[Teaching_Composition] How to study transfer in Senior Gen Ed Writing Seminar

[Christiane Donahue]

Hi Heather and all,
I'm sorry not to have responded quickly. The ideas we're discussing here are
central to me but they are also ideas with which I struggle a great deal,
and it's taken me a bit to articulate just a beginning reply. This
discussion links to two others I've been working on, the idea of "readiness"
and the idea of "developmental" (in particular, the ways gen ed is supposed
to be "developmentally-based").

I think the suggestion about how you might track back through assignments
students have worked on earlier (and potentially good student responses) and
analyze them for the characteristics you want is very, very helpful--you
might be really surprised by what students have been doing.

Elizabeth's questions get right at another key issue as well, that of our
need as faculty to know so much more about what our colleagues ask students
to do and why. The "drawing-on" that we need to do is, I think, essential.

This statement from Elizabeth gives me pause, though-- "Have students really
been taught elsewhere to do the kinds of research and writing that you
expect of them? The rhetorical situation of your writing seminar sounds
complex, and my guess would be that students don't encounter anything else
like it." On the one hand we certainly want what students learn in different
contexts to be somehow linked or related, but on the other hand transfer, to
me, is in good part about what kernels (best word?) might be drawn upon in
new situations, re-employed, even when nothing like what someone did before
is being encountered. This is the source of part of my trouble with many,
many secondary/post-secondary discussions in which people try to determine
what activities students should have in high school that will make them
"ready for" activities in college.

In some ways, transition probably can't really be easy across different
situations. But in other ways, we transfer every minute--consider our use of
language, the way we relatively effortlessly (in many contexts) re-employ
what we've learned. Think of new cultural contexts into which we do move.
Etc. etc. I'm very interested in trying to locate ways we do transfer and
understanding what made them possible, building on the kind of work
Elizabeth and I summarized in the initial module.

The two difficulties you describe your students having don't seem, at least
at first glance, to be "developmental" problems à la Perry (or other
models). A hypothesis you might add to your already good list of hypotheses
is one about the course itself--it seems almost like a "reverse"
issue--students moving from gen ed into the major, working for some time in
the major, becoming part of that world, and then in a capstone being asked
to move back out of the major (as they prepare not only to graduate but
perhaps to go to grad school?).

There are my disjointed thoughts about all this. I will follow-up.
Thank you for starting this discussion!
Tiane


On 9/24/07 4:18 PM, "Elizabeth.Wardle@notes.udayton.edu"
<Elizabeth.Wardle@notes.udayton.edu> wrote:

