Identity

"Who are you?" said the caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I - I hardly know, sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."
Alice's Adventure is Wonderland, Lewis Caroll

Just allow me, for a moment, to play devil's advocate. Ken Hyland, City University of Hong Kong, has demonstrated a couple of noteworthy points. First, contrary to the rigidity of the 'rules' of academic writing, many published articles (in peer reviewed journals) do include author pronouns. He acknowledges that there are a greater number of examples in the social sciences and humanities than in sciences and engineering - but that even in the latter disciplines there is a presence of author 'voice'. (Hyland, Options, 352)This seems to justify inclusion of identity at the student level. But Hyland doesn't want us to get too comfortable with the idea. He also notes that some students may resist revealing identity: "First person pronouns are a powerful way of projecting a strong writer identity, and this individualistic stance seems to clash with beliefs and practices that value more collectivist forms of self-representation." (Hyland, Authority and Invisibility, 354). And so we are left with the fact of enculturation that comes along with language learning: I want the students to have a voice - they themselves may not see the opportunity to insert themselves in their work as useful or desirable.The path forward - down the rabbit hole - must be through the students themselves. We have accepted the idea of grounded research, at least in principle, for years. That is, we accept that the most useful work comes out of projects where the 'subjects' are intimately involved in designing, performing, and analyzing the results. Now we need to begin to practice 'Grounded Teaching', and empower students to decide the most important questions for themselves.

Thank you Poppa, Janis and Dian for your continued interest and participation. Your meaningful contributions are sustenance.

Refs:

Hyland, Ken "Authority and invisibility: authorial identity in academic writing." Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1091-1112

"Options of Identity in academic writing." ELT Journal Volume 56/4, 2002 351-357.

In Through the Out Door

I have a new printer in my small apartment. The previously unwieldy pile of research that I have been shuffling around is growing and spreading across the floor. I have been feeling a vague unease about the direction of my research - something was not coming together. Today though, I came across the following from a 2010 conference abstract called Academic Writing and International Students: The Need for a Free Space by Enrica Piccardo and Choongil Yoon (bold text mine):
"While research has been proving the significance of writing as a fundamental skill to improve both L1 and L2  competence (Brookes & Grundy, 1991, Hyland, 2002, Cummin, 2006), because of its heuristic, reflective and scaffolding potential (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987, Greg & Steinberg, 1980, Graves, 1983), the lopsided emphasis on academic writing in tertiary education may cause a lack of space for students to effectively improve their writing skills by being allowed to express themselves, write creatively or for pleasure and therefore make it hard for them to fully exploit the potential of writing (Graves,1983, Allen, 2002, Piccardo, 2005).
This idea seems to resonate with my experiences. Few of the students I encounter will pursue academic writing in English beyond the end of their ESL programs. Still, most will have opportunities to communicate in written English - in their various career paths, as well as in their personal lives. Imagine if the writing style we taught, the style students practice in our classes, made it a possibility that they might "fully exploit the potential of writing"? I'm no longer convinced that rigorous adherence to academic rules is the most productive or life-enhancing approach to teaching writing.

So - do we need to permeate the borders between academic writing rules and self-expression? Or would we be better to offer an alternative writing course, for students who are interested in writing for non-academic purposes?

One final thought: I hope to find a means of conveying to students that their identities - straddling, hybrid, and in-transition, are a rich resource in the context of writing, not a problem that an outsider must 'solve'.

Gonna shove the papers aside and watch 'Hoarders' now.

Some Practical Suggestions

I conduct 'research' in a meandering, intuitive way. As a result, I often find myself traveling down unexpected pathways. Sill, I have specific goals for this project, and was lucky earlier this week to stumble upon research by Elizabeth Van Der Leigh and Lauren Fitzgerald (complete citation below). In an article directed at Writing Program Administrators, Van Der Leigh and Fitzgerald refer to Virginia Chapell's idea that one of the tasks of writing instruction could (or should) be to help students "articulate their commitments".  The authors concur and suggest that students require opportunities to apply their newly-aquired analytical skills to "the supposedly private aspects of their lives". In doing so they become engaged with, as opposed to estranged from, their past. Encouraging students to use their 'religious literacy', Chappell notes, can result in in a more "active citizenship". Van Der Leigh and Fitgerald suggest the following three guidelings for writing departments to follow (paraphrased):

1. Establish boundaries for the function of religious belief in writing programs that emphasize the academic purposes of doing so.
2. Students and instructors must agree to neither attempt to convert nor to denigrate religious belief.
3. Students and instructors must agree that remaining silent on religious matters is also acceptable.

These suggestions strike me as useful for the ESL classroom. Thoughts?

