College Composition Weekly: Summaries of research for college writing professionals

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Category Archives: labor issues in composition


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Beare and Stenberg. Emotion and Publication in Rhet/Comp. CE, Nov. 2020. Posted 01/15/2021.

Beare, Zachary C., and Shari J. Stenberg. “‘Everyone Thinks It’s Just Me’: Exploring the Emotional Dimensions of Seeking Publication.” College English83.2 (2020): 103-26. Print.

Zachary C. Beare and Shari J. Stenberg investigated the emotional experiences of academics in rhetoric and composition who were developing and submitting material for publication. The authors recruited at research-intensive institutions listed in the Consortium of Doctoral Programs, interviewing three assistant, three associate, and three full professors, with one addition who contributed in writing (106). Interviewees ranged across a number of specialties and research areas. Though specific demographic information was not requested, the interviews indicated “a diversity of intersectional identities” (107).

The authors explain the analysis of their data as a qualitative, collaborative, “iterative, multicycle process” (107). Among the data collected were “contextual cues” suggesting emotional responses, including, for example, “charged language” (107).

According to Beare and Stenberg, the role of emotion as central to writing, to the teaching of writing, and to the lives of academics in general has become a research focus in higher education (103). Although much attention addresses “burnout,” the authors cite a study by Robert H. Stupnisky et al. indicating that while faculty appear to have developed strategies for handling emotions centered around teaching, research concerns trigger “more anxiety, guilt, and helplessness” (qtd. in Beare and Stenberg 103).

Threads of research, the authors report, can be traced to work by Alice G. Brand in 1985 and Lynn Worsham in 1998. These projects led to recognition that emotion is “socially scripted and imbued with power,” with some emotions deemed appropriate in certain contexts and others culturally discouraged (104). The authors integrate this research with the concept of the “habitus” developed by Pierre Bourdieu, which denotes “acquired patterns of thought, behavior, and taste that correspond to social position” (105). The authors argue that faculty engaged in research are encouraged to adopt a “valorized ‘emotional habitus’” that rejects emotions like anxiety, frustration, anger, or self-doubt (105). The academic writer, the authors write, feels pressured to project rationality and emotional control as marks of an “advanced writer” (105).

Beare and Stenberg extend their discussion of emotional habitus to the concept of “belongingness,” contending that a sense of belonging is an important component of emotional experience (108). In this view, belonging accrues from a sense that one’s individual emotional habitus accords with that approved within one’s community, resulting, in Bourdieu’s words, in “a sense of bodily comfort and ease.” In Bourdieu’s framing, to feel that one belongs can mean having “a feel for the game,” in that one understands accepted behaviors and interactions (qtd. in Beare and Stenberg 108).

The authors write that career status impacted faculty members’ emotional responses to the pressures of publication (107). Pre-tenure participants consistently expressed “feelings of depression and anxiety” (108), often linking them to time issues, such as a feeling that they weren’t doing enough or weren’t meeting the pace necessary to assure their belonging in the field (109). In the authors’ view, these respondents compared themselves to “an idealized, ‘inside’ subject, who is confident and certain of their contribution” and who might reflect effects of gender (109). These faculty worried that their insecurity further exacerbated the difficulties presented by their research and writing efforts.

Participants no longer facing tenure pressure evinced less concern about time (110), feeling freer to let projects develop at their own pace. These interview subjects also reported a shift in their attitude toward the review process. Rather than feeling under pressure to accede to every demand, associate and full professors reported learning to assess the quality and relevance of reviews (111). In fact, as they became reviewers themselves, Beare and Stenberg state, these faculty found themselves able to contribute to the rules of the implicit “game” and to valorize reviews that represented “a less emotional and more collaborative, problem-solving, communal practice” (112-3).

Even for more secure faculty, the sense of belonging could be affected by responses to their preferred research areas and modes of presentation. “Tim” expressed frustration that the field seemed resistant to work that is “too curricular, too classroom-based” and to language that “state[s] things simply and directly” (qtd. in Beare and Stenberg 114). Others noted apparent discouragement of work with autobiographical or first-person approaches (114). “Nora” argued that with regard to research, the field seems to prefer work that builds on prior, established research rather than work that takes on new issues (114-15). The authors write that such frustration is a move beyond “assimilation” to a willingness to “question the criteria for belonging in the field” (114).

Asked how they translated their emotional experiences into mentoring for their own graduate students, respondents noted in that graduate school, students are supported and often praised for their work, while reviewers for publication “are looking for the area where your argument falls apart” (115). Many supported advice to make failure much more visible, for example by sharing their own rejections, so that rejection becomes a normal and possibly productive part of the process (119).

Interviewees also noted that graduate school did not prepare students for the amount of revision demanded. Interviews suggested that although students receive feedback on seminar papers, they seldom actually revise them (116) and perhaps, in an environment of diminishing financial support, often graduate with dissertations that could be usefully revised (117). Participants recounted sharing their own revise-and-resubmit experiences so students would understand publication expectations, and also noted encouraging students to submit work earlier rather than waiting for “perfection” with the understanding that revision would inevitably be required (119-120).

In general, participants suggested that mentors could do more to teach “high-performing students how to deal with disappointment or failure” (“James,” qtd. in Beare and Stenberg 118). The authors dispute the idea that the pain of rejection or negative response ever disappears. However, participants indicated that developing strategies for dealing with these inevitabilities and the ensuing emotions was an essential part of persevering in the field. “Tim” suggests that believing in one’s work and considering it “worth the time and energy” can help a writer return to a project even in the face of troubling emotions (qtd. in Beare and Stenberg 120).

“James” calls for attention to “self-care,” in particular what the authors encourage as a practice of “community-care” (121), arguing for a systematic reform of working conditions that drive negative emotions throughout higher education (121). An ethic of community care, the authors write, would foreground “radical listening, empathy, [and] vulnerability” (122). Such an ethic, they contend, could diminished the sense common among academics that they are anomalous failures within their communities and must face the challenges of their field alone (122).


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Wootton, Lacey. Truth-Telling by NTT Faculty as Parrhesiastes.

