Dee Drive's final project....thoughts welcome
One of the main questions of my dissertation project is this: Why is there such a wide gap between student and teacher perceptions of what should be taught in FYC writing classrooms? My guess is that many of the reasons are political and due to conflicting social standpoints. Students tend to be motivated by their own personal bottom line. They’re here to get a degree to get a good job to prosper in the world. Anything that they could learn in a composition classroom should contribute somehow toward that goal. Composition teachers, on the other hand, are often committed to forwarding progressive politics and special topics related to their areas of study (literature, philosophy, new media etc) in their composition classrooms. I would like to propose that such motivational gaps can be overcome, but only if composition instructors are willing to engage in a Burkean process of identification with their students. What I hope to do in this project are three things: 1) Explain the Burkean notion of identification 2) Assign salient interests of each group using preexisting data 3) Show how the teachers’ and students’ interests can be identified and possibly consubstantiated in the Burkean sense to improve curriculum design.
Dee, this sounds great. I
Dee, this sounds great. I would like to read your paper when you finish it. Have you thought of ways in which instructors may suggest to his/her students to identify ways in which they can write about a certain topic by utilizing their terministic screen that may be releated to their major, interests, positions, etc.?
I commented on this earlier,
I commented on this earlier, but it disappeared into the blogosphere someplace. No! I hadn't thought about using the concept of the terministic screen in the ways you suggest. I had, however, thought about inventing some sort of process that asks comp instructors to get perspective by incongruity. I don't know how that will happen yet, but I'm working on it.
Identification in FY Comp
Dee Drive:
This is a very interesting question/problem . . . the nature and function of identification in pedagogy/first-year comp. It’s a “big” one, too, so one issue will be how to focus your work as you move forward (as I’m sure you realize).
Here are a couple of ideas to ponder as you move ahead (key principles to keep in mind, I guess):
1. Remember that Burke claims that “consubstantiality” may be necessary for any way of life and that identification is a key aim of rhetoric. Therein, I think, is the suggestion that it’s not quite a matter of “wanting to identify” with each other. That desire is built in, or implicit, in any act of communication. Identification is a motive, in other words, or a situation. By extension, students and their teachers would be predisposed to identify (as human beings). But clearly, something gets in the way sometimes (as it often will) when you have participants with unique experiences, etc.
2. So then with identification, you also get division, a natural result of incomplete overlap in experience/identity.
And with regard to pedagogy:
3. The literature is full of discussions of teachers’ attempts to identify with their students (meet them on their terms), and sometimes that produces situations where you have instructors trying to be “cool” (or whatever) so their students will like them. That’s a situation fraught with difficulties, in part because students identify instructors as a class (“Instructor”) even as they might recognize some individuality. What are the consequences?
And a couple of sources that might be helpful:
In “Underlife and Writing Instruction” by Robert Brook, he draws on the work of Erving Goffman to describe the battle of identities in the comp classroom. It’s a fantastic essay, and very relevant here, I think. Goffman was also influenced by Burke’s ideas, so there’s a good connection there waiting to be made.
See
Brooke, Robert. "Underlife and Writing Instruction." CCC 38.2 (1987): 141-153.
http://inventio.us/ccc/archives/1987/05/robert_brooke_u.html
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire has a lot to say about identification and the dialogue that can make it happen. There’s a good opportunity (esp. as you move into your dissertation) to explore the Burkeian/Freirean connections on this point. Freire is very much influenced by Freud and Marx, as is Burke.
I hope this gives you some ideas!
Dave