In Laura Micciche’s chapter “Feminist Pedagogies” in A Guide to Composition Pedagogy, she writes about the combined approaches that feminist teachers may take. These approaches include encouraging the use of writing as a way to engage the personal and political and teaching and mentoring as a form of “professional activism” (p. 128). These approaches got me thinking: does a teacher need to engage explicitly with discussions of feminist theory or content about women’s experiences to be enact feminist pedagogy?

In my own background as a feminist teacher, I’ve struggled with the choice to reveal my sympathies with feminism to my students. Sometimes, I’ve felt that identifying as a feminist might alienate me from my students. After all, if a student has a negative bias against feminism, might that student write me off completely if I reveal this piece of my identity?

I was attracted to Micciche’s discussion of mentoring as professional activism as an alternative to explicitly revealing my interest in feminism to students. Micciche writes that feminist teachers may assign students narrative essays, since “women’s narratives emphasize relational connections and identifications” (p. 130). Although I’m not totally comfortable with the way this statement engages in a gender binary, I am interested in this idea that narrative may empower female writers to value their experiences. In fact, this idea reminds me of how the academy tends to privilege certain forms of masculanized writing, especially that which relies on evidence and argumentation. Could I engage in feminist teaching by inviting students to share their experiences through narrative?

I’m also interested in the idea that a teacher’s mentorship of a student or even their classroom design can enact feminist pedagogy. For example, Micciche (2015) writes that sequencing small-group and large-group discussions, non-directive conferences, and process based pedagogies can help with “overcoming and suppressing gender bias” (p. 131). These student-based strategies might help to mitigate the power dynamic and empower female students.

At the end of the day, while I am encouraged that feminist pedagogy can include narrative-based writing and inclusive class-design, I feel a little bit unsettled by the gender binary that feminist pedagogy might reinforce. What do you think, readers? Can feminist pedagogy, much like queer theory, move away from being about engaging female students and instead be used as an analytic to critique the marginalized status of narrative?

One of the challenges of teaching writing is, to put it simply, handling the paper load. Whether your students submit printed copies of their essays or submit using an online course management system like D2L or Canvas, the reality of teaching writing is that it takes a lot of time to read student writing. However, in Bean’s book Engaging Ideas, he suggests 10 strategies that writing teachers – or any instructor who assigns writing – can use to handle that seemingly endless stack of student papers.

Below is my own take on Bean’s 10 strategies for handling the paper load:

1. Use Well-Designed Assignments: Well-designed assignments break long papers into shorter papers so that students work toward a larger goal. Also, well-designed assignments are clear enough that misinterpretations are rare.
2. Use Clear Grading Criteria: Share task-specific rubrics (rubrics assigned just for that assignment) with students when you assign a paper. Then, hold an in-class norming session where you share a few example essays with students and have students score them until the class reaches a consensus. This can help to clarify expectations to students.
3. Exploratory Writing and Class Discussion: Sometimes, the paper load is frustrating because students have interpreted an assignment differently than we intended. Or, sometimes we read underdeveloped papers that perplex that need to be fleshed out. In-class exploratory writing allows students to free write or journal about their topics. You can walk around the room and check in with students as they write, so you can immediately give them feedback on their ideas. Class discussion is also a powerful tool for managing the paper load. Students can brainstorm paper ideas as a class or in small groups.
4. Scaffold: It may seem like it is more efficient to have students only submit their final written paper, but in fact it may be better to have students submit some writing early in the process. For example, have students write a short proposal so that you can identify students who need help.
5. Peer Review: Students can read each other’s essays and provide one another with feedback. Peer review can strengthen student writing.
6. Writing Center: By referring students to the writing center, students can tackle both higher order concerns and lower order concerns before submitting a course assignment. Feedback from a tutor can help motivate a student toward revision.
7. One-to-One Conferences: Conferencing with students allows you to course-correct, answer questions, and challenge your students to develop their ideas in writing. The key is to have students drive the discussion by asking students to talk about their writing and what kind of help them need.
8. Group Conferences: It can also be helpful to hold group conferences, which tend to be more efficient than one-on-one conferences. Plus, group conferences allow students to hear each other’s struggles and bounce ideas off of one another.
9. Give Written Feedback on Drafts: When you give written feedback on drafts, make limited, focused comments and try to avoid marking too many errors. Instead of acting as an editor, act as a curious, thoughtful reader who wants to guide the student toward revision. As a result, it becomes less challenging to think of what feedback to give and how to say it, as you’ve decided a clear role as a reader for yourself.
10. Reduce Written Feedback on Final Papers: By this point, students have received a lot of feedback. Unless you allow students to revise and resubmit final papers, reserve your comments for earlier drafts.