Wootton, Lacey. “The Affordances of Governance Structures for the Non-Tenure-Track Parrhesiastes.” Forum: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty 24.1 (2020): A10-A16. Print.

Writing in the Fall 2020 Forum: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty, Lacey Wootton argues that non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty should consider the rhetorical practice parrhesia, “speaking frankly,” especially in contexts of unequal power. She writes that parrhesia can be grounded in existing institutional structures where it can enhance faculty’s ability to foreground important and often unwelcome truths.

Wootton explores three different interpretations of parrhesia. In that of Michel Foucault, the parrhesiaste’s first allegiance is to the truth, a stance that may lead to risk and lost relationships but which is necessary if speaking truth can play its “disruptive and critical” role (A12). Kristen Kennedy’s interpretation, Wootton writes, draws on Cynic rhetoric; in this manifestation, the use of parrhesia is linked to kairos and context in that it can be an effective move if its “ethical imperative to speak” signals the inequity of the spaces it disrupts (qtd. in Wootton A12). Not only the speech itself but also the rhetor’s visibility in the particular setting calls out the exclusionary nature of the setting on which it intrudes.

Wootton also cites Arthur E. Walzer, for whom the truth enacted by parrhesia can be  delivered with “artifice and guile . . . that allow the truth to be heard and the relationship to be maintained” (A12).

Wootton contends that institutional structures in academia can provide a context in which parrhesia is appropriate and in fact invited. When NTT faculty hold positions, often appointed ones, on committees and other institutionalized bodies, parrhesia becomes a manifestation of their acknowledged role (A13). These positions within an institution’s accepted hierarchy can constitute the “standing” necessary for effective  intervention, in Foucault’s formulation (A13).

A risk for parrhesiastes who adopt this strategy is that of losing “one’s allegiance to the outsider agenda” and instead settling into “business as usual” (A13). In Wootton’s view, a commitment to parrhesia’s role as truth-telling can undergird the courage necessary to disrupt norms.

Wootton accentuates a need for “political intelligence and structural understanding” for NTT faculty working to move within an institution’s governance environment (A14). She advises that finding pathways into the structural spaces that supply standing requires attention to local conditions; although structural opportunities for participation are often embedded in faculty manuals and other written policies, Wootton writes that “one can’t fully understand local politics” through such documents alone (A14). NTT faculty must work through a “long, incremental process” that may begin with filling in gaps in committees at the department level, “not displacing tenure-line faculty, but rather supplementing their work” (A15).

Such persistence, she argues, foregrounds the power of parrhesia as “presence”: In itself, the figure of the truth-teller confronting risk for the sake of the greater good through the “expected rhetorical behaviors” (A 13) of “codified structures” can disrupt oppressive norms (A 14).


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Kahn, Seth. Devaluing Teaching. CE, July 2020. Posted 09/22/2020.

Kahn, Seth. “We Value Teaching Too Much to Keep Devaluing It.” College English 82.6 (2020): 591-611. Print.

Addressing issues in English/writing studies related to teaching versus research and the professional and labor concerns connected to those issues, Seth Kahn points to a rhetorical tendency in the field that he contends asserts the importance of teaching while often “unwittingly” (608) or “inadvertently” (603) contributing to its devaluation. Of concern to Kahn in particular is the degree to which this often implicit devaluation comes to the attention of decision-makers who are already inclined to denigrate teachers and exploit vulnerable populations (609).

Kahn argues that writing studies has produced a rich scholarly literature on effective teaching that demonstrates how the field is “anchor[ed]” in classroom practice (594), but in his view, this scholarship does not find its way to administrators and politicians who affect educational budgets and priorities (591). Rather, these policy makers are more likely to encounter documents like collective bargaining agreements, departmental personnel policies, social media posts, and articles in widely shared public venues like The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) and Inside Higher Ed (IHE) (591). In Kahn’s view, even well-meaning discussions in such publications encourage audiences to see teaching as less valuable than other academic activities (595).

Kahn contends that assertions and actions meant to demonstrate how the field “values” teaching often undercut their own claims when they rely on ambiguous meanings of “value.” “[C]atered monthly lunches to talk about responding to student writing,” he asserts, “don’t pay the rent” (593). He writes that participating in a “discourse of teaching devaluation” (595) even as positions that “usually require more teaching” (597) become more common both undercuts work toward labor equity and damages public perceptions of academia as a whole.

Kahn sees differences in compensation as clear messages to policy makers that the field does not truly value teaching. He contends that even important scholarship on labor issues shies away from questions of compensation (594); he also reports that responses to most of the proposals in the 2016 CCCC Statement on Working Conditions for Non-Tenure-Track Writing Faculty were “generally positive” but that the call for a minimum of $7,350 per course was “not popular” and deemed “impossible” because non-tenured faculty might out-earn their tenured colleagues. Kahn argues that any tenured faculty member making less than an adjunct teaching eight courses “was also being underpaid,” denoting a larger problem than adjunct pay per se (598).

Kahn points to data revealing that faculty who “just teach” earn less at all levels from those assumed to do research and perform other academic tasks, both within institutions and across types of institutions. His sources reveal that faculty at master’s, four-year, and two-year institutions where faculty are often expected to teach more make less than faculty at doctoral universities (596-97). He notes that institutions rationalize providing lower compensation for teaching faculty by asserting that they are asked for fewer “commitments” (597). Kahn argues that such programs simultaneously acknowledge that participation in teaching-related scholarship would improve teaching (597); he proposes that faculty in lesser-ranked institutions are often active scholars whose research may well outperform that of their better-paid counterparts (598).

In Kahn’s view, institutional policies in which teaching loads increase because of faculty’s “failure” to publish at prescribed levels and the use of phrases like “release time” to do research cast teaching as “punishment” (598-600). He argues further that severing teaching and research often means that faculty whose positions primarily entail teaching are denied the resources to do scholarship at all (598), even though the field claims to be committed to research for and by teachers (595).

