Blog #5: Designing Writing Assignments for Working Class Students at the College Level

October 17, 2016

Mack, Nancy. "Ethical Representations of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities." (2006) Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. (6)1: 53-78.   Online.

Nancy Mack’s central contention is “that working-class students need writing assignments in which they can occupy an authoritative position . . . that is not discounted as underprepared or limited but (is) a respected, working-class-academic identity (54).”  She goes on to say that the types of papers traditionally assigned to working class students frequently discount their “experiences, histories, and ways of making knowledge,” focusing instead on topics with which they may have little experience or interest. I would suggest the way the academy creates these barriers to students who identify as working class is the same way it creates them for other students who are outside of what she calls the “competitive, elite culture.” She points out the unacknowledged stigma attached to working class students, the assumption of an inherent “deficit or liability;” the same assumptions that attach to many students of color entering major universities. These assumptions ripple out in many directions, impacats of which are to disempower, undermine, and alienate students, often resulting in their dropping out before they graduate. The point here is not to say that all of this can be attributed to how students are treated in composition courses; however, Mack cites a report showing that the skills working class students worry about the most are their writing skills, and that marginalized students, among whom are women, working class, and students of color, leave “university because of their perception that their writing is fundamentally unacceptable (56).” To combat this problem, Mack developed a theory that stresses the importance of recognizing the plural identities working class (and other marginalized) students bring with them to the writing table; for example, the struggle of students to reconcile their identities of upwardly mobile students whose use of the language of  the academy is exactly that interpreted by their friends and family as “getting too smart for the rest of us” or in some communities of color, “acting white.” Writing assignments should give students “the discursive space” to create their own academic identity that “legitimates and ethically represents their multiple identities” (60) as workers, students, and all the other identities they bring with them into the classroom. The model Mack describes to do this is a multigenre research project that focuses on either family, community, or “peer group folklore.” She particularly emphasizes the folklore project as an opportunity for students to combine direct one-on-one interviews with academic readings; the final project is presented as multiple pieces of writing from different genres. The final step is what she calls an “expository cover letter” which students use to reflect on the processes they used in creating their project because, as she concludes, “Reflections can help us to connect theory to practice (74).”  Mack’s ability to join theory to concrete classroom assignment is the value of this article and why I think it is useful to other students in terms of creating assignments. She raises issues that must be considered to teach successfully in classrooms with students from a diversity of backgrounds.

Cognitive Process of Writing in Practice

Blog #4

Janks, Hilary. The discipline and craft of academic writing: building writing capacity in institutions of higher education. 2012. Reading & Writing. 3(1). Art #25. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v3i1.25

In their article, “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing,” Flowers and Hayes introduced the idea composition was a set of distinct, hierarchical thinking processes that the writer organizers as she sets her ideas down on the page. The response to this article resulted in a major pedagogical shift in the way teaching writing was viewed. The one thing they almost all had in common was that no longer was the writing product the focus of the teaching pedagogy as much as the process used to produce that product. Writing from her experience as a participant in a two-week course on academic writing, Janks presents what can only be seen as an almost perfect case study of Flowers’ and Hayes’ theory in practice. She describes the pedagogy used in this course as a synthesis of academic writing with several techniques of creative writing, by a professor whose philosophy was that even research writing was creative writing. Janks describes the structure of the course – two weeks of classes with the weeks separated by a month in-between – and then describes in detail the exercises done and the impacts those exercises had on her writing. Sessions such as “creativity” and “pushing the boundaries”; peer groups where members critiqued each other’s work. Activities such as free writing on “I am the color of…”  “what stops you from writing…”, drawing mind-maps of students’ research and free associating on the word “before.” These go directly back to Flowers and Hayes’ four points; they are examples of how process can externally introduced and guided and how it works. That is its relevance for this course. The activities may seem far out, the methodology, “kooky,” but I it is critically important to have an open mind and understand what the theory of cognitive process really means when put into practice creatively. Its application becomes even more relevant because we have students from all different disciplines but they will all have to write research papers and do academic writing. It is our responsibility to teach them  how to do it in a way that demystifies it, makes it accessible to them, and gives them alternate tools to break through what are sometimes long-established barriers from historically bad experiences with writing. Although this may have been an unorthodox article, it was valuable article in demonstrating in a concrete way what process can mean and how we have to open our own minds to being more creative.