Further Thoughts on Finishing Chapter 2

I will try not to be as windy as my previous post. I continue to be extremely impressed by John Bean and his work. I think he is right on regarding college students' view of knowledge as being about the acquisition of correct information. They see knowledge in absolutist terms--that there is a right and wrong answer and don't see how knowledge is "dialogic, contingent, ambiguous, and tentative" (22). I think it is this place developmentally where students are that makes critical thinking oriented writing assignments so hard.

What I am taking away is the crucial importance of designing writing assignments (both formal and informal) that give students practice in confronting problems and interesting questions. Part of the fault of my approach last semester is that we dived into a formal writing assignment on a problem. What might have made it worse is that I gave them the freedom to choose a problem. Probably, I should have given them different level of problems to encounter and write about before such a large assignment that they then got to choose a problem for. But again, I face one of the paradoxes of writing courses--we do not necessarily have "disciplinary" content unless I have students write about writing. Usually, teachers will engage students in a theme or some other content and teach writing skills as students write about these themes. Writing is a funny subject to teach.

So #1 moral: design problem/question oriented writing assignments that lead students into active inquiry about subjects that may have no easy answer.

I particularly like the quote on page 23: "Good writing assignments produce exactly this kind of discomfort: the need to join, in a reasoned way, a conversation of differing voices."  I also like his summary of the way his History colleague presented assignments: "In all cases, the writing assignment is the same: 'Present an argument that supports, rejects, or modifies the given thesis, and support your response with factual evidence'" (31). I can say that these kinds of writing assignments have been the staple of my English 1302 classes, but not necessarily for my 1301 classes which have started with more expressivist writing.

Moral #2: encourage revision
I actually have worked hard to encourage revision in my classes, but students still don't always revise much. I really like his 15 suggestions for encouraging revision. I just want to know how to "seize" my students with questions.

As I in the more immediate sense work on preparing for Summer I and in the not so distant sense prepare for Fall, I want to think about how I will revamp/revise my assignments.