Although contending that questions about the value of teaching are distinct from debates about tenure, Kahn locates in IHE and CHE a discourse on tenure and promotion that addresses labor and equity issues only as they pertain to research-intensive positions, with teaching-intensive positions rhetorically erased (602, 606). Kahn argues that this focus on only one faculty cadre elides the fact that it is possible to “build a successful academic career” without feeling overwhelmed by research-heavy demands (602). Such rhetorical framing, he claims, by “generalizing” about the “unimportance” of teaching in an academic setting (602), reduces it to an “[a]fterthought” (600).

Kahn finds the denigration of teaching visible in an article in CHE about recruiting English majors. Distinguishing between the content of such articles and the way they are framed, Kahn finds the idea of encouraging faculty with “expertise in material representative of the English major [to] teach general-education courses” an “interesting concept” (604). However, he writes, not only does the framing imply that the non-tenure-track faculty already teaching the courses would not possess the requisite expertise, it casts such courses as “service courses” that would be a “burden” and moves on to argue for incentives like bonuses to already highly paid faculty (603-04). Such approaches instruct policy makers that “faculty who teach primarily lower-division courses are lesser,” thus “mak[ing] them easier to exploit” (604).

He further notes how subtextual denigration of certain kinds of teaching finds its way into mainstream discussions by analyzing the framing of a news article in IHE on a study of teachers’ motivations for teaching well. He writes that the reporter ignores the limitations acknowledged by the study authors, including the failure to include any two-year-college faculty, and instead presents “faculty ‘generally’ as people who need more motivation to teach well” (606). In Kahn’s view, this generalization erases “those many thousands of us who primarily identify as teachers” (606).

Further examples from CHE and IHE illustrate Kahn’s view that substantive issues can be addressed without devaluing teaching, for example by pointing to structural issues rather than the commitment and ability of adjuncts as explanations for the problems contingent labor poses for students (607). Kahn argues that taking more care not to devalue teaching and the colleagues who do it may not address “the regime of neoliberalism” and its attendant effects, but it is “easy to do right now” and a necessary condition for any of the more extensive goals (607). He makes three “calls”:

  • Be quieter when denigrating any teaching
  • Be louder about valuing all teaching
  • Try to stop other people from denigrating teaching (606; emphasis original)

He writes,

When you denigrate teaching labor, you may not feel like you’re bashing teaching but the effect is the same: You make it easier for people who want to de-professionalize us to do it.

Please stop. (609)


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Brown, William Christopher. Systemic Inequity in English Scholarly Journals. Forum, Spring 2020. Posted 05/24/2020.

Brown, William Christopher. “Scholarly Journals Should Not Replicate the Systemic Inequality of Higher Education.” Forum: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty 23.2 (2020): A3-A9. Print.

In Forum: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty, published twice yearly by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, a section of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), William Christopher Brown critiques the exclusion of non-tenure-track and contingent faculty from important academic positions in English programs and publications.

Pointing to ongoing concern about labor inequity in higher education and in English studies in particular, Brown cites scholarship that characterizes contingent faculty, including full-time faculty not on a tenure track, as “the new faculty majority.” He cites data showing that as of 2014, contingent labor constituted “65% of all faculty employment,” while data on English departments show that the field accounts for substantial percentages of this labor force (A3). Further, data show that the majority of first-year writing courses are taught by faculty not on a tenure track (A4).

In Brown’s view, the importance of these part-time or non-tenure-track faculty to the field warrants concern over a posting on the “Announcements and Calls for Papers” page of the NCTE journal College English in May 2018. This job posting solicited applications for the next editor of the journal English Education. The ad specifically required that applicants be either tenured or far along the tenure path with “a reasonable certainty” of success. In addition, applicants must have published “in English Education or a national journal of similar quality” (qtd. in Brown A3).

Writing as a member and 2018-2019 chair of the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession (A3), Brown argues that despite the journal’s stated mission of “serv[ing]” instructors in the field, this set of requirements “prohibits a majority of faculty associated with the field from serving in a leadership position as editor” (A4).

Brown notes that appointments to editorships and other leadership positions often require that applicants have access to institutional support, such as release time, office staff, and adequate compensation, features which, he posits, the field’s leaders see as “a privilege of the tenured and tenure-track faculty” (A4). In addition, he notes numerous institutions that restrict “publishing subventions”—subsidizes for publishing costs that facilitate the production of academic monographs—to faculty with tenured, tenure-track, or emeritus rank (A4-A5). He argues that this restriction is problematic because more and more non-tenure-track positions now include a research requirement (A5).

Moreover, he contends, increasing numbers of contingent faculty are committed to and successful in academic research and publication, with many having earned PhDs (A6). He points to one writing-center-coordinator position with non-tenure-track status that pays only 80% of what a new tenure-track hire would earn, but requires research, in his view, “provid[ing] lofty goals of research without enhancing the conditions necessary for research to occur” (A6). He presents these cases as ongoing examples of inequity in the field, as more labor and expertise is demanded of contingent faculty while that expertise and ability to lead are denigrated.

Brown notes that the appearance of the English Education ad in an NCTE journal belies the claims on the NCTE website that the organization’s mission is to

strengthen or create inclusive hubs, . . . providing access for more diverse voices to create, collaborate, and lead, within and beyond the organization. (qtd. in Brown A6)

The author cites data from the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of Americaa (TIAA) showing that tenure-track hiring does not meet this goal, with minorities and women occupying tenure-track appointments at lower rates than their actual representation among faculty (A7). Thus, by limiting leadership positions to tenure-track faculty, Brown claims, NCTE perpetuates the lack of diversity it proposes to address.

Brown adds his voice to those of other scholars who have called for contingent faculty to raise their visibility and make themselves heard. He argues that these faculty bring important strengths to the scholarly conversation, and urges those responsible for leadership appointments to consider how their exclusion of contingent faculty increases inequity while denying valuable contributions to the field (A7-A8).

 


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Driscoll et al. Self-Care in Doctoral Education. CCC, Feb. 2020. Posted 04/29/2020.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn, S. Rebecca Leigh, and Nadia Francine Zamin. “Self-Care as Professionalization: A Case for Ethical Doctoral Education in Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication 71.3 (2020): 453-80. Print.

