What is andragogy, and how might the approach help in teaching FYC?

Andragogy involves teaching to adult learners, and adapting andragogical practices for first year composition classrooms may be useful for more than just nontraditional students.  Adult learners are often returning to the classroom after years of being in the workplace and out of an educational setting, and so may have different strengths and needs.

Often, adult learners are not returning to the classroom just because it is the next thing to do.  They've taken a different path, and their motives for returning are different.  Many are mid-career and seeking education to further that career; others are hoping for credentials to change careers.  Still others are returning because they know exactly what field they'd like to pursue; the difference between an eighteen-year old English major and a thirty-year old English major might be a degree of self-awareness and motivation acquired over the extra decade of life.

Because of this background, adult learners may have a different motivation, more intrinsic but also perhaps less patient.  So how does a teacher address this different motivation, without losing traditional students?

One key way to address this different motivation is by making assignments relevant.  Adult learners want to know why it's important to know something, and how a skill might help them in their careers.  But this curiosity is not limited to adult learners; at least as common a question from traditional students as "Will this be on the test?" is the question "But when am I ever going to use this?"

For first year composition, this means that the instructor must thoroughly understand the course design and the individual assignments.  Often in introductory composition courses, these are scaffolded assignments created for practice, and the question of audience is complicated.  It may be best practice in this case to acknowledge that this practice is what these courses are designed to do, and it may be helpful to imagine where in a career the skill might be useful.  Though  many students dread first year composition courses, these courses are nothing if not practical and skill-based.

Also, in class, we have talked about the role of writing as part of becoming a citizen, and we've discussed the use of problem-based learning, using writing as an attempt to solve problems in the students' communities.  While this sort of writing may not currently have a solid place in first year composition, it strikes me as an extremely important skill with which to equip students, and also inherently practical, in a way that writing a rhetorical analysis draft might not be.

Teaching philosophy, part II

An evolution of my teaching philosophy (many thanks to MaryAnn Widerburg, whose teaching philosophy structure helped in the re-shaping herein):

In the book Why Art Cannot Be Taught, author James Elkins attempts to explain “the curious endeavor to teach the unteachable.”  He organizes the book by several arguments ("Art can be taught, but nobody knows quite how," "Art can be taught, but it seems as if it can't be since so few students become outstanding artists," and "Art cannot be taught, but it can be fostered or helped along," among them) but the ultimate impression is that the pedagogy of art is a mystery.  The book specifically applies to college level instruction of visual arts, but many of these concerns translate quite readily to the teaching of composition and creative writing.  A writing class is necessarily very different from a differential calculus class, for example, or from a language class.  It is a brief exposure to the process.  For some students, a writing class will be an introduction to the undertaking of a much longer study.  For others, it will represent a stage in their already started journey toward becoming a writer.  For still others, and especially in the case of creative writing, it will represent a mode of expression that may one day be discarded.

My values and goals as a teacher very much reflect the idea that learning an art is a process, and that I am in the midst of the same discovery process as are my students.  I value:

1.       Writing and reading as a primary means of communication within academic, personal, and professional spheres.

2.       Writing and reading as a way to connect, both to the internal (self) and to the external (the outside world).

3.       Clear expectations for individual writing courses, with instruction specialized according to audience, purpose, and student needs. 

Always, I focus on writing as both process and product, and know that separating one from another is impossible.  Additionally, as a creative writer and a teacher of first year composition, it is important for me to acknowledge the value of both modes of writing and the differences therein.

Writing and reading as a primary means of communication within academic, personal, and professional spheres.  Writing and reading remain primary methods of dissemination for the bulk of academic work, including journal articles, theses and dissertations, and press releases.  Students often believe that writing and reading are skills mainly used in the humanities, but though much of STEM research may be done in a lab or other setting, it is the publication of this work that makes it available to a larger community of scientists, and thus continues the conversation of knowledge.  In the personal sphere, though letter writing has fallen out of favor, we still write as a means of communication (emails, texts, social media posts, and yes, letters), and we read as a way to receive this communication.  In the professional world, being able to write continues to remain crucial for workers, and the opportunities for writing have only expanded (consider here the fields of business writing, technical writing, professional writing). 

Writing and reading as a way to connect, both to the internal (self) and to the external (the outside world).    As a creative writer and a teacher of creative writing, I value writing and reading both as a means of expression and as an aesthetic entity.  Writing and reading allow access to our most private selves, and much of the curriculum of creative nonfiction operates on the belief that we don’t truly know what we believe until we try to write these beliefs.  I believe in the value of expressionist writing as a source of self-discovery, as a means to facilitate healing in the case of trauma, and as a way to connect more fully to our human experience.  When this writing is shared, and when we share in the writing of others through the act of reading, we often connect in profoundly human ways, and often, we connect to people we have never or will never meet in person. 