> Hi Heather,
> Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This will be fun!
> 
> So the way I read your email is that you believe that students should have
> done things previously that would enable them to do the work in your
> seminar, but they aren't doing that work to your satisfaction. Is that a
> correct read on my part?
> 
> If so, the first thing I would do is question your first assumption--that
> students have done things elsewhere that should enable them to successfully
> complete the work in your course. Do you know this to be the case? How do
> you know? You specifically mention research--knowing how to find a gap,
> articulate an issue. What are students' previous experiences with research
> like this? Where have they specifically been taught to conduct such
> research? You also mention that students aren't writing in ways that are
> situationally appropriate. Again, I would want to know where else do
> students write in ways that address the kind of situation found in your
> seminar?
> 
> My initial thinking is that before you can look for transfer, you need to
> ascertain whether, in fact, there is something to transfer (more
> accurately, I would say whether there is something for them to generalize,
> because it will change shape in your class). Have students really been
> taught elsewhere to do the kinds of research and writing that you expect of
> them? The rhetorical situation of your writing seminar sounds complex, and
> my guess would be that students don't encounter anything else like it.
> 
> How do you find out whether they've encountered similar kinds of research
> and contexts previously? That's tricky. I don't think you can depend on
> students for the information; I am not sure that surveys of teachers would
> tell you, either, because you are looking for something in an assignment
> that is rhetorically complicated. One way might be to find out which prior
> classes assign research and extended writing and then collect assignments
> from those classes and interview the teachers about those assignments. Even
> better would be to collect "good" responses to the assignments to see if
> the student papers do, in fact, exhibit the characteristics you are looking
> for.
> 
> If you discover that students have written/researched elsewhere in related
> ways that you think are transferable/generalizable, you might be able to
> explicitly draw in those experiences in class to encourage the transfer
> (they need to know, as Tuomi-Grohn and Engestrom say, that "the chair is
> sit-on-able").
> 
> If it turns out that students aren't doing much research and writing *of
> the kind you want* elsewhere, then there might not be much for them to
> transfer. In that case, you may find ways to teach what you want from them
> without expecting they should already be able to produce those things.
> 
> This will make a great dissertation!
> 
> Elizabeth
> 
> Elizabeth Wardle, PhD
> Assistant Professor
> Director of Writing Programs
> Internship Coordinator
> Department of English
> Humanities 277
> University of Dayton
> Dayton, Ohio
> 937-229-3003
> ewardle@udayton.edu
> 
> -----teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com wrote: -----
> 
> To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
> From: Heather Lettner-Rust <lettnerrusthg@longwood.edu>
> Sent by: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com
> Date: 09/23/2007 10:37PM
> Subject: [Teaching_Composition] How to study transfer in Senior Gen Ed
> Writing Seminar
> 
> Hello all-
> 
> I thought I'd use Elizabeth's three questions and develop some thoughts.
> 
> 1) What is my understanding of transfer? The ability of students to
> undertake a writing task with a contextual and convention-driven approach
> by producing some writing skills developed in other situations and also
> re-designing new skills to approach or approximate what is asked of them in
> new situations.
> 
> 2) What is the problem that's bothering me? What do I want to know?
> 
> My problem is this: Very few students make an easy transition into the
> general education public/civic writing seminar.
> 
> Background: Itıs an interdisciplinary capstone course that funnels all
> students through before graduation.
> Some possible explanations for their unease or resistance are the prefix
> and placement of this course in their academic career. This composition
> requirement is placed in their junior/senior year. They thought they were
> ³done with English.² Also, theyıre too busy with their majors to want to
> divert some attention to a general ed writing task. Or they donıt find
> community in their peers being out of their major for a writing course.
> Finally, it could be they are practicing what the university has trained
> them to do‹-import and apply, till you are asked explicitly to change.
> 
> But Iıd like to study why they have this difficulty.
> 
> More specifically, here are some of the problems students exhibit:
> 
> 1) difficulty articulating a researchable issue from the public sphere and
> also researching it--what is an issue?  Where do I ³find² it?  (In
> particular, they donıt seem to be able to conceive of an issue that doesnıt
> have boundaries captured in a scholarly journal or derived from a
> syllabus.)
> 
> 2) difficulty developing writing that is situationally-appropriate in terms
> of content, style, arrangement.
> 
> Questions:
> I know these are some of the same questions that other teachers who require
> writing face but I think this course has a unique angle on this difficulty
> because of the civic, public issues on which the course is based and also
> the timing of the course when they are supposed to be developmentally more
> able to handle conceptual tasks (Perry).
> So, why are these difficulties so apparent?
> 
> Is it a lack of knowledge about rhetoric? Our FYC is not explicitly
> rhetoric-based and has multiple variations, many which are lit-based.
> 
> Is it a developmental issue (Iım thinking of Perryıs scale here)
> 
> 
> 3) What methods might shed some light on this problem?
> 
> Should I interview students about collected sample assignments and/or
> writing pieces in our course?
> 
> Should I interview some before we start the work of the course and try to
> chart their ³transformation²?
> 
> 
> 
> The these questions are the beginning of a dissertation for me.
> 
> Heather Lettner-Rust,
> doctoral student in Rhetoric & Textual Studies, ODU
> Lecturer, English & Modern Languages Dept.
> Longwood University
> 201 High Street
> Farmville, VA 23909
> 
> office: 204 Barlow
> phone: 434.395.2178
> 
> 
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