Dana Lynn Driscoll, S. Rebecca Leigh, and Nadia Francine Zamin seek to open a conversation about self-care as a needed component of professional practice in composition, English studies, and related fields. They argue that despite widespread discussions about the life/work balance challenges in areas of the humanities, composition scholarship has paid scant attention to this issue (457). They focus on doctoral programs but recognize the need for better self-care in most forms of academic life (476).

The authors document an ongoing conversation as well as data about faculty and student burnout leading to attrition in humanities programs. They report, for example, a U. C. Berkeley study from 2014 showing that “almost 64% of doctoral students in the arts and humanities were clinically depressed” and a statistic from American Academy of Arts and Sciences showing a degree-completion rate in humanities doctoral programs of 42% (454). They cite concern dating back to Wendy Bishop’s 2000 CCCC Chair’s address and a 1986 article by Maxine Hairston that burnout is “just part of the job” (455).

A further literature review reveals attention to labor conditions for graduate students and, often, women and minorities that the authors see as linked to the need for self-care. Yet, they claim, this work seldom suggests solutions or directly posits how self-care can help address labor exploitation and what Beth Goodbee calls “epistemic injustice” that often casts women and minorities as less capable and thus triggers anxiety about living up to academic demands (qtd. in Driscoll et al. 459). Advice on self-care, the authors write, more often shows up in “self-help” books directed to academics rather than in the academic press (457).

Driscoll et al. developed and piloted a survey that they then distributed widely through listservs and doctoral programs across fields in the post-secondary language arts (460). Their study analyzed responses from 348 students in different stages of their doctoral work and in different specializations; 213 were female, 79 male, 3 gender-nonconforming, and 6 who preferred to not to answer. The 85 faculty respondents, all actively teaching in doctoral programs, included 54 females, 17 males, and 1 gender-nonconforming person (462). Of selected, diverse subsets approached by the authors, 9 students and 8 faculty participated in follow-up interviews (461). The authors note the gender skew and performed a one-way analysis of variance on Likert-scale questions (461).

Faculty reported more self-care practices than students; overall, the authors report that such practices fell into “physiological” actions, such as “getting enough sleep” or “seeing the doctor or dentist”; a wide range of “personal life” efforts such as spending time with friends or working on hobbies; and “professional life” choices focused on improving the work/life balance, such as working off campus or saying “no” (463).

According to the authors, the survey and comments reveal three widespread “barriers” to self-care. Sixty percent of faculty and nearly 90% of students indicated suffering from “academic guilt,” feeling that all their time should be invested in their academic life (464). One student writes that failing to work hard enough implies not “car[ing] enough” about the profession, and that wanting “a more balanced life” affected the decision of whether to apply for a research-institution job (464).

“Burnout,” resulting from what one tenured faculty member called “extreme demands” and leading to a lack of time for self-care, affected 54.3% of faculty and 68.5% of student respondents (464). One student reported concern over “mentors [who] make themselves physically ill over the amount of work they pile on themselves.” These attitudes, the tenured faculty member writes, are “normalized” (qtd. in Driscoll et al. 465).

Feeling that they are failing to work hard enough results in a third barrier to self-care, “imposter syndrome.” Although the study did not ask explicitly about this response, more than 40% addressed concerns that they did not belong in their programs in their interviews (465-66).

The authors report that although majorities of both faculty and students do practice some form of self-care, large majorities of those who do “feel the need to hide it from their academic community” (466). This problem, the authors’ data suggests, is more acute for women and minority students, who both want more opportunities for self-care and more discussion about it in their programs but reveal more guilt in expressing their needs (467). Among faculty, while the authors report “less pronounced” gender differences, data from female faculty still revealed that they experienced more guilt and more tendency to work harder rather than seeking self-care (467).

Driscoll et al. point to psychology as one of the fields in which adequate self-care is a professional “ethical obligation” because it results in practitioners who are better able to address the needs of their students and clients (456-57, 469-70). Self-care as part of professionalism in humanities doctoral programs, the authors write, includes “faculty modeling and mentorship, accessible tools and strategies, and opportunities for self-reflection and discussion” (470). Faculty who have dealt with their own burnout and health crises, the authors recommend, should openly share their experiences and solutions, for example, modeling writing practices and demonstrating to students that it is okay to make a mistake (472). Students can be given tools for choosing commitments and for monotasking, learning when “to politely decline” (472).

In the authors’ view, reflection and discussion can especially help faculty and students recognize how the larger culture of labor shifts in higher education systemically pressures academics to yield to corporatization by working harder even though doing so leads to diminishing results (474). Driscoll et al. call for consideration of this larger culture alongside individual strategies. Student respondents to the study noted “the contradiction of faculty demanding too much while suggesting self-care at the same time” (475). Citing Beth Blum, the authors warn that “calls for ‘self-help’” can be “masks for the cruelty [that is] present” (475) when the focus is on “efficiency, performance, and competitive achievement” (Blum, qtd. in Driscoll et al. 475).

The authors report study limitations, including the exclusive focus on doctoral programs and the need to rely on self-report. Moreover, they note the preponderance of female respondents, positing that women may be more likely to respond to the topic. Finally, they recognize that they did not include race (461-62).

A closing quote from a “full professor faculty participant” reiterates the need for “a disciplinary norm” in which composition becomes a profession capable of “attending to entire whole humans” (qtd. in Driscoll et al. 476). The authors hope that this change will lead away from guilt and burnout and instead toward “the best labor that we are capable of doing” (476).


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Borgman & McClure. Advantages of Online Teaching and PhD Studies. FORUM Fall 2019. Posted 10/30/2019.

Borgman, Jessie, and Christine I. McClure. “The Ultimate Balancing Act: Contingent Online Teaching and PhD Coursework.” Forum: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty 23.1 (2019): A3-A8. Print.

Jessie Borgman and Christine I. McClure recount how the opportunity to both teach and take courses online allowed them to develop professionally and pursue rewarding careers.

The writers are long-time contingent teachers with wide experience in online environments. Both are pursuing PhDs in technical communication programs. MClure takes both face-to-face and online courses, while Borgman’s are all online (A3). As they pursue their graduate studies, they have both experienced teaching full loads as contingent faculty, taking on multiple courses at a range of institutions (A4-A5).

