This dissertation examines a widely practiced but often under-valued and under-examined component of teaching: the comments that teachers write on students papers. I explore the intellectual and pedagogical work of written comments and the role of the teacher as the reader of student texts. In the first half, I focus on teachers as readers of student writing. I trace what I call a pedagogy of practical criticismwhich operates primarily through close attention to student textsthrough a group of teachers including I.A. Richards, Reuben Brower, Theodore Baird, William E. Coles, Jr., Mina Shaughnessy, and David Bartholomae. I also examine the common argument that teachers should restrain their authority when reading and responding to students papers, and I argue that we should consider the positive, productive role of authority in teaching. I analyze scholarship on the issues of authority and appropriation, and I use student papers to look at how teachers negotiate their own authority in their response.
In the second half, I focus on students as readers of teachers response, with emphasis on the difficulties students face in interpreting what their teachers have written. I examine teachers response in the context of other texts that bear commentary, such as William Blakes marginalia and Jewish biblical commentaries, paying special attention to the ways in which these texts embody both stasis, in the form of the words fixed on the page, and change, which happens through the dynamic and unpredictable work of readers. I foreground the potential difficulty of the more flexible kind of reading that comments often demand of students in asking them to change their own work or to think about it differently. I also examine the difficulty created by the differences between the knowledge and experience of, on one hand, the teachers who write the comments and, on the other hand, the students who must interpret them. I analyze a number of student texts with comments, and I consider the potential for learning that these comments offeras well as reasons why that potential may not always be fulfilled when students revise.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-11102010-131133 |
| Date | 30 January 2011 |
| Creators | Schwartz, Jennifer Whatley |
| Contributors | Mariolina Salvatori, Kathryn Flannery, Don Bialostosky, Adam Shear, David Bartholomae |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11102010-131133/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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