Where Does Agency Reside?

 The scholarship that we were asked to engage with this past week turned us away from process centered pedagogy and towards pedagogy centered around agency and ecology. Though these texts are all considered to be post-process text the pedagogy that the scholars advocate vary from highly expressivist to cognitively based. Donald Murray in “Finding Your Own Voice: Teaching Composition in an age of Dissent” advocates for a pedagogy that allows students to work to figure out their own voice and their own topics of study. Though Murray acknowledges that as teachers we need to teach students how to find a topic the finding and documenting of a subject should be done by the student. According to Murry teachers cannot “see the student's world with the student's eyes and evaluate it with the student's mind” thus, he or she should could not possibly choose a topic for the student (Murray 119). This approach to teaching composition gives full agency to the student, for it is his or her responsibility to find a subject, document said subject the decisions about the final form that the composition should take all reside in the student. The instructor in this type of approach seems to serve more as a mentor than as an instructor. While I think mentorship is important, I feel that this type of approach may be better suited for graduate students already well versed in writing and in subject matter but to expect first-year composition students to take on this agency seems irresponsible. Writing should be a way of figuring out what one wants to say the expressivist approach taken by Murray assumes that knowledge is already within the writer and that writing is a way to get said knowledge out.

                Rather than seeing knowledge as something that already resides within the writer William Irmscher view the role of writing is as “more than a frozen record of thinking. It is an action and a way of knowing” (241).    When my students ask me why I like writing so much, I find that I often tell then that writing allows me to figure out what I know, what I want to say and what I need to learn. In support of his approach, Irmscher draws on scholarship from Brooks saying, “it is writing as a generative process, as investigation, as probing, as learning in action” (241). Writing is not simply something that we learn it is a way that we learn. As I was reading this article this past weekend I was struck by the passage that states for “the integrity of our own discipline as a subject worthy of research and understanding” (240). I was struck because this declaration comes a good 10 years before we even have rhetoric and composition programs. This makes me think of the writing about writing approach written about by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. This approach “takes that declarative and procedural knowledge about writing as the content of the course, and that regards helping students think and learn about writing as the appropriate goal for the course (rather than teaching students how to write) (Wardle and Downs 276). If we do not study writing as a discipline then we run the risk of seeing writing as skills to master rather than a way of understanding and making sense of the world around us ( Irmscher 243). If we are to see writing as nothing more than correct grammar and sentence structure then we begin to turn back the clock to a process approach that stressed form and correctness. If we are to view Writing as a subject worthy of study in and of itself that we need to decide how one develops expertise in writing. In his article “The Idea of Expertise: An Exploration of Cognitive and Social Dimensions of Writing” Michael Carter offers a theory that helps us to define what we mean when we say expertise.

                Carter argues for an approach to expertise that takes both local and global knowledge in to account. Novice writers Carter states should “be initiated into a discourse community by studying the conventions of that community and the way writing is used in that community” (266). Thus, novice writers need to learn not only how language functions but how language functions within the discourse community that he or she is trying to enter. While I agree with Carter that all writing is contextual and that students should learn contextuality of the situation to which they are writing for. I find fault with the idea that students need to be initiated in to a discourse community. Discourse communities are often highly exclusive and there are often barriers to entry that make it continually challenging for those whose discourse pattern are looked down upon, usually minority students who are often forced to give up their home language in order to be accepted in to the discourse community. While I think that it essential that students have both local and global knowledge, I feel that it is essential because this knowledge will help them take what they have learned and apply it to any writing situation that they face outside the classroom. Carter brings up the idea of transfer in this essay when he states, “some research shows that transfer of learning, the ability to generalize from performance in one specific context to performance in another context, is possible but only under special conditions” (270). We now take this to be true and even center composition courses around the idea of transfer. This semester I am teaching a course where the goal is to have students developed a theory of writing that they can then apply to any new writing situation that they face. I advocate for this approach because it gives the students agency and confidence that they have developed a theory that is theirs and that is useful to them. I feel that carter places too much focus on the situation and the community and not enough on the writer. It seems to me that the situation has control over the writer (which it always does to a certain extent) but that the writer in this model loses agency.