Clear expectations for individual writing courses, with instruction specialized according to audience, purpose, and student needs.   I also believe in clear expectations for coursework, as the reason for writing figures greatly into the process of producing a piece of writing.  Readers have different expectations for different types of writing, and learning to recognize these different expectations is crucial to becoming a successful writer.  For example, a research paper is different from a business email, and so would have a different process and a different format.  In the same way, a creative essay is different from a poem, which is different from a rhetorical analysis.  I believe that clear expectations are crucial to student success at the assignment level, at the course level, and at the level of the overall degree plan.  If, as teachers, we understand exactly the kind of writing we want students to be able to produce after finishing the course, we can better construct this course in order to scaffold these skills.  Here, too, we are able to accommodate many different forms of and purposes for writing:  if our goal for freshman composition is preparing students  to participate in the academic conversation, we prepare them for these sorts of writing (literature reviews, researched papers, even lab reports).  If our goal for a fiction workshop is to understand the facets and nuance of story, we deconstruct story and study these elements, parts in the service of a whole. 

I do feel that the focus on writing often neglects the act and skill of reading, and I hope to encourage within my students a love for the written word, a curiosity about their lives and their surroundings, and a respect for the process itself.   Research has shown that students who identify as readers are more empathetic, and have a larger referential knowledge base.  Reading is certainly a way to experience many lives that do not belong to us, and is thus enriching beyond measure.   I believe very strongly that readers become writers, in much the same way that people who like to eat learn how to cook.  And part of the process of learning to write lies in the process of learning to read, and in both a construction and a deconstruction of the craft.  But always craft is primary, and growth the goal.

Teaching philosophy

A draft of my teaching philosophy, wherein I try to combine composition and creative writing:

In the book Why Art Cannot Be Taught, author James Elkins attempts to explain “the curious endeavor to teach the unteachable.”  He organizes the book by several arguments ("Art can be taught, but nobody knows quite how," "Art can be taught, but it seems as if it can't be since so few students become outstanding artists," and "Art cannot be taught, but it can be fostered or helped along," among them) but the ultimate impression is that the pedagogy of art is a mystery.  The book specifically applies to college level instruction of visual arts, but many of these concerns translate quite readily to the teaching of composition and creative writing.  A writing class is necessarily very different from a differential calculus class, for example, or from a language class.  It is a brief exposure to the process.  For some students, a writing class will be an introduction to the undertaking of a much longer study.  For others, it will represent a stage in their already started journey toward becoming a writer.  For still others, it will represent a mode of expression that may one day be discarded.

My values and goals as a teacher very much reflect the idea that learning an art is a process, and that I am in the midst of the same discovery process as are my students.  I value

1.       Writing and reading as a primary means of communication within both academic and professional worlds.

2.       Writing and reading as a way to connect, both to the internal (self) and to the external (the outside world).

3.       Clear expectations for individual writing courses, with instruction specialized according to audience, purpose, and student needs. 

Always, I focus on writing as both process and product, and know that separating one from another is impossible.

I hope to encourage within my students a love for the written word, a curiosity about their lives and their surroundings, and a respect for the process itself.  I believe very strongly that readers become writers, in much the same way that people who like to eat learn how to cook.  And part of the process of learning to write lies in the process of learning to read, and in both a construction and a deconstruction of the craft.  But always craft is primary, and growth the goal.  

Based on your teaching philosophy (which may change over time), what are types of assignments which you would include in a FYC syllabus?

Quite naturally, this week's readings have me thinking about the type of writing assigned in first year writing programs, and how to best serve students with these assignments.  It is impossible to think of this, however, divorced from the context of what exactly first year composition is supposed to accomplish.

It seems to me that first year composition at a research university is designed to allow students to enter into the academic conversation.  This is not, of course, the only type of writing that students might ever do.  But the more I think about it, the more I think that other forms of writing (business writing, for example, or creative writing or technical writing) might be better served in more specific courses.  And it's not that an engineer will never need to know how to write a resume or that a marketing major might not ever have to compose a lab report, but I do feel that by trying to address all possible types of writing in an introductory class, we lose some of the class's utility.

With that in mind, I think of the first year writing program at Ohio State (which, by the way, is one semester long).  In first year composition, we led students through one paper over the course of the entire semester.  We started with examining primary sources, and there was a small paper at this point discussing the interesting aspects of our primary sources.  We didn't have quite the focus on rhetorical analysis as we do here, but there is plenty of room at this point for this very useful skill.  We concluded this portion of the semester with a research question, and because of the preliminary work, this question is borne of familiarity and curiosity.

Next, we focused on answering this question, and we spent time in research.  This included trips to the library, visits by librarians, a thorough introduction to our electronic resources, and then we set to the work of integrating this research.  We used MLA but we showed students where to find help with other styles, acknowledging that we were preparing them for a larger role in their own disciplines.  

Finally, we finished the papers, spending at least a couple of weeks drafting complex thesis statements.  We worked on intros and conclusions, and formatted our Works Cited page.  After the paper was finished, we turned our attention to editing and revision.  The students left first year writing with a clear sense of what to do in each stage of the writing process when writing a researched paper.  Again, we're excluding many other types of writing here, although many classes had a blog where students practiced writing for a different audience.