They note that they encounter negatives common to contingent positions, such as pay levels not commensurate with their professional standing (A4), “identity issues,” and “lack of professional development opportunities” (A5). They report heavy workloads, including the need to read and respond to a huge amount of student work, to keep with their own coursework, and to continue their own research and writing (A4). They write that this workload has affected their stress levels, their abilities to find time for their families, and their health (A4).

However, the authors contend that their strategies for dealing with these characteristics of their teaching jobs as well as their PhD coursework have allowed them to pursue career directions that would not have been possible without online education. Acknowledging literature that claims that online teaching is more time- and energy-intensive than face-to-face work (A4), Borgman and McClure simultaneously find the ability to work online both as teachers and as students “freeing” (A3).

A strategy they cite as both freeing and enabling is the recognition that they are not tied to “9-to-5 lives”: they “must always be prepared to do what [they] can when [they] can.” They characterize this situation as “a new fluid workspace” that has allowed them to meet demands that would otherwise be impossible (A4).

They also note personal characteristics they believe contribute to their achievements. These include being “extremely organized,” “highly motivated,” and possessed of “excellent time management skills” (A3). They have developed the ability to use synched calendars to coordinate the many intersecting threads of their job, coursework, and home requirements (A5-A6).

The lack of professional development led them to accumulate their own strategies over their years of teaching; they cast their decisions to enter PhD programs as a desire for “more” (A5). They also find that their coursework has led to networks and collaborative alliances that allow them to grow “more confident” about their career trajectories (A5).

One advantage they cite for their online trajectories is the ability to avoid heavy debt loads. They find that flexibility in their programs and employment allows them to take time off as needed to accumulate funds and that financial assistance may often be available from institutions where they work and study (A6).

Borgman enjoys the freedom afforded by contingent work, as well as the opportunity to teach at a wide range of institutions; she does not seek tenure-track employment. McClure notes the value of the benefits she now receives in her current full-time position as an instructor, but is pursuing her research agenda to work toward a tenure-track job (A6).

The authors stress that working online as contingent faculty and studying online need not, “at least for some,” be a “disadvantage” (A6).

Being online students and educators has been more of a blessing in both our lives than a hindrance; we have been able to pursue more opportunities than we had imagined. (A6-A7).

 


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Wilkinson, Caroline. Collaboration in Dual-Credit Programs. WPA, Spring 2019. Posted 07/14/2019.

Wilkinson, Caroline. “From Dialogue to Collaboration in Dual-Credit Programs.” Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administrators 42.2 (2019): 80-99. Print.

Caroline Wilkinson addresses tensions that arise when universities implement dual-credit courses (credit-bearing college courses taught in a high-school environment). She draws on the experiences of two high-school teachers involved in a dual-credit program at the University of Louisville, a large Midwestern/Southern institution (83).

Wilkinson cites statistics showing that nationally, 1.4 million high-school students take dual-credit courses, with 77% of these courses taught at the high school and 45% of those located at the high school taught by high-school teachers (80). She attributes “a real anxiety” to “[m]any composition educators” with regard to staffing dual-credit courses with secondary teachers (80). Having taught dual-credit courses herself, Wilkinson had “observed the very real differences in the contexts and cultures” that separate high school and college (83). Research indicates that the quality of dual-credit programs varies and that the benefits to students depend on various factors; “nonwhite” and female students seem to gain from the experience (81).

Acknowledging that composition scholarship has begun to consider the roles of the high-school teachers recruited to teach these courses, Wilkinson writes that scholarship specifically dealing with these teachers’ experiences is “limited” (81). Among her goals is to bring teachers’ voices into the discussion.

Students accepted into dual-credit courses at the University of Louisville met a number of criteria, including a 3.0 GPA and minimum entrance scores on standardized tests; they had to be nominated by their English teacher and approved by a counselor (83). “Most” teachers in the program had a Master’s in English or 18 hours of graduate English credit. “Emma” and “Daphne” were the only teachers at their high school to meet these criteria (84).

Instructors also took the university’s “Teaching College Composition” course and to attend the summer orientation. In addition, they taught a standard syllabus and used pedagogical materials, including major assignments, provided by the university (83).

An important question for Wilkinson is “Can dual-credit courses be equivalent without being identical?” (88). She notes scholarship addressing the contextual differences between high school and college. Dual-credit students attend a year-long course with peers they already know rather than a semester-long course requiring them to build community with new acquaintances through the course itself (87-88). Daily class meetings also allow students more contact with instructors (84).

Wilkinson notes ways in which Emma and Daphne’s need to function within the full-time environment of the high-school community contributed to these differences. Differences in academic-year start dates meant that the two high-school teachers could not attend the full summer orientation (83). Similarly, the longer academic year meant that the graduate teaching assistants who attended the practicum course with Daphne and Emma completed the curriculum in less time than they did, a difference that made it hard for Daphne and Emma to make the best use of information covered in the fall semester but applied later in the year (85). The high-school teachers lacked the contact with other instructors teaching the same material and could not fully avail themselves of office hours and other support from the university writing program administrator (86). These teachers found that their workload made it harder for them to give the kinds of individualized responses they felt the college work called for (87). For these reasons, Wilkinson concludes that the courses were not “identical” (88).

However, she argues that they were “equivalent” (88, 94). The high-school course followed the same syllabus and used the same materials as the university-based version. The teachers received the same training as on-campus graduate assistants and “had a supportive WPA” (88). Both teachers and students recognized the unique features the college course offered, such as many useful materials and a more interactive environment (84, 86). Moreover, the high-school students had access to the university library and writing center and met new requirements, such as the use of outside sources, for their assignments (87).

Wilkinson expresses concern that “equivalence” in these respects does not align with scholarship that urges universities and high-schools to see dual-credit programs as a “partnership” (88). Instead, in Wilkinson’s view, the relationship is “unidirectional,” with the university setting the contexts and terms (89).

