A Post-Secondary Writing Bridge Program for Incarcerated Learners

This chapter discusses a College Bridge Writing Program piloted by the Petey Greene Program inside the Washington D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) Jail. The program is designed to foster racial and social justice by addressing some of the barriers that prevent incarcerated students from accessing higher education, from succeeding in college-level courses, and more generally, from finding meaningful employment. After providing an overview of the structure and the objectives of the course, the author focuses on the challenges posed by the pandemic and on two of the main features that contributed to the success of the program – the use of learning technology and the role of volunteer tutors, who provided one-on-one support to incarcerated students.

Demystifying Critical Thinking through the Exploration of Social Media

Critical thinking is a term used to describe one of the aims of higher education programs around the world. As an example, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (2011) clearly lists critical thinking as one of five inherently desirable educational outcomes in post-secondary writing in the United States. However, the definition of critical thinking is complicated by a large variety of philosophical concepts and a lack of clarity as to what students should actually learn and do (Moore, 2013). Too often, university courses impose unclear expectations on students, which adds unnecessary difficulty, particularly for multilingual, multicultural, and international students, who might not be socialized into the use of critical thinking in academic work. (Robertson, et al., 2000; Tran, 2011). Even university instructors themselves admit to a lack of comprehensive understanding of critical thinking and how it can be taught (Hang, 2011). In so far as standards for critical thinking in academic work will be imposed on students, there is a need for a clarification of critical thinking, leading to practical directions for classroom instruction. In this chapter, I propose a pedagogically focused definition for critical thinking and illustrate how this definition can be applied to a teaching approach involving the exploration and presentation of information on social media. It begins with an explanation to students regarding the epistemology of critical thinking, dispositions that support or deter its practice, and integrated skills. Adhering to this framework of critical thinking, students then explore a variety of comments on social media in order to deepen their understanding of social issues and of society itself. This approach to teaching critical thinking also provides a structure for academic presentations or written assignments that may serve as final products of the learning experience. The nature of student perspectives with regards to this approach to teaching critical thinking is also discussed.

Dialogic collaging to cultivate shame resilience in writing classrooms

Purpose Recently, practitioner literature in English education has taken up the issue of writing-related shame in classrooms, calling for teachers to help students develop resilience. One possible approach for nurturing shame resilience around writing is dialogic collaging: students make and dialogically engage with collages and with colleagues to explore the self-as-writer and to connect with others around writing struggles and joys. The purpose of this paper is to share and critically reflect on this pedagogical approach. Design/methodology/approach To share, interpret and consider the limitations and implications of the dialogic collaging pedagogy in service of writing-related shame resilience, the authors offer a multi-voiced narrative about one classroom instantiation of college, from the perspective of a university writing teacher and a student of writing. Findings On the interpretation, this story unfolds three central themes as follows: dialogic collaging can help students to develop a more realistic and situated sense of self-as-writer. That is, students can come to appreciate how “becoming a writer” is a process they – and others around them – are already in, rather than an unreachable achievement at which they will inevitably fail. The stance of playfulness nurtured through the dialogic collage process can provide a helpful distance between self and writing. These processes may – under certain conditions – support shame resilience. Research limitations/implications The conclusion reflects on whether more explicit attention to shame could be fruitful and on the dynamics of teacher vulnerability in writing classrooms. Practical implications The authors hope to inspire writing teachers – particularly in secondary, post-secondary and adult education – to engage with dialogic collaging as part of their pedagogical repertoires. Originality/value Dialogic collaging is a pedagogical approach not previously discussed in the literature on secondary and post-secondary writing instruction, offering one promising way to address writing-related shame. It can make visible and build solidarity around how others are also in the midst of a process of becoming – as writers and/or with writing. This appreciation can help nurture a more realistic, playful and shame-resilient stance toward self-as-writer.

Writing Instruction, Academic Labour, and Professional Development

As we envisioned this special section and, in turn, encouraged colleagues to contribute, we confronted one of the ironies of post-secondary writing instruction: many of the people entrusted with the responsibility of supporting student writing development are, essentially, excluded from professional conversations about effective writing pedagogy. That is, hired term-by-term, treated by their departments as fungible, and burdened with excessive teaching loads, university writing instructors may lack a sense of belonging to a profession or a discipline. College instructors, in turn, are also frequently precarious; even if working in full-time and permanent positions, they have little opportunity to engage with the profession, conducting research, as Brenna Clarke Gray points out, “off the sides of our desk.” The effect is a feeling of isolation and, for too many, despair about the sustainability of their work in higher education. This sentiment is expressed in the excellent work submitted by our contributors, who are each at differing points on their professional timelines, and, as a result, provide a range of viewpoints. We are grateful for their provocative and engaging work, and we also appreciate and acknowledge the formidable challenges of potential contributors who explained why they could not produce articles for publication--including some who struggled with how to represent their experience of academic precarity without hampering their employment prospects. We thank the editors of CJSDW/R for their patience and assistance as we completed this project amid other responsibilities.

Authoring Selves in School: Adolescent Writing Identity

This embedded case study investigates the nature of authorship in a secondary English Language Arts classroom by examining two adolescents’ writing identities and experiences writing across genres. Using rhetorical genre theory, the study illustrates how composition and notions of authorship in this context were strongly informed by conversations—both with peers and the teacher. An additional finding was that students wrote themselves into different genre identities as they composed poetry, editorials, and memoirs, drawing on different authorial stances and sources of knowledge. Finally, this analysis documents robust learning about the nature of writing, including transferring rhetorical strategies across contexts and purposes, skills often called for in education policy as well as career and college writing, not documented in secondary schools. Implications for teaching include valuing relationship-building conversations, offering students multiple genre positions across secondary writing experiences, and considering ways to build upon writers’ self-described and socially constructed identities as successful writers.