It seems to me that there's a great deal of value in the slow and steady building of a paper over time, and that this process allows students to practice each stage of the process thoroughly.  For my own assignments, I would keep much of this framework, as I think it debunks some of the impression that writing is a kind of magic, that you're either good at it or not.  By emphasizing the conversation, you increase intrinsic motivation and you help students see writing as a skill that can be learned and practiced.

I also would adopt much of the rhetorical analysis work we're doing in 1301 now, as I think it is extremely valuable, especially in the refinement of critical thinking that we're looking for as teachers of writing.  I would use this rhetorical analysis as the content for the paper, which is similar to what's happening now in 1301.  

And finally, I would encourage students to look for the kind of writing that they will be asked to do in their fields, by attending undergraduate research conferences or poster sessions, or by seeking theses or dissertations in the library.  In class, I love to use the image of college as an apprenticeship, that one of the goals is for students to learn how to communicate and act in their field.  

What is the most difficult thing to teach in the teaching of writing?

 What is the most difficult thing to teach in the teaching of writing, and how do you go about teaching that? 

This week's readings have certainly emphasized that writing is a multi-faceted thing (skill?  subject?) and as such, a complex thing to go about teaching.  When I consider difficulties students have in writing, and what I'd like them to take from a composition course, my first instinct is to want to instill in them an ease with creating writing.  Of course, no such thing exists, even for experienced writers, and this goal is such a flimsy and unspecific one that it's of virtually no use to me.

What is of use, however, is tracing this teaching instinct back to a source, to a reason for existing, and then questioning the source.  Writing, as acknowledged previously, is such a multi-pronged activity that a difficulty with any one piece of this activity results in a difficulty with the whole process.  Reading through the pre-semester diagnostic assignments this weekend has revealed to me that many of my students do not feel comfortable with standard English conventions, and because of this discomfort, the whole process of writing is fraught with worry about these conventions.  How is it possible to move on to the discussion of composition without first addressing the question of standards?  Even when we tell students that it's okay to make mistakes, we still mark up their assignment and let them know how their writing has fallen short.  

The Reeves article, "Minimizing Writing Apprehension in the Learner-Centered Classroom," seems to have a pointed and practical answer to this question.  On page 40, in the section sub-headed "Contextualize and Customize," she mentions that grammar shouldn't be taught in isolation, and then gives specific instructions for addressing persistent grammar issues, using Nancie Atwell's mini-lessons in grammar and then having students proofread essays in small groups.  I have not seen Atwell's mini-lessons, but I'd like to.  I do start composition classes with grammar rules, one per day, as a sponge activity to begin the class, and as a class, we correct sentences.  We only address one grammar issue per class period (for example, pronoun-antecedent agreement) because otherwise I'd lose them.  But it seems to me that focusing a little on the standards of written English seems to remove some of the anxiety for student writers, and also helps them to understand feedback on their work.  

All of this is not to say that I think grammar instruction should be the heart of composition instruction, only that it is a source of anxiety for students, and that easing this anxiety is one of my primary goals as a composition instructor.  As Flower and Hayes note in "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing," translating (their term for "the process of putting ideas into visible language") "requires the writer to juggle all the special demands of written English, which Ellen Nold has described as lying on a spectrum from generic and formal demands through syntactic and lexical ones down to the motor tasks of forming letters."  The sum of these requirements can easily overwhelm, as they note:  "If the writer must devote conscious attention to demands such as spelling and grammar, the task of translating can interfere with the more global process of planning what one wants to say."  When we introduce explicit grammar instruction in a college classroom, we are not teaching grammar from scratch, but solidifying rules with which the student is probably already familiar, and my hope is that by acknowledging the conventions of language and spending a little bit of time with them, that we are easing the discomfort of the writer.

An aside here, and one about the teaching of writing in the elementary grades: as my children learn to write, I have followed their curricula, and I have seen two opposing schools of thought in their teaching.  One is the "Write, write, write, revise, revise, revise" school of thought, characterized by writing assignments being assigned early and often in the hopes of achieving exactly the kind of comfort with writing that I'm describing.  In its worst iterations, this method has kindergartners (who have often not yet learned to form letters) asked to write three sentences about George Washington for Presidents' Day.  This method embraces invented spelling and intense revision.  The other school of thought that I have seen is one that acknowledges that the development of writing is a step behind the development of reading, and has students spend time in fine motor skill development before attempting to craft written texts.  At its extreme form, this method of teaching writing progresses from letter formation, to copy work, to dictation, all in the attempt to separate the physical process of forming letters from the mental process of forming sentences, paragraphs, and texts.  In my entirely anecdotal experience, the second method seems to produce a more comfortable writer, precisely because we did not tell the writer that those rules don't matter.  And it's this comfort that I am after as a teacher.

Finally, after all of this discussion, I have to acknowledge that we never really reach comfort, and that writing, even for the most experienced writer, is a painstaking process even on the best of days.  My hope is that, by introducing but not focusing on the conventions of written English, that we at least make students more comfortable with this one aspect of writing, in order to shift our focus more fully to composition as a way to join the larger conversation.