastery of particular skills, like punctuation and grammar; as confidence in one’s ability to complete a specific task, like write an essay; or confidence that one can earn a particular grade in a language-arts class (143-44). People hold differing self-efficacy beliefs depending on the task being undertaken; reporting Bandura’s guidelines for effectively evaluating the effects of self-efficacy on success at a task, Pajares cautions that the self-efficacy measures must correspond to the actual task to be assessed, that is, if the outcome is a task like a successful essay, the self-efficacy features to be examined must be those involved in actually producing an essay, not more basic skills such as handwriting competence or mechanics (142). According to Pajares’s review, findings on gender differences are mixed. Girls in lower grades tend to have more confidence in their writing than boys, but by middle school, even though girls believe they write better than boys, they no longer score higher on self-efficacy. Pajares reports speculation that at higher grades, school becomes more masculinized, affecting girls’ attitudes (148-49). Some researchers also posit that girls are less likely to express confidence because they have absorbed a “feminine orientation” that discourages boastfulness (149). Others suggest that girls think they write better than boys because writing, in contrast to math and science, is categorized as a component of a feminine orientation. Pajares reports findings that “gender differences in academic motivation may in part be accounted for by differences in the beliefs that students hold about their gender rather than by their gender per se” (150). Pajares finds less authoritative research on writing self-efficacy in minority students (151-52). Studies find that Hispanic students have lower self-efficacy with regard to their writing than non-Hispanic Whites; this was not the case with regard to math. Pajares raises the possibility that “entrenched, negative perceptions of one’s ability” may impede minority students in academic settings (151). He notes the need for broader research to follow up on these questions. In general, teachers must be aware of the power of self-efficacy beliefs to promote or derail learning. Research suggests that students’ efficacy beliefs about their abilities as writers declines as they progress through school, which further suggests that self-confidence may not be given its due as a factor in ongoing success (152). Efforts to break learning down into challenging tasks that students can succeed at and awareness of the impact of adults’ judgments on students’ self-confidence can prevent negative beliefs from limiting academic achievement (153). Significantly, according to Pajares, efforts to address such affective factors as writing anxiety will not improve outcomes unless the larger construct of overall writing self-efficacy is emphasized (146).