In my own experience as a writing teacher, I’ve used each strategies with varying success. My favorite strategy is to give feedback on drafts instead of final papers. If a student expresses specific interest in rewriting a final paper, I then leave more detailed feedback focused on ways to revise.

In the future, I’d like to try sharing my grading rubric with the assignment sheet and holding norming sessions. On one hand, I’m not crazy about the way that the rubric/norming session focus student attention on grades. On the other hand, I can appreciate that rubrics/norming sessions can be a teaching tool to help students conceptualize their projects.

What do readers think? Do you have a favorite strategies for handling the paper load? Do you think that a norming session places too much focus on grades?

Grammar.

Grammar is the topic that people tend to bring up to me when I tell them I teach writing. As a writing teacher, I feel a bit anxious when someone mentions this word. I anticipate the following:

“Ugh, no one can write anymore.”

“I didn’t even learn grammar as a kid.”

“Some of my coworkers have terrible grammar.”

The above laments may be accompanied by sighs, nodding heads, and a shared sentiment of frustration over the state of writing instruction.

Yet, as a composition teacher, I believe that the problem of grammar instruction is incredibly messy. John Bean summarizes the mess of teaching grammar and sentence correctness in Chapter 5 of Engaging Ideas. Bean points to complaints by teachers across the disciplines that students can’t write. What teachers mean, Bean says, is that students make sentence-level errors. However, the issue of addressing error is so complex that, despite non-English faculties wishes, composition teachers cannot simply “fix” student errors with the wave of a semester-long-writing-class wand. The reasons for the lack of a quick fix are vast, as Bean reviews in his chapter on this topic.

Several issues account for the problem of teaching sentence correctness (Bean, 2011):

1. The traditional teaching method of “skill and drill” exercises and red pen marks on papers has been proven to be ineffective (Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, & Schoer, 1963).
2. The above teaching methods may even have a harmful effect on students since they are ineffective and eat up time that could be spent on more meaningful instruction.
3. It’s unclear what we even mean when we say that someone “knows grammar.”

On the third issue, Bean writes that linguists have distinguished between different levels of grammar. Patrick Hartwell’s important study, specifically, distinguishes between these levels of grammar:

1. Grammar 1: The grammar in our heads
2. Grammar 2: Rules of language as discerned by linguists
3. Grammar 3: Usage
4. Grammar 4: School grammar

If you’re interested in learning more about these levels, check out Hartwell’s study. The gist, though, is this: a person’s ability to use language fluently is a result of Grammar 1, which we develop by being immersed in rich language environments (Bean 2011). On the other hand, the idea of “bad grammar” actually has nothing to do with grammar itself, as “bad grammar” often refers to usage that is still linguistically quite clear and understandable (Ex: “I ain’t going to class today.” – this is understandable, especially in a particular social context, but is typically considered “bad grammar”). So, when we talk about grammar, what we often mean is a person’s ability to conform to the conventions of a particular group of people in a particular context.

But does the fact that “bad grammar” isn’t always linguistically ungrammatical mean that composition teachers should ignore usage? Bean (2011) argues, and I tend to agree, that errors can harm the effectiveness of a piece of writing.