Chappell, Virginia. "Teaching - and Living - in the Meantime." The Academy and the Possibility of Belief: Essays on Intellectual and Spiritual Life. Eds. Mary Louise Buley- Meissner, Mary McCaslin Thompson, and Elizabeth Bachrach Tan. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000. 39-63

Van Der Leigh, Elizabeth and Lauren Fitgerald. "What in God's Name? Administering the Conflicts of Religious Beliefs in Writing Programs." WPA: Writing Program Administration. Vol. 31 Nos. 1-2. Fall/Winter 2007.

TEACHING!

I should have put the word 'teaching' in the title of this blog. The point of my work is to figure out how I can use what my students already possess (knowledge, experience, and yes, faith) to improve and enhance their writing in English. Today I am 'back to class' at my university. I'll be teaching reading this semester - and with any luck the students will learn to LOVE reading as I do. Unlikely, I know... but a girl can dream. I asked the class today to raise their hands if they read for pleasure. Silence, puzzled expressions... and then a small, dislbelieveing question from the back "Do you mean in English?". I'd better get to work.

Useful Reading:

belief: readings on the reason for faith
selected and introduced by Francis S. Collins
Harper Collins. 2010
ISBN 978-0-06-178734-8

Eat me

As much as I like the idea that Alice's world could be perceived as tangible - perhaps it is inappropriate for me to suggest that this is an analogous to believeing in a creator, or a heaven or hell. In practicle terms - a 'Wonderland' is not a place inhabited by a community of believers. It is a place where the individual chooses outcomes, and where the physical matter is at the mercy of individual whim. Religious faith suggests the opposite: that human destiny is in the hands of an uber-engineer who leads us all into temptaion, or not, as he/she sees fit. If Muslim students are already negotiating the world in the belief that their will, and outcomes, are preordained, is it not unrealistic to ask them to consider ideas, particularly those that foreground individualism (democracy, progress, success?), apart from that belief?  Rather, we should find a way to bring the belief system (and system is an important word here because the way in belief is maintained is embedded in multiple practices) into the classroom - at least as a point of dicussion.

First Response!

Good Morning,
How exciting to see a comment posted to this blog! Thank you Janis, both for your time and your thoughts. I agree that a critical next step is to bandy these ideas about with the students. Their insights will provide the map to method.
This morning I came across the following description by Alberto Manguel in his "A Reader on Reading". In the passage he discusses his early experiences reading Alice in Wonderland : "When I was eight or nine, my disbelief was not so much suspended as yet unborn, and fiction felt at times more real than everyday fact. It was not that I thought that a place such as Wonderland actually existed, but that I knew it was made of the same stuff as my house and my street and the red bricks that were my school."
This level of 'knowing', this degree of conviction about a thing 'unproven', is what is so difficult for the non-believer to accept. In turn, it suggests to me that the believer has the right (?) to decide what constitutes knowledge (in the same way that a reader determines meaning). Perhaps another question (which I am clearly better at asking that answering) is whether the authority for determining truth currently resides in the correct place (the academy). How do we authentically reposition this authority? Grounded research? In doing so, what does the scholarly process relinquish?

More later, and thanks again Janis.

Location

One other point worth considering is whether the trend, whereby teachers reveal their own beliefs (social, political, religious, etc) and in doing so provide students with their 'location', suggests the same should be true for students. If teachers have a responsibility to situate themselves culturally, and assuming higher education is an exchange of sorts, do students have a responsibility to 'locate' themselves in the same way?

Is an academic paper a good opportunity for them to do so?

Still working on that reading list.

Posing the Question of Integrating Logic and Faith-based Argument

Hello,

It is fitting that the topic of my research is Logic and Faith. I submitted a research proposal to a teaching conference in November 2010 - purely based on half-considered concepts, wine-drenched discussions with unreasonably supportive friends, and the belief that I would have FREE TIME of the Christmas holiday to research my ideas. Ha. Well, here it is January 4, 2011. Logic tells me that I cannot possibly complete the poster presentation that I have committed to in time for the colloquium on Feb. 21st. Still, if my students have taught me anything it's that a surprising amount of learning can happen in a very short time if one is determined.  To that end...

I teach academic writing to adult ESL students, many of whom are practicing Muslims (in varying degrees). In my attempt to teach the skills of logical argument for the purpose of essay writing I often encounter students' reliance on faith-based reasoning (if such a term is acceptable) to argue their positions. In other words, my students will sometimes argue that a thing is good/bad, correct/incorrect, or advisable/inadvisable based on what it says in the Qu'ran.

My questions include the following:

1. Do models of academic writing exist that allow for faith-based knowledge as legitimate forms of asrgument?
2. Does rejection of the appeal to faith (considered a common fallacy in logical argument) constitute a degradation of an individual's culture?
3. Is it possible and or desirable to integrate faith and logic, as different but equally relevant styles of argument, for academic purposes?

I plan to post a list of reading material here in the near future, and I welcome and look forward to your comments and suggestions.