                If we look to a system that places agency back onto the writer or at least on the surface appears to then we can better understand the balance that needs goes on between situational factors and the cognitive processes of the writer. Flowers and Hayes create a structure where they emphasize that “composing is a goal-directed thinking process” wherein the writer creates a hierarchy of their goals (366). Flower and Hayes argue that through these goals and sub-goals, the writer engages in the creative process of writing. In their model of the composing process, the student is placed in a task environment where they are faced with a rhetorical problem. It becomes the writer’s responsibility to navigate this problem and through the process of writing the student is able to retrieve information from his or her long-term memory that helps them to respond to the task environment.  While it is up to the writer to be able to retrieve this information through writing it is the task environment that calls writing in to being in the first place. However, for me, this approach reminds me of a more complex process theory. It seems to me that there are still finite stages that the writer must go through to compose, what has been expanded is the complexity of the steps and the fact that this model accounts for the reclusively of writing. One question that I have when it comes to this approach is that the entire act of composing seems to be going on in the student’s mind. What role then does context or situational factors play? I am also somewhat bothered by the fact that the authors seem to claim these stages to be universal of all writers, part of me wonders what this would look like if we were to add multilingual students into the mix especially those still working to gain fluency in English?

Amanda

Carter, Michael. “The Idea of Expertise: An Exploration of Cognitive and Social Dimensions of Writing.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 41, no. 3, 1990, pp. 265-286.

Flower, Linda, and Hayes, John R. “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 32, no. 4, 1981, 365-387.

Irmscher, William F. “Writing as a Way of Learning and Developing.” CCC 30.3 (Oct. 1979): 240-44.

Key Terms and Connections Across Readings

Student Agency:

Donald M. Murray “Finding Your Own Voice: Teaching Composition in an Age of Dissent”

Linda Flower and John R. Hayes “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing”

Connection: Murray aims at a classroom where the instructor serves as a mentor for the student, where the student takes ownership of their own learning. Flower and Hayes' essay also centers on the writer's cognitive processes. For both Murray and Flower and Hayes, agency resides within the individual composer.

Return to Classical Rhetoric:

Donald M. Murray “Finding Your Own Voice: Teaching Composition in an Age of Dissent”

James E. Kinneavy “Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric”

Edward P.J. Corbett “The Usefulness of Classical Rhetoric”

Connection:

Murray argues that in order for students to have agency in the composition classroom, that there needs to be a return to classical rhetoric. Kinneavy sees classical rhetoric (specifically kairos) as the tool to teaching college composition. Corbett’s argue for classical rhetoric is that it provides guidance in the classroom. While Murray and Corbett may not agree on the way that classical rhetoric is used in the classroom-- Murray being post-process and Corbett being very system-oriented-- there is a connection between the three scholars in how they value classical rhetoric.

Writing as Coming to Knowledge:

William F. Irmscher “Writing as a Way of Learning and Developing”

Charles W. Kneupper “Argument: A Social Constructivist Perspective”

Michael Quigley “Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Ideology in Freshman English”

John T. Gage “An Adequate Epistemology for Composition: Classical and Modern Perspectives”

James Moffett “Ch. 1-2” in Teaching the Universe of Discourse

Connection: Irmscher centers his essay around the concept that “writing [is] a process of growing and maturing” (242) and that through writing and composition the student develops the ability to use knowledge. Irmscher references Moffett and his concept of abstraction in his essay, saying that “if teachers do not let students abstract from the ground up, students will never learn” (243). Kneupper and Quigley both work towards a concept where critical thinking/furthering knowledge is the goal in composing. Gage’s text uses classical rhetoric as a means of discovering and validating knowledge. All of the readings listed construct a theory or process where writing/composition works toward knowledge and developing.

