“What is to be done? Articulating the conditions necessary to achieve authentic research.”
This work is my latest research conducted with my fellow co-writer Scott MacPhail that has been accepted by the national Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) conference, to be held in June, 2019, in Vancouver, BC.
DEVELOPING AN EMERGENT PEDAGOGY FOR AN ACADEMIC WRITING GROUP: BRIDGING THEORY AND PRACTICE
Abstract
This paper outlines how the development of an academic writing group, in a university setting, emerged as a project that contests the neoliberal attitude that has become instituted in academe. The original intent of our undertaking was to help graduate students improve their academic literacies. However, upon reflection, we came to realize that our practice not only allowed us to create a functional informal pedagogy, but also, it created a space where we were able to contest the constraints which the neoliberal attitude places upon students by the university.
Keywords: Academic Writing Group, Academic Literacies, Neoliberalism, Emergent Pedagogy
INTRODUCTION
This is a very much needed resource that you are providing. I wish it was possible [to attend every session] because what you are providing is critical to graduate students.
M.A.Ed. Thesis Student
Academic writing is central to most graduate students’ scholarly pursuits. All graduate students are expected to face the demands and conventions of emergent academic literacies: researching and analyzing text, building effective arguments, and expressing themselves through their academic writing skills. However, many graduate students, in particular international students and those who have been out of academia for many years, may struggle to perform at required academic levels.
Adding to the above difficulties of graduate students has been the changing nature of how universities operate under the influence of modern capitalist agendas. This agenda, commonly termed neoliberalism, has led to a “pedagogical shift” (Aitchison, 2009, p. 905) in universities. This pedagogical shift is observed in the pressure to publish, changing dynamics of university students and staff, and the changes to academic literacies (Catterall, Ross, Aitchison and Burgin 2011; Boud and Lee 2005; Aitchison 2009). Despite the increase in demands for academic writing, we argue that this need has not been adequately addressed for students by institutions of higher learning. It is in this shadow that we placed ourselves as we developed an academic writing group to help ourselves and our peers navigate the world of academia.
In developing our writing group, we situated ourselves between faculty and students, placing ourselves at the intersection of university administration, faculty demands, and student expectation. This intersection provided the space for a structure to emerge that encompasses all the elements of academic literacies, as well as a space to develop an academic writing pedagogy. With our interest in scholarly writing, we have observed that universities, while pushing for students to write assignments, essays, and publishable papers often fail to support students’ writing skills expected by faculty. To fill this gap, we argue that the support provided by an academic writing group may create the learning space for graduate students to develop and deepen their academic language. Unbeknownst to us, we were also undermining the neoliberal attitude.
Opting to not go for a quick fix, we created, what Arendt (1958) calls, an “in-between” space where participants can disclose themselves through uninhibited discourse and writing. More than half a century ago, Dewey (1954) expressed the need for “free social inquiry” that is “subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive” (p. 164). Both Arendt and Dewey link writing (and speaking) to the existence of free society—the kind of communication that allows people to reveal themselves to others. It is our contention that this articulation ought to be located in our arguments because essentially, we provided academic literacies, a simple and safe space to develop. This means that the emergence of space as a categorization will be understood as a counter-reflex to neoliberalism, as will the deployment of academic literacies as a tool to create the community of scholars we call the Academic Writing Group. Such a view provides the platform of argumentation with which we can contest the emergent neoliberal attitude that has become pervasive in the world of academia.
DEVELOPING AN EMERGENT PEDAGOGY
We currently live in an era where money, profit and the commodification of the work force is supported by a neoliberal agenda. The prevalence of this ideology has penetrated the notion that the individual can only serve the good of the society if they make themselves a commodity (Zimmerman, 2018). This economic function—acquiring credentials that are valued in the marketplace—coerces the individual to acquire the necessary credentials, and seek further education, in order to, as Zimmerman points out, “augment their own human capital” (p. 353). When education is framed as compatible with market commodities (Giroux, 2014) adult learners enroll into universities to seek knowledge in order to enhance their careers. Although adult students return to university for many reasons, we have observed this growing trend at our university of many entering a Master’s degree to enhance their position in the workplace. This has been part of an agenda since the 1970s when credentials began to trump meritocracy in the workplace (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). This can also be linked to the neoliberal capitalist agenda where students are expected to make themselves as greater products for the workforce. The neoliberal agenda that coerces students to return to school to improve their credentials is also informing university administrative structure and integrity. This structure becomes increasingly difficult for students to navigate and inhibits their access to the resources needed to successfully complete their studies. Through our position between faculty and students, we created a space that contributes to the learning process. The critical point being our interest in advancing the scholarly abilities of the student, and our passion to facilitate learning, more specifically, to position ourselves, in the center of gravity that is most important in academic endeavor—writing.