Thus, despite administrative support, the two teachers felt “separate from” and “different” from the teaching community embodied by the Teaching College Composition course (90). Operating on a different time schedule, which meant separation into a distinct “mentoring group” (90), was one factor in this sense of isolation; another important factor, for Wilkinson, is that the course addressed issues faced by graduate assistants as first-time teachers, while Daphne and Emma had many years of teaching experience behind them and had very different needs (89). Wilkinson calls for a more explicit “bilateral” partnership in which the expertise of the high-school teachers is recognized and drawn on in the design and implementation of a dual-credit course (91).

Wilkinson considers taking the Teaching College Composition course “formal professionalization” into composition studies for the high-school teachers (92). In her view, this professionalization process creates problems for both the teachers and for composition as a field. Because of their inability to develop community within the university program and their earlier professionalization as high-school English teachers focusing on literature rather than writing, the teachers did not see themselves as true college instructors (91). Wilkinson raises concern that positioning high-school teachers as competent to teach college writing may mean that “the long-fought for professionalization of the field is at risk” (93). First-year enrollments that form the staple of many writing programs may also suffer, resulting in fewer composition jobs. Finally, composition scholarship may cease to address first-year writing if it is delegated to the schools (93-94).

Wilkinson addresses remedies for WPAs dealing with dual-credit pressures. Noting that programs vary in the amount of resources they can devote to developing a successful dual-credit partnership (95), she urges that universities designate specific faculty as point-people for such efforts (96). She writes that mentorships can be more accommodating to the teachers’ schedules, but must be paired with coursework that introduces composition theory (93). Mentorships between new dual-credit teachers and more experienced ones can provide a stronger sense of community (96). Importantly, in her view, the teachers themselves can be included more fully in the development and implementation of these programs. Ideally, “dual credit programs provide an access point where high school and college instructors can work to collaborate on writing pedagogy and professionalization” (97).


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Hanson and de los Reyes. Adjunct Identity as “Compositionists.” Forum, Spr. 2019. Posted 05/27/2019.

Hanson, Gina, and Chloe de los Reyes. “Identity Crisis: Daring to Identify as More than ‘Just’ Adjunct Composition Instructors.” Forum: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty 22.2 (2019): A4-15. Print.

In the Spring 2019 Forum: Issues about Part-Time and Contingent Faculty, included in the March 2019 issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Gina Hanson and Chloe de los Reyes discuss the disciplinary identification of adjunct composition instructors. Of concern is the question of which faculty members may call themselves “compositionists” (A4), and what restrictions on the use of this title mean for those who, in the authors’ view, are denied the authority it confers.

The authors are part-time lecturers teaching four first-year-writing courses per semester in the English Department of a large public university in southern California; their experience includes teaching across a range of institutions and programs (A7). They note that the reliance of higher education on contingent labor has long been a topic of discussion, but argue that despite decades of concern, little has changed (A5). While acknowledging the importance of economic issues to part-time teachers, Hanson and de los Reyes focus on the “alienation and isolation” they see as inherent in adjunct status as it is commonly defined (A5).

Quoting Jody Norton, the authors note discrepancies between situations in which composition professionals tell adjuncts that “you are us” and those in which they “remind [adjuncts], in unambiguous terms, that you are not us” (qtd. in Hanson and de los Reyes A5). This distinction, Hanson and de los Reyes claim, derives from what Norton designates as the “uneasiness of what adjuncts represent to the future of higher education” (A5). Citing a 1989 document from the Conference on College Composition and Communication as well as one accessed in 2013 from the American Association of University Professors, the authors argue that a shared narrative casts the prevalence of part-time faculty as a threat to tenure, which is equated with academic freedom, and as a detriment to the “integrity of faculty work,” as the AAUP states (qtd. in Hanson and de los Reyes A6).

They further quote James Sledd that “it is hard to argue that tenure is essential to academic freedom when half the faculty will never be tenured” (qtd. in Hanson and de los Reyes A6). This uneasiness with the presence of adjuncts, in the authors’ view, contributes to the tendency among tenured faculty to marginalize part-time instructors.

Hanson and de los Reyes focus on what they see as the devaluation of teaching as central to the identity discrepancy between “[r]eal compositionists” and part-time instructors (A8). Quoting a line from Chris Gallagher that poses teaching time as “an impoverished metric for either teaching commitment or teaching impact” (A9), the authors also quote Melissa Janetta’s recruiting post for a 2018 CCCC workshop that laments the “under-representation of classroom research” in the literature of the field (A9-10). In the authors’ view, this devaluation separates teachers into “workers” versus “thinkers,” with only those who theorize beyond classroom practice and participate in the development of programs and other work outside the classroom deserving of the title “compositionist” (A8).

For Hanson and de los Reyes, this distinction is concerning at several levels. They argue that counting on tenured faculty to sustain the vitality of composition puts that responsibility on “a dying breed” (A10). Further, ignoring the knowledge created by classroom practitioners who are charged to “enact” the theories will continue to impoverish the quality of teaching itself (A10). Finally, improving “working conditions” but not the “professional conditions” that exclude classroom instructors from knowledge-making within the profession will further alienate even those who have persisted in the field because they are committed to it and want to contribute, often sending them into “greener pastures in the private sector” (A11).

The authors contend that they do not want to eliminate distinctions between different kinds of research; rather, they argue for recognizing that the two approaches have equal merit (A12). In their view, the claim that adjuncts “don’t research” overlooks not only the research done to produce articles like theirs but also the importance of recognizing that “our classroom practices are often the most useful kind of research in our field” (A12). Stating that teaching is “our community’s defining practice” (A10), the authors write that overlooking this kind of research will divide researchers from teachers and exclude knowledge vital to the field’s success (A12).

They argue that the narrative that casts part-time instructors as detrimental to higher education uses these teachers as a “sacrificial lamb” in the fight to protect tenure. They maintain that characterizing adjuncts as underqualified even as they teach large segments of composition classes leaves the impression that “anyone can do it because some unqualified yahoo just did” (A13), thus undercutting arguments that base composition’s status as a discipline on its members’ expertise.

