Digital Commons Network^™

Towards Public Professionalism: A Pentadic Intervention In Debate Between The Common Core Standards Initiative (Ccsi) And The National Council Of Teachers Of English (Ncte), Jim Webber

Doctoral Dissertations

In this project, I propose an alternate rhetorical strategy for literacy educators (K-16) seeking to enter debates over common standards for "college- and career-readiness" in literacy. I argue that the NCTE's current strategy fails to invite public participation in debate, and to remedy this situation, I suggest educators employ Kenneth Burke's pentad to sponsor public inquiry into the standards. When the CCSI claims its standards will ensure that all students "demonstrate independence as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners," I suggest educators ask: in what situations do students demonstrate independence? With whom or for whom? For what purposes? Using what methods? …

Learning From Feedback: How Students Read, Interpret And Use Teacher Written Feedback In The Composition Classroom, Elisabeth A. Kramer-Simpson

Doctoral Dissertations

Much research on teacher written feedback has focused on the teacher's role in giving the written commentary. What these studies fail to provide is a description of if and how students are reading, interpreting and using this feedback in their revisions. Some research has explored how students feel about the feedback they receive, but few studies have investigated the interplay between teacher and student in the actual process of feedback and revision. Those studies that have looked at feedback and revision in the classroom context are few in both first and second language writing research. Further, these few studies fall …

Writing For Numbers: The Cultural Production Of Good Writers In The Time Of High Stakes Writing Assessments, Barbara W. Tindall

Doctoral Dissertations

Few studies have looked at the consequences of standardized writing tests to students' understanding of what it means to be a competent writer. Using research techniques drawn from performance studies and art therapy, this qualitative study of middle class, honors students invited them to explore their understanding of what it means to be a high scoring writer on the SAT.

The theoretical framework of the study is situated at the intersection of three fields: cultural production theory, New Literacy Studies and object relations theory. The study has two related strands. In the first, I perform a socio-historical analysis of the …

Politics And Ethics Of Student Self-Assessment In The Composition Classroom, Mike Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations

While writing instructors often assign student self-assessment essays with the goal of motivating their students and helping them to develop writerly self-awareness, the reality of the classroom power dynamic limits what can be accomplished in such essays. Students might feel pressured to construct versions of their "selves" that are simply reproductions of traditional student roles rather than to engage in honest, meaningful reflection. Scholars in the fields of Education, Assessment and Composition Studies have noted the lack of research into the political and ethical implications of requiring students to compose these essays.

This dissertation answers the call for research into …

The Self-Help Of Composition: Peter Elbow's "Writing Without Teachers", Composition Studies, And The Extracurriculum, Alexandria Peary

Doctoral Dissertations

The influence of Peter Elbow's Writing without Teachers on Composition Studies and classroom-based writing instruction is indisputable, yet the central message of the book has been continually sidestepped. At the heart of Elbow's book is an inherent contradiction to classroom instruction: the original impetus for the book was based on self-instruction, or learning about writing outside of any course. For Composition Studies, Writing without Teachers, starting with its title, is a riddle or a Zen koan the discipline has delayed answering for over thirty-five years. This project examines Writing without Teachers as a self-help book on writing and thus as …

Arresting Beauty, Framing Evidence: An Inquiry Into Photography And The Teaching Of Writing, Kuhio Walters

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the uses and conceptualizations of photography in college Composition. Composition has long been conflicted over the relation between form and content---and since the 1970s, between aesthetics and politics. Today, this disciplinary tension manifests in how the visual is brought into pedagogy: either it is approached aesthetically, as something to beautify a text, or politically, as a source of cultural critique. The field's uses of photography have been positioned within this aesthetics/politics binary, but to understand the medium as only one or the other is to miss its full practical and theoretical potential.

Theoretically, photography is powerful and …

Understanding Sla Through Peer Interactions In A Chinese Classroom: A Sociocultural Perspective, Lei Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Second language learning and development is a complex process that is situated in sociocultural settings. Classrooms provide such daily life settings in which language acquisition occurs via social interactions among peers and the instructor as well as other mediated means. The purpose of this research study was to examine the roles of peer interaction in a Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) classroom and how different types of peer interaction affect learners' second language development in a classroom setting, and what roles peer interactions played in such a setting. Based on the sociocultural theory, the study explored the opportunities for …

Teaching Toward Understanding: Feminist Rhetorical Theories And Pedagogies In The College Composition Classroom, Alison A. Knoblauch