To communicate one`s ideas through writing in academic context is integral to the process of adult learning in graduate school. Through natural course, we adopted a traditional civic approach of adult education, used by adult educators such as Coady and Tompkins, that literacy and empowerment of the individual is an asset for the individual and the community in which they find themselves. We came to understand the Academic Writing Group—the name we have formalized ourselves with—as a counter hegemonic approach to the neoliberal attitude. The not-so-hidden order of neoliberalism, removed from “all vestiges of the social contract” (Giroux, 2014, p. 15), marks spaces such as ours, Giroux further points out, as “unmentionables.” Through our mode of civic academic literacy approach, we enabled individuals to participate and connect and be part of a discourse of critical inquiry, dialogue and engagement. Habermas (1976) emphasizes mutual understanding in the context of “communicative competence” which contrasts the immediate technical approach one could so easily embrace. However, as noted above, we did not go for a quick fix, we aimed long term. The sole reason we could help our participants was that they allowed us to gain access to their frailties and weaknesses, which in turn allowed us provide support through systematic instruction and practice. They learn new strategies, apply them, and soon realize that, as Silvia (2007) asserts, “deliberate practice breeds skill” (p. 6). Our approach involves, therefore, not only discovering new skills in writing, but also to create a context that is accessible and available to all participants, where there can experiment with research, improve on and innovate from. Our efforts thus required a pedagogy—both experimental and emergent—to discover what will enable us as educators (facilitators and mentors) to efficiently and effectively support graduate students who can master academic writing. The experimental and emergent process that we created through our efforts enabled the participants to efficiently and effectively learn how write and improved their academic literacies. Moreover, we encultured them into the world of academia.
We designed and situated our pedagogy on what we term an ontological model of human nature. In providing practical access to our expertise as facilitators, teachers, mentors and through establishing a work environment based on trust, we were able to exercise, what we consider, effective guidance and leadership. While ontology in general is concerned with the being of anything, here, in our sessions, we were concerned with the ontology of the participants informed by their writing. Being a skillful writer in academe, it appears, emerges from learning, exposing and exploring one`s frailties, as one of our participants revealed in an e-mail to us:
I am feeling much more confident about approaching my paper in the fall--and preparing for it too. Also, your comments help with my writing in general, therefore I believe my writing for my [Graduate Seminar] course, this winter, will also be better. (Personal communication, January 19, 2016)
The intellectual confidence and the new-found academic abilities allowed the above-mentioned graduate student to become a better academic writer. It also indicated to us that writing is central to unlock academic pursuits. Further, the above quoted student`s experience, signaled to us that we were on the right road to challenge the pervasive influence of neoliberalism in academe. Hence, our influence is theoretically distinct form the regime we unexpectedly critiqued. Clearly, neoliberalism has created a new academic ontology, by separating student from faculty, and therefore changing the traditional adult education landscape into an individualized endeavor that favors the “survival of the fittest.” This is particularly disturbing given the unapologetic turn that higher education has taken in its willingness to mimic corporate culture in universities (Giroux, 2014). Giroux, further notes that, faculties no longer feel compelled to address important issues, such as academic literacies for graduate students, they are less inclined to engage in a type of scholarship that defends sites as ours as being crucial for learning. How fortunate we are then that our university, through the Lifelong Learning Department and Library, acted to contradict this culture and provided support to form a culture that makes peer learning possible.
Employing an approach to adult education inspired by Moses Coady (Laidlaw, 1971; Alexander, 1997), who advocated for the empowerment of people through cooperative education practice, we held strategically based weekly activities to advance an emergent pedagogy situated in the development of student’s scholarly writing. This form of social learning is reflective of the mentor/apprentice relationship often referred to by Lave and Wenger’s (2005) in their theorization of a community of practice (CoP). Thus, the interrelated nature of Coady’s cooperative learning and Lave and Wenger’s community of practice, came to anchor our theoretical framework as we discovered that our non-formal community of practice deepens the knowledge and expertise of all participants in area of interest, as we interact on a regular basis, therefore a community of adult learners emerges.
THEORY INFORMS PRACTICE
In our role, as mentors, facilitators and instructors, we find value in social learning (cooperative and collaborative) because we apply strategies that improve both our own as well as the students’ academic writing skills. We share information, insight, and advice, help each other solve problems, ponder common issues, and explore ideas. In embedding the students’ writing—mainly essays, theses and dissertations—in our community of practice, graduate students learn that, as Wenger, McDermott and Snyder `s (2002) stipulate, the value is not merely instrumental, “it also accrues in personal satisfaction of knowing colleagues who understand each other perspectives and of belonging to an interesting group of people” (p. 5). CoP requires relationships, based on trust and expertise, thus creating a community with “a point of stability in a world of temporary, distant relationships” (p. 136). Further, it “give[s] members a forum in which to ‘talk shop’, solve problems together, and in the process find ways to learn from each other`s perspectives” (p. 123). The notion of “learning from each other” and the feeling that there are peers dealing with the same kind of problems nurtured our community of scholars.