Indeed, sentence-level errors can be quite problematic from a reader’s viewpoint. One of my favorite studies is by Larry Beason (2001) called “Ethos and Error: How Business People React to Errors.” In this article, Beason shared a questionnaire with business people and then interviewed 14 participants to gather their personal reactions to different kinds of errors. To put it simply, Beason’s study suggested that different people are more or less bothered by different errors. This finding suggests two important conclusions about error: 1) Error can cause the reader to develop a negative impression of the writer, and 2) Different readers find different errors frustrating. All this is to say that when we talk about teaching sentence-correctness, we also may want to keep in mind that correctness does matter (though it matters differently to different readers).

The takeaway? Teach students to discern what counts as error and how to avoid those errors in different situations, and teach students that errors can hinder their relationship with the reader.

At least that’s my takeaway. What’s yours? How do you approach the teaching of sentence-level correctness? Should composition instructors respond to requests from outside departments to increase grammar instruction? I’d love to hear from readers in the comments below.

Should students use Wikipedia and Google in their researched writing? Though it’s not uncommon for instructors to ban the use of internet sources in academic work, Randall McClure (2011) writes in “Googlepedia: Turning Information Behaviors into Research Skills” that today’s students can – and do – use Google and Wikipedia as a starting point for research. McClure’s piece appears in Writing Spaces: Reading on Writing, a peer-reviewed open textbook series for writing classes, and it is written for an audience of college students. As such, composition instructors may consider assigning this article as reading to spark discussion among first-year composition (FYC) students about their source use.

In “Googlepedia,” McClure first explains that the way that writers conduct research and handle information has changed, with most students searching the Web using search engines like Google to find information. To show how some students use the web to find, evaluate, and use information, McClure offers the cases of two students, Susan and Edward, who use Google and Wikipedia, respectively, to conduct research in FYC. Throughout his description of Susan and Edward’s literacy practices, McClure argues for the importance of information literacy. He then describes the writing processes of Susan and Edward, offering his analysis and – at times – critique of their process, as well as his recommendations to students for how to improve their information literacy.

What I found most useful about McClure’s piece is his 8 step process for developing research skills. In sum, these are the steps:

1. Start with Wikipedia to understand the topic and identify search terms.
2. Use Google to broaden your sense of the topic and try out some preliminary search terms.
3. Now use Google with quote marks around your search terms to reduce the number of results.
4. Use Google Scholar and try the search terms here.
5. Limit your search in Google Scholar by narrowing the search to the past 10 years.
6. Now, use your college’s library database and try your search terms there.
7. Search in at least one general academic database available through your library.
8. Limit your search by year and full text to reduce your returns.

McClure then reports that Edward and Susan “completed this sequence in less than thirty minutes” (p. 238), a convincing detail for students who may be reluctant to try the 8 step process.

I appreciate McClure’s step-by-step process which combines students’ information literacy practices with academics’ information literacy practices, and I think it’s especially useful to share with students that Wikipedia and Google can be great starts to the research process. McClure argues that library databases can make the searching process more efficient and, therefore, can save students time. I agree and find this to be a persuasive argument, especially for an audience of students. In my experience as both a student and an instructor, Wikipedia and Google can provide exactly the kind of background knowledge that McClure points to.

Although McClure’s piece is a great choice for instructors to assign to students, I wonder if a conversation with students should follow about the kind of knowledge generating practices valued in academia. In other words, McClure’s 8-step process is a great way to teach the research process to students, but we also need to emphasize the why. Academic sources aren’t only better because they may be more accurate and the author may have greater authority. (Right?). Academic sources are preferable because academic work tends to generate meaningful, tested knowledge. 

Thus, we might also engage students in these questions: How is knowledge generated? How do we decide which claims are valid and which ones are not valid? If we teach research as a process of going out and finding sources, then do we suggest to students that so long as a claim can be supported, the claim is valid? How can we push students away from writing papers that fall into the trap of confirmation bias and instead encourage students toward the kind of inquiry and critical thinking valued in academia?

And is “academic thinking” intrinsically valuable, or is academic thinking no more valid than any other kind of thinking? These are the bigger questions that I’ll need to grapple with as I decide how to teach students about research.

Why do we teach first-year composition (FYC)?