The authors argue that recognizing the authority and knowledge-making skills of the many committed part-time teachers, fully recognizing them as “compositionists,” will provide a much more sustainable future for the teaching of writing. They write that they have chosen “to see ourselves as compositionists even if others do not” (13), arguing that the label of “worker” who practices what others theorize is a limiting institutional definition based on rank rather than on commitment and ability. Such definitions, they argue, should not supersede

the identity of compositionist [that] can come to mean a person who shares in the give-and-take of a distinct body of knowledge and not merely one who engages in the push-and-pull of academic politics. (A13-14)

 


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Schell, Eileen. On Being a Woman Department Chair in RCWS. Peitho, 2019. Posted 04/20/2019.

Schell, Eileen E. “Is It Worth It to ‘Lean In’ and Lead? On Being a Woman Department Chair in Rhetoric and Writing Studies.” Peitho Journal 21.2 (2019): 308-33. Web. 4 Apr. 2019.

In her contribution to the Special Cluster on Gendered Service in Rhetoric and Writing Studies in the Peitho Journal, Eileen E. Schell draws on the feminist scholarship of gender and academic labor as well as her own experiences to address the challenges of serving as chair of a large writing program (309).

Schell contends that scholarship on academic leadership does not adequately take into account the different positions of the many laborers, particularly women, who are involved in supporting an academic unit (311). Any leadership role, she argues, depends on many actors and stakeholders whose contributions and influences may not be uncovered when the focus is purely on the “relative privilege” that is afforded leadership positions within “institutional hierarchies” (311).

Schell advocates “intersectionality” as a more productive lens (310). For example, she cites the work of Mel Michelle Lewis and Shannon J. Miller, who examine how their “intersections as Black queer women” (qtd. in Schell 310) inform their leadership roles. She presents her “embodied” position as an “able-bodied, cis-gender, white academic woman on the tenure track” as one window on the effects of taking on the role of department chair (311).

Schell provides a list of important questions, including “what is gained or lost” in accepting the many challenges of a chair’s role (309). She frames her own discussion “around timing, dual academic career couple issues, and family formation issues” (311).

The discussion of timing recounts how Schell was asked to take on the chair role far ahead of the schedule she had negotiated on being hired but was able to defer the appointment until a more logical point in her career (314). Issues included the importance of a developing research agenda and the need for tenure before taking on such extensive administrative duties.

Schell reports that saying no to service appointments can be an effective strategy, but it carries a burden in that many female academics see “service work as vital to the functioning of academic units and the institutional mission of colleges and universities” and feel a sense of obligation to their colleagues (314). Accepting other administrative and service duties while deferring the chair’s role allowed Schell to serve her institution and program as well as develop her scholarship toward tenure and promotion while resisting an early commitment to the chair’s role (314).

One aspect many women face in relation to the timing of demanding administrative appointments is family formation. Schell recounts the challenges of caring adequately for her young daughter, for example, the need to bring her to work (316). She cites scholarship showing that, for many women, working toward tenure and being asked to take on more institutional responsibilities tend to coincide with the years they want to begin a family; some research suggests that the struggle for tenure actually affects women’s ability to start families (315).

A third timing issue for Schell was coordination with her partner’s career. Originally forced to commune long distances, by the time Schell accepted the chair appointment, he had earned tenure in an institution that was much closer, easing this burden (314).

Schell draws on work by Lisa Wolf-Wendel and Kelly Ward to argue that institutions should not force faculty to negotiate each situation individually but rather should recognize that, for women especially, barriers to effective participation in leadership as well as teaching and scholarship should be systematically addressed by the institution. Policies should serve all “pre-tenure professors (both male and female) with family demands” by meeting needs such as those for “tenure stop clock policies, lactation support, access to affordable day care, family leave” (315). Schell notes how work by her fellow faculty to install a family leave policy helped her in the early months of her child’s life (315). Similarly, her institution passed a “tenure clock flexibility proposal” that, among other provisions, addressed the effects on the tenure path of extensive service (316).

During her appointment, Schell noted the number of women chairs increasing despite ongoing dominance by older white men (317). Though she could draw on her experience working with female leaders in the writing program, Schell contends that the chair’s role encompassed a much larger set of exigencies. “Guidebooks” on the chair position she consulted featured “a masculinist dominance-based model” that did not deal with the issues that she specifically faced as a female chair (318-19); her discovery of “interdisciplinary scholarship on intersectionality and department leadership” finally gave her needed direction (319).

Crediting her leadership experience “both inside and outside the department and in the community” (319), Schell lists some of the initiatives she was able to implement, while also acknowledging failures (320). The ongoing task of “Mentorship and Advocacy” involved such efforts as “negotiating for the resources” faculty members needed to do their work and scholarship and clearing the “backlog” of women who had not been promoted to full professorship (321). “Assigning Service” included determining how to allocate committee work effectively while keeping in mind equity in workloads and compensation (321). Schell recounts extensive interpersonal engagement as one of her “most favorite and challenging duties”: acknowledging colleagues’ accomplishments and empathizing with as well as helping to address their daily and professional struggles (322).

Schell notes that the “scope and scale” of the chair’s duties exceeded those of other academic positions: “the work touched on all areas of the department and the lives of every single faculty member” (322; emphasis original). She explores issues such as the need to prioritize interactions and the exigencies of the “second and third shift[s],” such as dealing with her family’s needs and then returning to administrative duties late at night in a “job [that] never turned off” (322-23). Effects on her health led her to address the difference between “work-life balance” and a “sustainable schedule and life” (323-24; emphasis original). Keeping up with scholarship (324) and insisting on “self-care” such as scheduled work-outs were among Schell’s strategies (329).

She offers “general advice and lessons of survivance” she gathered during her tenure as chair (326). Citing research showing that few chair receive adequate professional development for their roles, she urges networking and workshops (326). Further, she reminds potential chairs to be sure to arrange adequate compensation and manageable teaching loads (327). Under “Developing a Sustainable Work Plan,” she discusses establishing a well-functioning program infrastructure to accomplish departmental goals (327-28).