Key significance in our conceptual framework—substantiated by the above-mentioned appropriate theories, cooperative learning and CoP—relates to and validates the notion that theory can, in fact, inform action and good practice. Further, our observations, provide new avenues for discourses in academic literacy development. Even though we, as adult educators and learners, acknowledge the difference between theory and practice we nevertheless work toward bridging the two.
By having theory inform practice we created an emergent epistemological principle that is concerned with empowering the adult learner with academic literacies needed for students to succeed in academe. As noted earlier, an ontological mastery of a subject leaves one being, an epistemological mastery of a subject leaves one knowing. The effective exercise of our role as facilitators, teachers, leaders, and mentors, required us to deal with personal circumstances that are present in the lives of our fellow students, consequently the initially constraint fellow graduate students are diminished and have the capacity to become effective academic writers. When we attended to these constrains, as both quotes above suggest, the students` writing efforts, seen in successfully completed scholarly works such as theses, papers, posters, and presentations, rewarding moments occurred. Hence, students` effort articulated itself into academic literacy.
Working with students on weekly basis, augmented by strategically placed weekend sessions, called Writers` Retreats and Workshops, participants improved their academic literacies and found accomplishment in their work. Though, we held retreats we never retreated from any challenges that the status quo—neoliberalism—has presented to us. What we did was to create a traditional adult education learning space where peers could mentor each other. This position, students improving themselves while improving the culture of the post-secondary program, is, as Maxine Greene (2013) points out, very much at odds with the approach taken in many learning environments, such as universities today, that is, instruct students, talk at them, often work on them, but not with them. In contrast, our graduate students, and in conjunction with them, we, the two facilitators, learnt how to learn, to articulate ideas on paper, to be with one another, to develop the “in-between” of untapped experiential possibilities that undermines the neoliberal agenda that in turn forces students to return to school to improve their credentials. The students` effort to live up to this expectation also informs university structure and integrity and leads to, what Mills (2000) calls, struggle to shape identities, desires, and modes of subjectivity in accordance of market values, needs and relations.
Our metaphoric assertion that “we organized retreats but never retreated” is on target in arguing that our effort left no room for the rapacious nature of capitalist/neoliberal attitude, moreover, our benevolent intent marked the space in which current and would be “masters” of academic writing “stand firm, take risks, imagine the otherwise, and push against the grain” (Giroux, 2014, p. 19). The central idea to this conception is to support and inspire our participants to succeed. A graduate student, who also participated in our program, vividly echoes this analysis:
I just submitted my proposal and wanted to thank you for all of your encouragement and help. I appreciate the work you and the other PhD students in the Writing Group do to support the writing development of those of us in the master’s program. (Personal communication, 2017, November 28)
Students` file cabinets are full of uncompleted papers, articles, and ideas that our Academic Writing Group did well to reach and attain as resources. We took it upon ourselves to allow such an association to unfold for the enrichment of the other. However, we also realize that, as scholars, we have an exceptional opportunity in designing a way of learning which will encourage the habits of scholarship informed by good academic literacies.
Another e-mail by a different graduate student extends this line of argument with her description of her experience and relates it directly to our work:
With the guided help you have already provided I feel far more confident about [re]searching for appropriate papers, [as] I am wondering about some of your ideas around organizing material and linking ideas. (Personal communication, February 23, 2016)
When learners have grasped the fundamental concepts of a subject area, and can appreciate the criteria of good skill performance, and when they have come to trust in our credibility, as quoted throughout the paper, then, we as teachers, facilitators, mentors, and, significantly, peers of this program, can assuredly declare that learners have acquired valuable knowledge and experience to have the effect we intended in the first place—to begin to write academically in a confident manner.
CONCLUSION
To conclude our analysis, for now, we emphasize three elements of framework. First, if we accept the view quoted at the beginning of our paper that our work is of critical importance, then, we argue, their statement of validity holds true to our claim that we accomplished our original goal of helping students in improving their academic literacies. Second, the legitimate utility of our ontological approach is its ability to generate a strong contention, which necessitates the confirmation of existing paradigm, that when theory informs practice, difficulties in education research can be overcome (Kettley, 2010). Third, we realized that, the strength—the umpf—of our conceptualization situated the Academic Writing Group in a space where we can efficiently utilize our “disruptive” preoccupation against the aggravating nature of the neoliberal attitude pushing its way in the academe. It is to this task that we shall steadfastly (re)turn in our future epistemological adventures.