I’ve recently been thinking about this question as I read part two of Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle’s edited book Naming What We Know. Part 1 of this text introduces threshold concepts, or concepts that define writing studies, while Part 2 offers ways that teachers and administrators can use threshold concepts in curriculum and program design. I was particularly drawn in by Chapter 7: Threshold Concepts in First-Year Composition. As a teacher of first-year composition for the past six years, I am always asking myself what function the course serves as part of a larger college education.

Is FYC where students learn to become good writers so that they can handle the rest of their college coursework? Such a goal seems reasonable. However, what we know about threshold concepts in writing studies complicates this goal. As Doug Downs and Liane Robertson write in Chapter 7, FYC is about “helping students examine prior knowledge” (p. 105) about writing. In other words, FYC helps students to understand how their previous knowledge of writing can apply or transfer into this new college environment.

Indeed, students may arrive at college with many misconceptions about writing. For example, Downs and Robertson write that students may believe the following:

• Good writing is good writing, regardless of the situation.
  • Writing scholars know that writing is about human interaction, so the definition of good writing changes depending on the situation. (i.e., Writing as human interaction).
• Good writing is so clear that it will be equally understood by all readers.
  • Writing scholars know that, in fact, texts exist outside of writers, so both writers and readers decide what a text means. (i.e., Writing as textual).
• Good writing communicates ideas and knowledge.
  • Writing scholars know that writing not only communicates ideas and knowledge; writing also creates new ideas and knowledge. (i.e., Writing as epistemological).
• Good writing is the result of careful editing.
  • Writing scholars know that writing is an “ongoing and iterative process” (p. 109) of developing new ideas, not a one shot deal. (i.e., Writing as a process).

These four threshold concepts — writing as human interaction, writing as textual,  writing as epistemological, and writing as a process — can provide the foundation for a FYC course designed around interrogating students’ misconceptions about writing (Downs & Robertson, p. 108).

I like this idea of focusing FYC around the four threshold concepts above, specifically if teachers pose those concepts not as new things to learn about writing, but as messy problems or questions (see previous posts about Bean’s work on messy problems to teach critical thinking).

Could the threshold concepts above be posed to students as messy questions, such as the ones below?

• Why do people write?
• Why is some written communication more successful than other written communication?
• Do ideas exist and writers merely capture those ideas, or do writers create new ideas through the act of writing?
• How do the things we read and write come into being?

Perhaps these questions could help FYC instructors to engage students in transformative learning that helps students build identities as novice college writers.

Readers, I’m interested in your thoughts:

• Are the above questions related to the threshold concepts in clear enough ways?
• Do you think these questions could spark interesting dialogue in your classrooms?
• How can we create assignments that get students to engage with these questions?

American employers routinely report that they want applicants to have strong critical thinking skills, communication skills, and teamwork skills. Educators who want to prepare students for the job market might be interested in a pedagogical approach that combines all three:

Collaborative Writing Pedagogy.

According to Krista Kennedy and Rebecca Moore Howard’s discussion of collaborative writing pedagogy in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, collaborative learning derives in part from Kenneth Bruffee’s (1984) social constructivist perspective that thought and conversation are deeply connected because thought is basically internalized conversation. Since thought is internalized conversation, writing then externalizes that thought.

In my experience, collaborative pedagogy is a useful way of highlighting the essentially conversational or social nature of knowledge-construction. I first discovered the joy of collaborative writing as a freshman in first-year composition at my alma mater, Randolph-Macon. As I engaged with other students’ writing in peer review groups and as they read and talked to me about my writing, I had the pleasure of having someone respond to my ideas. As a result of peer review, I dramatically changed the way that I write and think. I no longer view my thoughts as fixed but as constantly transforming as I enter new conversations.

Now, as a teacher of writing, I try to apply collaborative pedagogy in my own classroom. Below are a few techniques that Kennedy and Howard suggest.

Strategies for Collaborative Writing

Delay students’ collaborative writing until students get to know each other.

Kennedy and Howard suggest that classes engage in other forms of collaboration, like small group discussions, before being assigned to collaborative writing projects. This way, group dynamics work themselves out.

Design the assignment for a group.

