The overall purpose of this study is to analyze how students talk and write
about writing to understand why mainstream students struggle with writing when
they are neither economically nor culturally marginalized. Composition scholars'
literacy narratives have identified problems in education and literacy encountered
by marginalized students, but they fall short in identifying and accounting for
problems that mainstream students face. After examining literacy narratives by
composition scholars, this study assesses interviews, questionnaires, and literacy
narratives from 77 college students, ranging in ages from 18 to 26. These accounts
indicate that mainstream students have had few opportunities to examine their
literacy skills within the context of their developing sense of self. Because literacy
narratives are stories about writers developing a voice to share with their
community, ethos is central to this examination. Building upon classical and
contemporary models, two aspects of ethos are developed in my analysis: ethos as
it relates to students' character, identity, and self-awareness, and ethos as students' sense of their relationship to the communities that shape their character and form
their audience as writers.
My assessment of student accounts develops four conclusions. First,
standardized testing and formulaic writing have done little to foster students'
confidence or self-awareness. Second, as a result, exigence becomes a necessary
addition to writing assignments to encourage students to learn from their writing
and see themselves as writers. Third, having students write their own literacy
narrative is a valuable exercise so that they may become aware of how literacy
affects their identity. Fourth, students' self-assessments reveal that their
perceptions of writing bear little resemblance to issues defined in recent debates in
composition studies, particularly the rift between personal and academic writing
and the debate concerning expressivist and social-epistemic pedagogies. I define
an alternative, an ethos-based pedagogy, placed within the post-process theory
paradigm as defined by Thomas Kent. An ethical pedagogy focuses on developing
students' character and confidence and on moving students to examine the
relationship between interior and exterior spaces they inhabit and on considering
how these spaces influence them on a personal and a social level. An ethical
pedagogy can move students to form stronger relationships with language and their
literacy practices.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-6989 |
| Date | 2009 August 1900 |
| Creators | Groesch, Julie E. |
| Contributors | Swearingen, C. Jan |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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