REFERENCES
Aitchison, C. (2009). Writing groups for doctoral education. Studies in Higher
Education, 34(8), 905–916. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070902785580
Alexander, A. M. (1997). The Antigonish movement: Moses Coady and adult
education today. Toronto, ON: Thompson Educational Publishing.
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Boltanski, L. & Chiapello, È. (2005). The new spirit of capitalism. London, UK:
Verso.
Boud, D. & Lee, A. (2005). “Peer learning” as pedagogic discourse for research
education. Studies in Higher Education, 30(5), 501–516.
Catterall, J., Ross, P., Aitchison, C. & Burgin, S. (2011). Pedagogical approaches
that facilitate writing in postgraduate research candidature in science and technology. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 8(2), 7.
Dewey, J. (1954). The public and its problems. Chicago, IL: Swallow Press.
Giroux, H.A. (2014). Neoliberalism`s war on higher education. Toronto, ON:
Between the Lines.
Greene, M. (2013). Literacy for what? In W. Hare & J. P. Portelli (Eds.),
Philosophy of education (pp. 392-402). (4th ed.). Alberta, BC: Brush Education Inc.
Habermas, J. (1976). Communication and the evolution of society. Boston, MA:
Beacon Press.
Kettley, N. (2010). Theory building in educational research. London, UK:
Continuum
Laidlaw, A. F. (1971). The Man from Margaree. Toronto, ON: McClelland &
Stewart.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (2005). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mills, W.C. (2000). The sociological imagination. (Fortieth anniversary edition).
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Silvia, P.J. (2007). How to write a lot. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A. & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of
practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Zimmerman A. S. (2018) Democratic teacher education: Preserving public
education as a good in an era of neoliberalism. The Educational Forum, 82(3), 351-368.
The work below provided the opportunity to conduct research alongside my colleague, Ph.D. candidate, Scott MacPhail, in the field of adult education. As the lead author of this initiative I created my first opportunity to be directly involved in innovative research and, feasibly, pave the way for more publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Developing an Emergent Pedagogy for an Academic Writing Group: Bridging Theory and Practice
Paper Proposal accepted for the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) conference in Vancouver, 2019.
Support for adult graduate students` writing is significantly limited in universities. Despite being out of school, often for many years, graduate students are expected to face the demands and conventions of academic literacies: researching and analysing text, building effective arguments, and expressing themselves through their scholarly writing skills. However, as Aitchison (2009) notes, home universities often fail to assist the development of these academic literacies making student participation in university culture a difficult process for many to undertake.
With our interest in scholarly writing, we have observed that universities, while pushing for students to write assignments, essays, and publishable papers often fail to support the students’ writing skills. To fill this gap, we argue that the support provided by an academic writing group may create the learning space for graduate students to develop and deepen their academic language.
We agree with Boud (1999) who argues that the need for academic writing for students has not been adequately addressed by institutions of higher learning. By situating ourselves between faculty and students, we are also placing ourselves at the intersection of university policy and student expectation. This intersection provides the space for a structure to emerge that encompasses all the elements of academic literacies, as wells as a position to develop a writing pedagogy.
Wenger, McDermott & Snyder `s (2002) Community of Practice (COP) anchors our theoretical framework in that our non-formal learning community deepens the knowledge and expertise of all participants in area of interest, as we interact on a regular basis, therefore a community of adult learners emerges. We, in our role, as mentors, facilitators and instructors find value in interactions because we apply strategies that improve both our own as well as the students’ academic writing skills. We share information, insight, and advice, help each other solve problems, ponder common issues, and explore ideas. In embedding the students’ writing—mainly essays, theses and dissertations—in our community of practice, graduate students learn that, as Wenger et al. (2002) stipulate, the value is not merely instrumental, “it also accrues in personal satisfaction of knowing colleagues who understand each other perspectives and of belonging to an interesting group of people” (p. 5).
To provide a further flow and deepen our theoretical framework we use Coady’s (Welton, 2001) approach to adult education, which contributes to the empowerment of people through cooperative education practice. Our strategically based weekly activities advance our emergent pedagogy, situating it in the development of student’s scholarly writing. The ramifications of the complexities of an academic writing group further embeds the participant into the CoP of academe.
Key significance in our conceptual framework—substantiated by the above mentioned appropriate theories, Wenger et al. and Coady—relates to and validates the notion that theory can, in fact, inform action and good practice. Further, our study, also provides new avenues for discourses in academic literacy development. Even though we, as adult educators, acknowledge the difference between theory and practice we nevertheless work toward bridging the two.