Instead of assigning a project that could just as easily be done individually, assign a project that works best when done collaboratively.

Let students collaborate on individual assignments.

Let students know if individual assignments may also work as collaborative assignments.

Discuss methods and problems of collaborative writing first.

For example, talk to students about some of the techniques that help collaborative writing go well, like assigning roles.

Choose how students will collaborate.

Lunsford and Ede talk about dialogic collaboration, or groups that work together on all elements of the project, and hierarchical collaboration, or groups that break up the work and then tie it together. Either technique can work, and some groups will use both dialogic and hierarchical.

Anticipate problems and student resistance.

Some students resist group work, and it’s okay to let students opt out if the assignment’s objective is to enhance individual writing skills.

Let class decide how groups will form.

Students can choose their own groups or ask the professor to designate groups.

Consider accommodations.

This way, students with disabilities can participate in ways that work for them.

Decide methods and timelines.

Use some class time to have planning discussions in which groups can decide how they’ll manage their project.

Welcome dissent and minority views.

Explicitly tell students that they are allowed to present counter-evidence and minority opinions.

Involve students in grading.

For example, decide with students how students who don’t carry their load will be graded. It may be best to assign one grade for the group rather than individual grades for the project so that the collaborative process is assessed as such.

After considering these tips, I’m left with a few questions:

• At a practical level, what are some possible writing assignments that are best done collaboratively rather than individually (Wikis come to mind)?
•  Kennedy and Howard write that writing scholarship about individual-versus-collaborative writing has fallen away, as writing scholars have settled on the view of “collaboration as the natural, unavoidable basis of all textual production” (p. 38). If this is so, then do writing teachers need to explicitly assign collaborative writing assignments or can we assume that any writing assignment is automatically collaborative?

“Liberalism is rampant on campus and ruining academia,” reads a September 6, 2018 headline from the Washington Examiner. Indeed, while some people claim that liberal academics indoctrinate their students into radical views, other people praise academia’s ability to open students’ views in general. For example, a recent study from researchers at James Madison University (JMU) surveyed college students at the beginning and end of their first year. The survey data suggests that participants become more appreciative toward liberals and more appreciative toward conservatives. In other words, students who entered college as liberals became more appreciative of conservative views, and students who entered college as conservative became more appreciative of liberal views.

This suggests that something deeper is going on than liberal indoctrination. While the researchers from JMU cite that students’ interactions with other students may account for their changing views, another possibility is what happens in the classroom. For example, “critical pedagogies” engage students in critical conversations about politics, economics, and culture, which may develop students’ abilities to see multiple views. Ann George, a writing professor at Texas Christian University, writes that critical pedagogies aim to educate students to become engaged citizens who analyze cultural practices and institutions.

“Critical pedagogies envision a society not simply pledged to, but successfully enacting, the principles of freedom and social justice” (George, 2014, p. 77).

In George’s chapter in the book A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, she defines critical pedagogy, traces its history in academia, offers support and critiques, and suggests ways for teachers to use critical pedagogy.

Critical pedagogies engage students in what Brazilian educator Paulo Friere calls problem-posing education. Problem-posing education engages students in dialogue to raise their critical consciousness about the cultural, social, political, linguistic, and economic forces that (often invisibly) shape their lives. Critical pedagogy rests on the notion that knowledge is socially constructed rather than fixed, and that language and thought are deeply connected since ideology plays out through language.

In the writing classroom, critical pedagogy may:

• Allow students to co-create the syllabus, deciding alongside the teacher the course materials and objectives (George, 2014, p. 81).
• Engage students in discussions of power and rhetoric.

As George explains, while the goal of critical pedagogy is to produce student activists and engaged citizens, not everyone is on board. Some educators critique critical pedagogy as dogmatic and argue that it’s unethical to attempt to radicalize students. Others critique critical pedagogy when teachers offer their own agenda of social activism rather than allowing students to determine the goals of their education, even if the students’ aims are counter to the teachers’. These critics recognize student resistance to leftist politics as unsurprising.

