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Part of the curriculum in many composition classrooms contains a reflection component where students are required to think back over their writing and discuss strengths and weaknesses. Yet many of the reflections that students write fall short of the purpose of reflection when students fail to analyze their writing practices or to make future goals for themselves, a problem that occurs when higher level reflection strategies are not taught and practiced in the classroom. When students are taught to use reflection as a way to critically evaluate their writing, to make connections between class assignments and course objectives, and to make goals for future projects, reflection becomes a more useful tool for the composition student. In my study of two first-year composition classes, I compare the impact of instructing students about reflection and requiring them to practice good reflection against the more common practice of assigning reflection intermittently without formal instruction or feedback about what makes a constructive reflection. Through the results of my study, I confirm my hypothesis that when higher quality reflection is actively taught and promoted by the instructor, reflection helps students to integrate assignments into the course objectives, to extract personal significance from assignments, and to plan for future projects.

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With respect to matters of identities as a treacherous and sensitive subject in today’s college classroom, this project explores concepts like identity, otherness, resistance, otherization, writer’s identity, and identity negotiation; and interrogates how these concepts may affect learning and professional relationship among the class members in the First Year Composition Classroom. The crux of the argument in this research is that process and social construction collaborative pedagogies can be effective in negotiating the resistance and otherness manifesting from identity dichotomies in the First Year Composition classroom.

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