Doctoral Dissertations

While recognizing the value of traditional argument, many teacher-scholars have begun to challenge the primacy of antagonistic debate in college classrooms. In "Teaching Toward Understanding: Feminist Rhetorical Theories and Pedagogies in the College Composition Classroom," I maintain that the inclusion of invitational rhetoric, embodied rhetoric, and rhetorical listening as classroom content, coupled with the translation of these theories into pedagogical practice, can both challenge and expand current approaches to the teaching of writing and rhetoric. Furthermore, by offering alternatives to antagonistic debate, these rhetorical theories encourage productive and ethical forms of discourse, promoting more successful cross-cultural communication both in the …

When The Workplace Is On Campus: Learning To Write For A University Speech Language Clinic, Michelle Cox

Doctoral Dissertations

Much of the literature on academic and workplace writing focuses on the differences between these two writing arenas, leading Dias et al. to describe writing for school and work as "worlds apart." Using insights from activity system theory and rhetorical genre theory, this dissertation project investigates the possibility of middle spaces between academic and workplace writing. Set in a Communication Science and Disorders (CSD) master's program, this qualitative study follows five graduate students as they learn workplace writing in a space that physically bridges academia and the workplace, an on-campus speech-language clinic.

Findings indicate that the genres used in the …

Teaching Not Knowing: Reflections On A Writing Practice, Terry A. Moher

Doctoral Dissertations

Donald M. Murray (1994) proposes that the practice of teaching composition engages us in a process of "teaching not knowing." In this inquiry, I draw from theories in composition, psychology, epistemology, ethics, and communication to portray and describe this practice in my high school classroom. Studying my students' writing processes and our interactions in writing conferences, I describe a philosophical stance that approaches teaching writing as improvisational, dialogic and relational. This reflection explores the conditions and attitudes which enhance our capacities to teach writing processes and adopts discourse outside of composition theory that may inform our practices in teaching writing. …

Writing American Subjects: Race, Composition, And The Daily Themes Assignment For English 12 At Harvard, 1886--1887, Amy A. Zenger

Doctoral Dissertations

This study works to develop a way of reading the functions of race in classroom contexts---specifically in the predominantly white contexts in which composition was formed as a university subject. The model of race chosen for this study is based on critical race theories that conceive of race as being socially constructed, but also a force that organizes identity and experience in powerful ways, even when (or perhaps especially when) its presence is apparently silent---or is, in the terminology of Charles Mills, "normalized."

Primary data for the study is drawn from materials related to the daily theme assignment designed by …

Reading The Personal: Toward A Theory And Practice Of Self -Narrative In Student Writing, Megan Fulwiler

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines students' personal essays as rhetorical projects of self-representation. The debate over the role of personal writing in composition studies has created a binary opposition between a modernist transcendent notion of self and a postmodern discursive subject. As a result, the complex issues of self and representation in student work is often dismissed in favor of what is traditionally called "academic discourse." The concept of "narrative identity" provides a way to identify the strategies that student writers use to establish ethos, assert agency, and negotiate codes of belonging within multiple social communities. Chapter 1, "Situating Personal Writing," considers …

Layering Literacies: Computers And Peer Response In The 21st Century, Christopher Warren Dean

Doctoral Dissertations

Research into peer response work has a long history in the field of composition, and the work of my dissertation is to extend that research into the newer subfield of composition, computers and writing. Specifically I focus on the way students use multiple linguistic competencies (oral, print and electronic competencies) to perform a variety of selves in peer response. Drawing on the work of Erving Goffinan, the extant literature of peer response, work done in ethnomethodology, and research done in three first year composition classrooms, I outline the contours and strategies that students use to engage in peer response while …

At The Heart Of It: Middle School Writers Use Talk And Multimedia Journals To Forge A Literate Classroom Community, Julie A. Pantano

Doctoral Dissertations

In this research study, I investigated how middle school writers use talk and multi-media journals to forge a literate classroom community. Talk and multi-media journals helped middle school writers to construct and maintain a safe, caring, supportive, and respectful learning environment where transformative literacy and learning experiences could take place.

Classroom talk played a vital role in improving students' relationships in this literate classroom community and engaging them in meaningful ways with their multi-media journals. During the research study, explicit instruction in the social aspects of talk emerged as important as explicit instruction in language arts content.

The multi-media approach …

Thinking Through Performance: Children Make Sense Of Characters And Social Relationships Through A Gesture-Based Theatre Convention (Tableau), Georgia Patricia Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

This inquiry considers a gesture-based theatre convention called tableau as used by first and second graders during language arts instruction. I argue that tableau acts as a medium of thinking, used to make sense of literary text and of social relationships. Tableau is largely non-language-based; it augments instructional practices that are primarily language-based. Tableau reveals sophisticated understandings children cannot yet put into language. As such, tableau offers educators a means to cast children as capable analysts of literature.