Schell reports being “surprised” to find herself advocating strongly that women take on leadership appointments such as chair (325). In her view, such roles allow women to pursue a “progressive feminist agenda” that can improve the lives and work of all faculty, promote diversity, and strengthen curricula (327). Ultimately, she writes, she hopes that

more feminists in rhetoric and writing studies will lead our academic departments . . . and that when we attend chairs’ meetings at our colleges and universities, we will look around the table and see a more diverse and inclusive cast of institutional leaders who also said yes. (329).

 


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Larson, Holly. Epistemic Authority in Two-Year Colleges. TETYC, Dec. 2018. Posted 02/13/2019.

Larson, Holly. “Epistemic Authority in Composition Studies: Tenuous Relationship between Two-Year English Faculty and Knowledge Production.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 46.2 (2018): 109-36. Web. 9 Feb. 2019.

Holly Larson questions the relationship between community-college faculty and the larger field of composition studies. Based on data showing that in 2016, 49% of first-year college students attended a two-year institution, Larson argues that community-college exigencies should be “central” to the field’s mission (111). Larson builds on Howard Tinberg ‘s designation of community-college faculty as “border crossers” or “mestizas” (109) to claim that these faculty do not function as “thirteenth- and fourteenth-grade” high-school teachers, yet, despite their centrality to composition’s mission, are not recognized as full members of the university community (111).

Larson draws on “standpoint theory” to note with Marianne Janack that two-year faculty are not granted “epistemic authority” by their university-level counterparts (111). This theory, which she characterizes as growing out of feminist scholarship,

examines how a group of people with socially constructed identities views and experiences the world differently and highlights the social conditions a group encounters in power relations, thus emphasizing its shared common experiences. (112)

In this view, dominant groups look down from a standpoint above, a position that makes it impossible for them to recognize the complexities below them and thus allows them to shut these complexities out. In contrast, groups lower in the hierarchy, looking up, see the many different points of view and confront the necessity of interacting with them (112-13). The standpoints thus constructed are not “objective and universal” (112); rather, they are the partial views of those who occupy the relevant spaces. For Larson, composition faculty in the traditional university culture claim the dominant standpoint and therefore fail at the kind of inclusive vision necessary to understand standpoints below them (113).

Larson argues that this failure manifests in both graduate preparation and in scholarship and publishing. She cites her own experience in assimilating theory during her preparation and then, as she moved into her first professional position at a community college, “spen[ding] the semester constantly translating the theory into a practice that is realistic and achievable for my students” (118). What she calls “canonical literature,” while providing rich insights into the history of the field and its guiding ideology, turned out to be “tone deaf to my students’ reality” (118).

Larson cites other compositionists calling for the inclusion of preparation for teaching at a two-year institution (116) and notes that the TYCA Guidelines for Preparing Teachers of English in the Two-Year College emphasize how “notions of professionalism are distinct at community colleges, with teaching, service, and scholarship valued in different configurations than at most four-year institutions” (qtd. in Larson 119; emphasis Larson’s). In this view, theory derives from a “pedagogical imperative” that serves students’ needs (119).

Mainstream scholars in the field, Larson argues, do not recognize community-college practice as making knowledge (120). Meanwhile, constraints of time and energy prevent faculty like her from “disciplin[ing] our teaching experiences into theory” (119), as the exigencies experienced by writing teachers in general are exacerbated in a community-college environment (120). Not only do these faculty have limited time to develop standard academic essays, their time constraints make it difficult for them to cite widely and demonstrate deep acquaintance with the theory and research that scholarly reviewers expect (121).

In fact, Larson writes, she and her colleagues do not necessarily have degrees in rhetoric and composition (121-22). While acknowledging the pressure on composition to establish itself as an academic field with a “common body of knowledge” (122), Larson notes that scholarship grounded in practice will not be accepted into this body of knowledge if it is seen as “too general or anecdotal” (121) or unoriginal (123). She contends that the kind of knowledge produced in two-year settings fits Gloria Anzaldùa’s definition of “kitchen-table conversations,” a form of knowledge that is “devalued in academia unless some critical theorist validates it” (121).

To argue for the value of these conversations, Larson cites an approach in social science in which theory and practice are more firmly integrated (122). She questions why community-college faculty must follow the standard academic form for their work to be valued (124). Sharing their knowledge through course materials and accounts of classroom experience, she argues, should be a way for these faculty to enter the larger conversation (125). In addition, she suggests that programs can build in important concepts from the larger body of theory in order to make them useful and meaningful in the specific settings of the community-college classroom (125).

Larson sees this grounding in actual classroom practice as especially important because, for the many students who inhabit these classrooms, the community-college setting is “the only academic space they belong to” (125-26). The two-year institution, in this view, functions as a “third space” that can encourage a sense of “belonging and investment” that students will not get in any other place (126). Community-college faculty, Larson writes, are the only faculty who will “see [these students] on a regular basis”; therefore, the field must commit to the “diverse ways of knowing” that will welcome both these students and non-traditional knowledge-making based in their classrooms (126).

Larson lists venues where community-college faculty can “submit all these diverse ways of knowing intimately about the third space” (127). Contending that these are “still limited,” she proposes two specific actions that she believes will facilitate the efforts of two-year faculty to enter the field’s scholarly conversation. “Acknowledging Alternative Knowledge” includes adjusting the “hierarchical professional ladder” from “vertical to horizontal” so that it allows for more inclusive formats (130). Part of this adjustment for Larson would be the recognition that “lore,” as described by Stephen North, is more than an assertion about “what works for me” but is rather the result of ongoing conversations in which theory is collaboratively built from practical experience in ways that are endorsed within feminist thought (130).

Second, Larson recommends “Shifting Peer Reviewers’ Role from the Gatekeeper to the Gateway” (130). She envisions a relationship between a four-year faculty member and a community-college faculty member in which the mentor would shift from the “punitive and judgmental” practice Larson attributes to the usual review process to an effort to provide an “entry point into the theoretical conversation on the topic” (131; emphasis original) as well as an incentive to two-year faculty to invest their limited time in scholarship. Larson asks that work of this sort on the part of the mentor be valued and rewarded; she quotes Lisa A. Costello in calling for “a radical revision of the institution itself to include different kinds of knowledges and ways of being” so that theory and practice can become symbiotic components of the field (qtd. in Larson 131).