Teaching Feminism 

I can personally relate to the challenges of implementing critical pedagogy. I once taught a class that was quite resistant to my unit that introduced them to feminism. My aim wasn’t to convince them to become feminists, but to engage them in analysis and dialogue about feminism. In this way, I was doing what many college courses do: allowing students to try on different ways of seeing. Despite my good intentions, students resisted. One asked me if I knew of any feminists. I said yes. The student asked “is she married”? I said yes. The student sarcastically said, “to a man?” I laugh at this now, but I wondered then where I went wrong. My attempts to introduce students to a historically valid movement, feminism hit a nerve. I misread my audience.

Know Your Audience

Thus, I appreciate George’s suggestion that student resistance to critical pedagogy might be a rhetorical problem, “one that might be lessened by employing rhetorical theory or smarter rhetorical strategies” (p. 89). In other words, know your audience. In the future, I might’ve anticipated potential responses from my students and thought more about how my message might not jive with their ideologies. This doesn’t mean I’d avoid a discussion of feminism, but that I’d frame it differently.

What do you think? How might critical pedagogy work without isolating the very students we seek to teach?

References

George, A. (2014). Critical pedagogies: Dreaming of democracy. In G. Tate, A.R. Taggart, K. Schick, & H.B. Hessler (Eds.) A Guide to Composition Pedagogies,(pp. 77-93). New York: Oxford University Press.

There’s a saying that goes like this: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Here’s the analogy to teaching writing: Assign a student a writing task and you teach her to write one way. Teach a student to understand writing as a rhetorical action within a recurring situation, and she’ll write for a lifetime. This is the principal behind genre theory.

I still remember the first course I took on teaching writing. It was my second semester at James Madison University in the Masters in English (Literature), and I took Teaching Writing as a pre-requisite to teach first-year writing. It was then that I read Carolyn Miller’s (1984) Genre as Social Action. Reading Miller’s work radically changed the way I viewed writing and learning to write. I’m almost embarrassed to say that it had never occurred to me until reading Miller to think of a genre as anything but a kind of music.

In fact, writers tend to work within established genres, which Miller defines as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (as cited in Tate, Taggart, Schick, & Hessler, 2001, p. 146). All writing courses rely on genres. For example, some assignments teach the genre of the research paper, while others teach the genre of the letter to the editor. Back in 2013 when I first discovered genre theory, it clicked for me that I could teach students how to use the genres they’d likely encounter in college.

Amy Devitt’s chapter “Genre Pedagogies” in Gary Tate et al.’s (2011) A Guide to Composition Pedagogies has deepened my understand of genre pedagogies. Specifically, Devitt offers three approaches to teaching writing through the genres, and suggests a combination of these three:

1. Teach particular genres – i.e., teach students the genres they’ll need to write (such as a thesis driven research paper).
2. Teach genre awareness – i.e., teach students how to analyze and understand genres.
3. Teach genre critique – i.e., teach students how to think critically about the ideologies and values behind various genres.

The advantages of genre pedagogy are vast: in particular, genre pedagogy, particularly genre awareness, helps students to acquire transferable skills they can apply to other writing situations. As Devitt writes, “Essential to the argument for teaching genre awareness rather than particular genres is the notion that genre awareness can help students transfer their knowledge to other writing tasks and contexts” (p. 153). Of course, this transfer doesn’t happen automatically. Teachers of writing need to assign reflective writing to encourage metacognitive awareness. Students need to become aware of what they know.

Although I find value in genre pedagogy, the composition classroom may be constraining. Devitt writes of Feedman, who argues for situated learning to teach students about genres. Students might best learn about genres within the context that uses those genres. For example, history majors may learn about writing in history best from their history professors, not in their first-year composition course.

Though genre pedagogy has many advantages, it leaves much to be desired: if genres are best learned within their actual contexts, then what is the role of first-year writing? Should we follow Elizabeth Wardle’s suggestion that first-year writing should teach students “about writing, giving up on teaching students to write” (Devitt, 2001, p. 158)? Or is the role of the first-year writing teacher to help students to “transfer their prior and newly acquired genre knowledge” (p. 158)? And how can writing teachers interested in genre pedagogy achieve its full vision of teaching metacognitive awareness to encourage transfer of learning, to analyze genres, and to critique the values of genres? This is a full agenda for a semester-long writing course, and perhaps that’s one of the restrictions of fully putting genre pedagogies into practice.