Writing as Subject of Study

Irmscher “ Writing As a Way of Learning and Developing”

Wardle and Downs “ Looking into a Writing about Writing Classroom”   

Connection: Irmscher brings up this idea of a declaration of integrity with the discipline; the “integrity of our own discipline as a subject worthy of research and understanding” ( 240). For me this brings up the idea of the focus of first year composition being the study of writing. This approach to first year composition has been referred to throughout the literature as a writing studies or writing about writing approach. This approach “takes that declarative and procedural knowledge about writing as the content of the course, and that regards helping students think and learn about writing as the appropriate goal for the course ( rather than teaching students how to write) (276). If we do not study writing as a discipline then we run the risk of seeing writing as skills to master rather than a way of understand and making sense of the world around us (243).

Writing as Goal-Directed Thinking

Linda Flowers and John R. Hayes “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing”

James E. Kinneavy “The Basic Aims of Discourse”

Connection: Flowers and Hayes create a structure where they emphasize that “composing is a goal-directed thinking process” wherein the writer creates a hierarchy of their goals (366). Flower and Hayes argue that through these goals and sub-goals, the writer engages in the creative process of writing. Kinneavy’s essay follows along the same lines in that he creates these aims, or categories, of writing in which the student can operate within and throughout. Both Kinneavy and Flower and Hayes formulate a structure that emphasizes “goals” or “aims” as ways of thinking and writing, yet they also both note that their structures are fluid and ultimately set by the writer.

Expertise as a Continuum

Carter “ The idea of Expertise: Exploration of Cognitive and Social”

Quigley “ Rhetoric, Dialect and Ideology in Freshman composition”

Connection: Carter argues that expertise is not something that one has or does not have but rather that expertise is constantly developing. Expertise in a combination of both general and local knowledge. Cater brings forth the idea of discourse community and states that “ novice writers should be initiated into a discourse community by studying the conventions of that discourse community and the ways that writing is used in that community” (266). In order to gain expertise one needs to both procedural knowledge and theoretical knowledge. For example it is not enough for students to compose within a certain community, a student must also understand the conventions and why these conventions are in place. For example, Quigley states that he is not “against having students write paragraphs that “cohere”; nor am I opposed to having them write essays that unified and focused” (Quigley 24) these are the argumentative structures in our discipline that are the “recurrent forms that are social products tested and maintained” ( Kneupper 184). The goal however is that the not that students learn these forms to reproduce them but  use this procedural knowledge to have students, “test the form and even to test the idea of form” (Quigley 24).

*** For more on discourse community see Gee “What is Literacy”***

Transferability

Carter “The idea of Expertise: Exploration of Cognitive and Social”

Yancey, Robertson,Tacsak. Writing Across Contexts:Transfer, Composition, and Sites Writing

Connection: Carter explores the idea of transfer of knowledge from one context to another is his discussion of expertise in writing. In his discussion of general and local knowledge Carter asserts that “transfer of learning, the ability to generalize from performance in one specific context to performance in another context, is possible under certain conditions” ( 270). These conditions Carter continues include cuing, practicing, generating abstract rules and socially developing principles ( 270). Therefore, while transfer from one context to the next is possible there are certain things the writer needs in order to engage in this transfer. In Writing Across Context Yancey, Robinson and Tacsak create a composition course that allows students to create their own theory of writing, with the goal of giving students the ability to take what they have learned in their composition course and transfer it to new situations both within the university and outside the university.  

Movement Away From Master Narratives

Gary Olson “ Towards a Post Process Composition: Abandoning the Rhetoric of Assertion”

Royster “When the First Voice You Hear is not Your Own”

All of these readings alert us to the dangers of creating a universal theory that is applicable to all writers. Olson invoking Toulmin cautions scholars that when we create theory we need to be aware what we are doing is generalizing. Theory becomes problematic when we believe “that we have captured a truth” and we assume that this truth is universal to all composers ( Olson 8). Theorizing on the other hand allows us to explore, challenge and reassess and speculate ( 8). Royster asks scholars when we create narratives that we need to listen to the voices of those that we are theorizing about. In order to create new narratives we need to listen to those voices that have been marginalized.