An underlying objective in much of composition theory is to afford our students avenues to assert their agency over their education as well as in their personal and professional lives through the teaching of writing. Thus, a salient question guiding our work throughout the course will be: how is student agency and empowerment realized in a first year writing course? Rhetoric obviously plays a key role in promoting students’ agency over the production and consumption of texts in terms of how and what they write, but we will also look to rhetoric to explore understandings of audience, purpose, kairos, etc., to examine how specific societal conditions have corresponded to articulations of theoretical approaches. For example, scholars such as Stephen North and Martin Nystrand argue that it was the social conditions of the 1960s (such as open enrollment policies) that led to the emergence of composition as a professional field, with writing centers burgeoning quickly after. Thus, interwoven in theories of composition are discussions involving politics, gender, race, feminism, the importance of geographical location, marginalization, colonization, and, of course, the expanding role of technology in our society.
The title of this course is Theory and Practice of Teaching Composition, and one of our main goals will be to examine the intersection between theory and practice, or praxis, as a hallmark of Composition Studies. Our work will involve complicating theories of teaching composition by tying them to classroom strategies and practices so as to determine how specific classroom practices work (or don’t, as the case may be) to achieve theoretical goals and claims. Ultimately, it is my hope that by working through these theories and identifying corresponding practices, you will begin to develop your own pedagogical philosophy of teaching writing, and possibly for teaching in general.
As we analyze and interrogate different theoretical trajectories, we will engage the following questions:
How does a theory for teaching writing respond to the public discourse and societal concerns at a particular moment?
Why have some of these approaches had more staying power than others?
Can enacting a particular theory provide students the skills to successfully negotiate academic discourse conventions and promote student empowerment over their education and in their communities?
SLOs:
Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to demonstrate:
an ability to historicize composition studies within academia and as a response to political movements
an understanding of how spatial and temporal place, highlighting Hawaiʻi as an example, impacts the teaching of writing
an ability to critically situate research, both one’s own and other’s, within scholarly conversations
preparedness to teach First Year Writing
Assignments:
Weekly Responses and leading one class discussion based on responses (15%)
Sample Teaching exercise (presentation) (15%)
Annotated critique of current published composition studies article (20%)
First Year Writing Syllabus & Assignments with Teaching Philosophy and Theoretical Justification (50%)
Texts:
Required:
Bean, John. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, 2nd Ed. New York: Jossey-Bass, 2011. Print. (ordered, UH Bookstore)
A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, 2nd Ed. Eds.: Tate, Gary, Taggart, Amy Rupiper, Kurt Schick, and Brooke Hessler. Oxford UP, 2013. Print. (will be provided)
Additional possible readings (to be provided as pdf):
Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Eds. Victor Villanueva and Kristen L. Arola. Urbana: NCTE, 2011. (selections)
Ellsworth, Elizabeth. “Why Doesn’t this Feel Empowering? Working through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy.” The Education Feminist Reader. Ed. Lynda Stone. New York: Routledge: 1994. 300-327. Print.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1994. Print. (Chapter 2)
The Politics of Writing Instruction: Post Secondary. Eds. Richard Bullock and John Trimbur. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook. 1991. 97-117. Print. (selections)
Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers. Eds. Peter Vendenberg, Sue Hum, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon. Urbana: NCTE, 2006. 226-257. Print. (selections)
Reynolds, Nedra. Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference. Carbondale: S. Ill. Univ. Press, 2004. Print. (Selections)
Shor, Ira. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987. Print.
In addition, scholarship on Indigenous pedagogy and creating space for language variation in the classroom will be covered (specific texts will be determined according to the interests of the class).