Qualitatively oriented, this inquiry uses instrumental case study methods of observation and data analysis coupled with a concurrent conceptual study of the …

Using Writing Composition Pedagogy In An Introductory Teacher Education Practicum To Learn About The Motivations, Journeys, And Understandings Of Preservice Teachers, Daniel Archer Rothermel

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the last third of the twentieth century, best practice in America's public schools has evolved from a focus on the teacher's behavior in presenting material to a focus on whether and how students learn. Over that same period, writing composition pedagogy has focused on the emphasis on students' growth and development as they think reflectively, write drafts, and self-monitor. Integrating writing composition pedagogy in the education of preservice teachers, I use Exploring Teaching, a learner-centered introductory course in teacher education that I teach, as the specific context of my inquiry. As my students write Dear Classmates Letters, portfolio reflections, …

In Pursuit Of "A Good Healthy Chat": The Roles Of Organization And Rapport-Building In Effective Middle School Literacy Instruction, Douglas Kingsley Kaufman

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study I explore what classroom conditions a master eighth-grade language arts teacher created in order to become a more effective listener. I defined effective listening as a deep receptivity that leads the listener to create responses that satisfy the other's needs. Responses must help students move their ideas and work progressively forward. Conditions that promote effective listening, then, serve two purposes: they (1) enhance teacher receptivity and (2) help students better articulate their interests, knowledge, and needs.

During the 1996-1997 school year I conducted a qualitative study that drew heavily upon ethnographic methodologies. As a participant-observer I took …

Constructive Texts: Theory, Practice, And The "Self" In Composition, Deborah Lynne Hodgkins

Doctoral Dissertations

The influence of postmodern theory on studies in composition and rhetoric has led to important questions for the teaching of writing: In light of/after postmodernism, what role does/should theory play in classroom practice and how can it best inform pedagogy? In writing and in the world at large, how do we define and where do we locate agency?

I argue that the goal of composition courses should be to help students learn to use discourse to represent the interests of themselves and others and effect change in a postmodern world--to become active citizens by becoming better rhetoricians. In order to …

The Role Of Shame In Writing: How Lived Experience Affects The Writing Process, Carol Kountz

Doctoral Dissertations

Writing fluently without disabling apprehension requires an ability to control ideas despite the occurrence of censoring thoughts or shameful sensations. Such ability is characteristically lacking in apprehensive or blocking writers, who, therefore, have difficulty in composing. To understand the psychological and social factors that impede the writing process, and to give writers and compositionists insight into the features of writing that result in "writer's block," I held conversational interviews with twenty-four people who designate themselves as apprehensive writers about their literacy experiences and writing behavior. Analysis of these interviews shows that these people, in anticipation of a real or inward, …

Bodily Discourses: When Students Write About Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, And Eating Disorders In The Composition Classroom, Michelle Marie Payne

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes student texts about bodily violence written for Freshman English and advanced writing courses at the University of New Hampshire between 1994 and 1996. All the volunteers were white women, most aged 18-21. The project addresses four central questions: Why are students writing about these experiences? How are they writing about them? What assumptions inform teachers' responses to such essays? What larger cultural contexts shape how such experiences are represented and understood by students and teachers?

The primary materials are twenty-five student essays; interviews with students, teachers, and campus personnel; and observations of classrooms and staff meetings. Information …

Giving Voice To The Spirits: Storytelling In The Service Of Belizean Literacy, Gerald Joseph Kelly

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the participation of indigenous storytellers in a textbook project undertaken by Belizean educators. A qualitative study of these narrators, who contributed both traditional stories and personal narratives, extended from February 1991 until February 1996 in Belize's Toledo District. Featured narrators were interviewed and audio-taped by the author throughout this time period, as they contributed their oral lore to the project.

This investigation reveals the complex interrelationships of anthropological salvage and cultural renewal. Certain contemporary scholars decry what they perceive as the limited pastoral dimension of salvage, which may suggest that the true value of traditional stories lies …

Beyond The Postmodern Impasse Of Contemporary Composition: The Non-Foundational Alternative Of Deweyan Pragmatism, Donald Crosby Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

In their critique of the autonomous individual of foundationalism, postmodernists have rejected the epistemological assumption that a knower directly perceives reality in thought then expresses these perceptions through language. Yet as these theorists have asserted the influence of language upon an individual's thinking, they have been unable to explain an individual's agency--the ability to create, assert, examine, and maintain/or modify a belief. Once considered to be situated in prior discourses, the individual has been conceived as a postmodern subject dominated by language. Yet the subject's ability to influence as well as be influenced by discursive practices has not been explained …

Beyond Note Cards: Rethinking The Freshman Research Paper, Bruce Ballenger

Doctoral Dissertations

Ever since its introduction as an assignment in composition textbooks in the 1920s, the freshman research paper has confounded students and discouraged their instructors. Yet the research paper remains a largely static fixture in most first-year writing courses. What accounts for assignment's persistence, despite the long history of complaint? What are the aims of the freshman research paper, and how well do students understand its purpose? Why do they struggle with the genre? How might it be reconceived?

