Broadening Environments and Practicing Literacy: A Contextual-Developmental Approach to Basic Writing
Karin Evans
- School: Purdue University (0183)
- Degree: Ph.D.
- Date: 1997; pp: 92
- Advisor: Weiser, Irwin
- Source: DAI-A 58/09, p. 3504, Mar 1998
- Subjects: Language, Rhetoric And Composition (0681); Education, Language And Literature (0279)
- ProQuest Document Number:
- ISBN: 0-591-58895-1
- UMI Number: AAT 9808440
Abstract:
-
College composition classes are positioned, for many students, between school literacy and
the multiple adult literacies of postsecondary education, workplaces, civic discourse, intellectual life,
community projects, consumerism, and personal and family realms. Given the narrow focus of literacy
instruction in most elementary and secondary schools, it is important that college composition
classes introduce students to the more sophisticated ways of understanding and using literacy that
they will need in order to function effectively in various adult domains. If students are placed in
basic writing classes, then the need for sophisticated approaches to literacy is even greater.
It has often been said of basic writers that their conceptions of writers and writing are limited--and
yet their introduction to college coursework in English often consists of writing and correcting
sentences in workbooks, or perhaps writing decontextualized short essays representing the modes of
discourse. Thus the question motivating this dissertation is, 'How can basic writers be helped to
enter the multiple and complex realms in which adults use literacy?' I explore this question from
several angles, considering the implications of social construction and literacy theory as well as
selected literature from developmental psychology that has helped me to understand that the
environments for basic writing--personal, institutional, and cultural--profoundly affect how
basic writers approach their writing assignments. Finally, I offer contextual-developmental
principles on which to base the design of basic writing curricula.
Dissertations
We post the dissertation abstracts
our graduates enter into ProQuest's
database of Dissertations and Theses (and link to 24-page previews as available).
Those at Purdue can locate the full texts through the Purdue Library.