PAB Entry #3

here_to_there1In her article, “They Can Get There from Here: Teaching for Transfer through a ‘Writing about Writing’ Course,” Jennifer Wells explores her justification for and experience with teaching a high school composition course using a writing about writing (WAW) approach. Though much of my personal research focuses on first-year composition (FYC), Wells’ interests and mine intersect where Wells seeks to prepare her senior English students for unknown college writing contexts, including FYC. She understands that, as writing teachers, we are not experts in writing in the disciplines, but we can prepare our students for writing in the disciplines by cultivating an awareness within them that prepares them to write in a variety of contexts.

Her exploration into WAW began when she found herself looking forward to the November homecoming visits of the seniors who graduated the previous spring. Upon their return, she would ask questions to find out about their college writing experiences. She found that college writing for her students is “idiosyncratic” and “highly unstandardized,” and she questioned, “how can I prepare [my students] to use what I teach once they are outside of my classroom?” (57). In her research, she discovered David N. Perkins and Gavriel Salomon’s (1989) work on knowledge transfer, which provided her with the needed vocabulary to design and pilot a new writing curriculum.

a-good-writerIn this new curriculum, Wells is intentional to include opportunities that promote what Perkins and Salomon call “mindful abstraction,” or guiding students “to deliberately search for connections” (qtd. in Wells 57). Her curriculum is shaped around three units in which her students 1.) question, research, and define others’ definitions of “good writing,” 2.) explore potential discourse communities they will enter once in college, and 3.) research writing in their intended major in the writing in the disciplines unit. As students move from unit to unit, Wells prompts them to self-reflect on their writing discoveries. Though, she does not detail the specifics of how she manages this self-reflection activities.

At the time thipab-questions article was written in 2011, Wells was not yet sure how successful her writing about writing pilot had been. She explains that “questions still remain” and she would find out at her former students’ homecoming how they felt about college writing and their preparedness for it. But herein lies another intersection between Wells and I, as I too often wonder about the short-term and long-term effectivity of the writing about writing approach utilized in my classroom. To what extent are my students more “mindful” of the various writing situations they encounter beyond FYC and are they successful in negotiating those situations?

Exploring the conversation in this article brings me to an interesting realization and question: In using a writing about writing approach, whether it is designed and built by the instructor or aligns with Downs question-markand Wardle, the instructor assumes the role of facilitator of knowledge rather than the deliverer, or teacher, of knowledge. Perhaps for this approach to be successful either in high school or FYC, students must construct their own knowledge (via the facilitation of the instructor); mindful abstraction therefore is not limited to an awareness of writing situations and personal writing choices, but it is an individual student’s ability to articulate their negotiation of different contexts. So while it is important that my students are negotiating various writing situations effectively, are they even constructing knowledge in the first place?

Wells, J. (2011). They can get there from here: Teaching for transfer through a “Writing about Writing” course. The English Journal 101(2), 57-63.

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