Using extensive interviews with students and a close examination of student papers, I argue here that the conventional freshman research paper is …

Making A Place For Poetry: Response In An Adult Writing Group, Andrea Luna

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how writers respond to other writer's work in the context of a community poetry group. A qualitative study of the poetry group, including participant-observation and tape recording of group meetings, analysis of conversation during meetings, collection of documents, and open-ended interviewing of participants, was undertaken over a period of ten months. Through narrative analysis of the data, one of the primary units of which is the single poem plus the group's response to that poem, the author attempted to create a credible interpretation of the activities and conversations of the group which addresses the question of what …

A Study Of The Reading And Writing Experiences Of Four Laotian Refugee Adolescents From One Family In An American Secondary School, Danling Fu

Doctoral Dissertations

This study describes and interprets the reading and writing experiences of four recently arrived Laotian refugee adolescents from one family in an American secondary school. Through four extensive case studies, the study compares and contrasts how these individuals read and write on their own initiative and are taught to read and write at school, and what happens when the school agenda matches and mismatches their learning patterns. This study reveals how school structure re-enforces the marginalization of the ethnic minority students in their school life by ignoring what they know and who they are. With a focus on four minority …

An Ecological Perspective Of Writing: Teachers, Peers, And Authors As Resources In A Response-Based Classroom, Margaret L. Murray

Doctoral Dissertations

The present study examines the ways in which the available resources of books, classmates, and teacher affect three fourth-grade students' writing development within the same classroom. The study's unique contribution is its holistic description of how all three resources contribute collectively to the ongoing writing of these individuals over the better part of their school year. The study describes the ways in which the children's writing and their notions of good writing are being formed in the dialectical processes of interaction with these resources. Further, the study describes the global traits of their particular classroom's culture--its extant written forms and …

A Celebration Of Tradition Or Of Self? An Ethnographic Study Of Teachers' Comments On Student Writing In America And In China, Xiao-Ming Li

Doctoral Dissertations

The study builds a dialogue between teachers of writing in China and America on what "good writing" is, for the purpose of revealing the fact that "good writing" resides not just with student texts, but with the teachers who read and judge student papers.

Writing comments on student papers is a time-honored and widely accepted practice in writing classrooms in most countries. Teachers offer text-specific advice to each student and communicate to the student writer, among other things, the criteria of good writing. A close look at the teacher's comments, therefore, reveals the criteria with which teachers measure student papers. …

More Than Print: The Home And School Literacies Of Three Fourth-Graders, Margaret M. Voss

Doctoral Dissertations

Through ethnographic case studies of three fourth-grade children, this study investigates the relationships between children's home and school literacies. The data were collected through participant-observation in the children's homes and at school; interviews of children, parents, and teacher; and analysis of children's products and processes (such as written work and hand-made crafts).

The study defines a literacy as a meaning-making system which can be used functionally, communicatively, reflectively, flexibly, and pleasurably. Schools typically focus on print literacy and do not always recognize or value the range of literacies children bring with them from home. This research shows children using not …

Large-Scale Portfolio Evaluation Of Writing, Jay Simmons

Doctoral Dissertations

Schools, districts, states, and testing organizations routinely assess writing ability with timed, prompted writing samples. Based on these results, those in control swing the gate open or slam it shut for thousands of students, teachers, administrators and schools, in decisions about promotion, admission, retention or funding.

This study demonstrates that timed writing samples poorly predict actual classroom writing performance, underestimating the weakest and poorest while overrating the strongest. Self-selected portfolios from 263 randomly selected students in grades five, eight, and eleven across eleven school unions also provide a clearer picture of the development of writing abilities from elementary through high …

One Writing Process: A Self-Reflective Analysis Of The Creation Of A Young Adult Novel, Thomas S. Romano

Doctoral Dissertations

To describe his process of creation, the author analyzes the journal he kept in conjunction with writing a young adult novel. Each day he wrote fiction, he used a journal to document his writing and thinking processes, invention strategies, and creation dilemmas. The author examined his planning techniques, his use of visualization and detail, the role that reading played in his writing, and the influence of people and autobiographical experience. He found that some of his most productive planning and thinking were done while away from his writing room, not consciously thinking about the novel-in-progress until ideas suddenly occurred to …