scholarly journals Designing Publicly Engaged First-Year Research Projects: Protest Art and Social Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Bridget Draxler
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Local Context ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Predominantly White Institution ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Protest Art ◽  
White Institution ◽  
Writing Assignment

This research assignment invites students in a first-year writing preparation course to explore topics of social justice through protest art. The course is taught at a small, private liberal arts college in a course for “emerging writers.” I have taught this assignment at a predominantly White institution (PWI), in a course where the majority of students are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Students choose a work of protest art from the campus library special collections, frame the social justice issue it addresses in a local context using local sources, and then write an essay that puts that research in conversation with their own story. Finally, linking public history to civic engagement, students create their own protest art as a community call to action. The multimodal, local, and personal nature of this writing assignment creates opportunities for students to see the connections between their emerging identities as writers and civic actors. This assignment can create space for students to use their multilingual identities to speak back to the structural inequality within our institution, developing confidence in their own voices to call for meaningful change.

scholarly journals Navigating the First Year: Transition and Adjustment Experiences of International Students of Color at a Predominantly White Institution

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina W. Yao ◽  
Jennifer N. Rutt ◽  
Kaleb Briscoe ◽  
Alexandra Kirshenbaum ◽  
Matthew W. Knight ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
International Students ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
International Student ◽  
Student Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Year ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Predominantly White Institution ◽  
White Institution

International student mobility has been a highly discussed topic in higher education in the United States (U.S.). Yet current geo-political issues necessitate a re-examination of how international students, especially those who would be considered students of Color, are transitioning to U.S. higher education institutions. Findings from three interviews that spanned participants’ first year on campus include the importance of social interactions, challenges with academic adjustments, and navigating the effects of politics. Suggestions for student affairs practice are addressed, including pre-sojourn connections and peer engagement.

scholarly journals Friendship Within and Across Borders

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaleb L. Briscoe ◽  
Christina Yao ◽  
Evangela Oates ◽  
Jennifer N. Rutt ◽  
Kathleen Buell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
International Students ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Students Of Color ◽  
Future Research ◽  
First Year ◽  
Domestic Students ◽  
Predominantly White Institution ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
White Institution

Establishing social networks can be extremely challenging when international students, particularly those of Color, move to a new academic and social environment. We examined first-year international students of Color perceptions of their social networks and how these networks affect their experiences at a predominantly White institution (PWI). This study illuminated participants' relationships with U.S. domestic students and the power of language, culture, and shared experiences through a longitudinal narrative inquiry. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are described in-depth for practitioners.

scholarly journals Productive Uncertainty and Postpedagogical Practice in First-Year Writing

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Composing Processes ◽  
Writing Assignment

To succeed beyond the writing classroom, students need creative thinking and adaptable, transferable writing and learning strategies, both of which are emphasized by a classroom approach called “postpedagogy.” Postpedagogy emphasizes experimentation and reflection as integral to composing processes, especially digital composing. One feature of postpedagogical classrooms is writing assignments that require students to make a broader range of rhetorical choices and experiment with new approaches, audiences, mediums, and/or technologies. I offer my “definitional text” assignment as an example of one such writing assignment. Though the experimentation encouraged by postpedagogical approaches may lead to initial failures and frustration, such failure can be made productive via intensive, sustained, and specific reflection on composing and learning processes.

Latina/o Undergraduate Students Mentoring Latina/o Elementary Students: A Borderlands Analysis of Shifting Identities and First-Year Experiences

2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 560-586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Delgado Bernal ◽  
Enrique Alemán Jr. ◽  
Andrea Garavito
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
University Students ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Elementary Students ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
First Year ◽  
Predominantly White Institution ◽  
White Institution ◽  
Shifting Identities

This article examines the experiences of first-year Latina/o undergraduates at a predominantly white institution. Through a borderlands analysis, the authors explore how these students describe their experiences participating in an ethnic studies course and mentoring Latina/o elementary schoolchildren. The authors find that these experiences served as sitios y lenguas (decolonizing spaces and discourses; Pérez, 1998)in which the undergraduate students were able to reflect on the ongoing transformation of their social and political identities, revealing the complex and fluid latinidades(Latina/o identities; Latina Feminist Group, 2001) that exist among the Latina/o university students. This article explores the physical and metaphorical borders (Anzaldúa, 1987) the undergraduates occupy, navigate, and challenge while they work simultaneously as mentors in a mostly Latina/o setting and as college students on a mostly white campus.

I See What You Mean

2018 ◽  
pp. 145-181
Author(s):  
Allison Smith Walker ◽  
Georgeanna Sellers
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Professional Writing ◽  
First Year ◽  
Teaching Tool ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Liberal Arts University ◽  
The Impact

The infographic represents a combination of visual imagery and big data, and it can be implemented successfully as a teaching tool across multiple educational settings. The infographic is also, by definition, a multimodal genre. It incorporates visual and textual elements, statistical evidence, research, graphic design, and digital literacy for both the creation and distribution of an effective data visualization through 21st century mechanisms of social action and interaction. In the following chapter, the authors, two instructors at a small, private, liberal arts university in the suburban South, will present examples of infographic curricula from undergraduate courses in first-year writing and professional writing in the medical humanities and analyze the effectiveness of this approach on student learning, particularly in relation to the impact of infographic instruction on the skills of synthesis, public resonance, transfer and social action.

scholarly journals ANTHROPOLOGY AND WRITING PEDAGOGY

Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Durba Chattaraj
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Written Text ◽  
The Core ◽  
Wide Range

In an increasingly interconnected world, learning how to think anthropologically — learning how to think with difference — should be an essential part of the process of higher education. Yet many students may never take an anthropology course during their undergraduate career. In such a milieu, it is important for anthropologists to both teach and actively participate in the curriculum design of the first-year writing seminars that are part of the core curriculum of many universities and colleges globally. While first-year writing programs predominate in the United States and the United Kingdom, they are growing internationally as well, particularly in liberal arts institutions. In this article I argue that anthropologists should teach first-year writing seminars at their educational institutions for three reasons: first, anthropology as a discipline is ecumenical about evidence; thus it introduces students to a wide range of evidentiary practices early on. This broad-based understanding of evidence facilitates transfer across disciplines. Second, encountering anthropology in a writing seminar attracts students towards pursuing majors, minors and elective classes in the discipline. Finally, through the discipline’s core methodology of participant observation, lived experience, rather than a synthesis of pre-existing texts, is the core source from which arguments and conclusions about the social world are derived. In an increasingly unequal world where representation in, and access to, written text is concomitantly unequal, it is important that students are introduced to multiple ways to understand and think about human experience. The methodology of participant observation destabilises slightly for undergraduate students the authority of written text as the main, and, often singular, source of knowledge.

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