What do readers think? I’m interested in what other compositionists think about the relationship between genre pedagogies and situated learning, the tension between teaching students about writing versus teaching students to write, and the reality of using the three approaches in genre pedagogy within a one-semester course.

Writing is thinking. 

It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? Writing doesn’t only involve thinking. Thinking doesn’t happen before we write. Instead, writing may be a way to develop that skill that professors and employers alike so deeply prize: critical thinking.

A few years ago, I began leading creative writing workshops for children in my small town. My goal in these creative writing workshops expanded beyond helping students to write fiction and poetry. In fact, my goal might’ve seemed odd: I aimed to develop students’ critical thinking skills through the process of writing. But what does creative writing have to do with critical thinking?

I recently started reading John Bean’s (2011) book Engaging Ideas, an easily accessible book written for any professor interested in engaging students’ critical thinking skills. In the first chapter, “Using Writing to Promote Thinking,” Bean argues that writing and critical thinking are linked because writing is “both a process of doing critical thinking and a product that communicates the results of critical thinking” (p. 4). To Bean, writing is a communication skill PLUS more: writing requires writers to think deeply about subject matter as well as rhetorical problems, such as the intended audience for the written composition.

That writing and critical thinking relate in this way has important implications for teachers of writing as well as teachers of other subjects who wish to improve students’ critical thinking. For one, if the writing process encourages critical thinking, then writing deserves a place in all college classrooms.

However, Bean writes that simply assigning writing in college courses may not be sufficient to spark critical thinking. Writing needs to be treated as deeply integrated with thinking. Good writing isn’t about polishing the silver; writing is the silver. Writing isn’t simply a skill that involves knowing the rules of grammar; writing involves “confusion and disorder” (Bean, 2011, p. 18) and “emotional struggle” (p. 23). That’s because the writing that is done in college is about deeply engaging with problems. As I defined in an earlier post, critical thinking can be thought of, too, as deep engagement with a messy problem that cannot be solved with a simple answer. Thus, college-level writing is distinctly tied to critical thinking.

What does this vision of writing as thinking mean for teachers of writing? What does it mean for teachers of other subjects who wish to engage their students’ in critical thinking? And, importantly, if we buy into the relationship between writing and critical thinking, how can we enact this vision in the classroom?

Depending on who you ask, the answer to this question varies.

To some students, college is many things – an opportunity that hopefully leads to a good job, a place to grow and discover and explore, an entry into adulthood, and a time to meet new and interesting people.

To some students’ parents, college may be a way for the next generation to build a better life.

Conversely, some economists might say that college signals to employers that students have essential skills needed for the job.

As professors, we likely hope that our students will enjoy all of the above through their college experiences. But, we also hope for more.

Many professors, including myself, have another ambitious vision for a college education: college stretches our students’ minds, ideas, worldviews, and imaginations, inviting them into a lively and rigorous conversation about ideas.

To me, this “stretch” is what a college education is for. Just as education philosopher Paulo Friere critiqued traditional models of education that value rote memorization as “banking models,” a metaphor that conjures up an image of students’ minds as banks into which teachers deposit knowledge, I remember distinctly my journey from high school, where state assessment often requires a banking model of education since students are judged based on their ability to memorize knowledge, to the liberal arts college I attended. It was in college that I entered classrooms where the crux of learning was a conversation between professors and students, and where the conversation was characterized by disagreement, puzzlement, and wonder over what Ken Bain (2004) calls “beautiful problems ” (as cited in Bean, 2011, p. 3), or problems that spark wonder and inquiry and engage us all as active and deep learners.

But how can I as a teacher create a similarly engaging environment that stretches students in my classes? In this space, I reflect on and explore this question and hope that other college educators with a similar vision may enter into this conversation with me.