This week’s readings feature empirical research on writing groups for doctoral students. This is a conscious effort on my part to blur the lines between the facets of the course that relate to technical aspects such as building writing skills and the more theoretical parts of the course (e.g., talking about ideas). Comment on whether these readings shed light on any aspects of this course.
Mitchell Waters - I particularly enjoyed the Lassig, Dillon and Diezmann article that details the authors’ experiences in their writing group. It seems that writing groups promote both the enhancement of technical writing skills for scholarly writing but also scholarly identity. This reminds me of what we have discussed earlier in this class where we interact with someone else and walk away changed in some way. Writing groups may initially form under for the purposes of achieving scholarly writing competence, but it often morphs into somewhat of a mutual support group as well, be it academic, social or emotional (p. 312). Coming together with a mutual goal of improving writing and pursuing a common enterprise, the interactional nature of writing groups necessarily contribute to professional and scholarly identity development. That is, we get to know more about who we are and who we want to be when we learn about who others are and who they want to be. This very well aligns with my experience in leading therapy groups. Group members bring with them their experiences and goals, share those with others and walk away changed in some way with both having shared their experiences and goals and from hearing others.
ReplyDeleteAmy Jefferson: Becker resonated with me when he mentioned making many multiple writing revisions. I have seen the value in shelving writing and then revisiting the words with fresh eyes in my own writing. It is helpful to know that some published authors use the same strategy. Becker’s idea of, “you learn to write from the world around you, both from what it forces on you and from what it makes available,” (2007, p. 107) reminded me of Dewey’s idea that knowledge is changed through experience. So, by shelving your work, allowing time to pass and experiences to occur, isn’t a writer essentially growing his or her base of knowledge before returning to a piece?
ReplyDeleteIn the Lassig and Aitchison articles, I wondered if scholarly identity and growth through the collaborative experience can be negatively or positively impacted by the make-up of the writing group. So how then should groups be formed?
I find that our class discussions and small group deliberations around Biesta and Burbules has given us the ability to touch the surface of learning how to critique written pieces. Atchinson (2009) found that “learning to critique was a pre-eminent pedagogy for writing development.” Therefore, doing the critiquing is a valuable strategy for learning how to write. Participants within the Atchinson (2009) study also viewed the process of giving criticism as equally important to receiving criticism. Similarly, Becker emphasized the importance of writing communities, criticism, and revision. Becker also expressed that learning to write takes place over a professional lifetime. I found it comforting to think of the revision process as a puzzle (Becker) because often times criticism can feel like a personal intellectual attack resulting in imposter syndrome.
ReplyDeleteLauren:
ReplyDeleteThese readings helped bring to light some concrete way I can engage to make myself a better researcher. It’s not just about the process of cultivating and conducting a study, you have to explain your work and these readings make it seem that group editing processes are not only just part of the world, they benefit all involved. This alleviates a lot of the pressure discussed in earlier chapters of Becker where the difficulty of just getting started were addressed. I do believe editing helps the writer and the editor. It helps you engage in meaningful discussions in a different way and lays out a whole body of work, rather than going back and forth. Every interaction is one that you can use to learn from so by having more people engage with your writing, and by engaging with more writing yourself, your immersing yourself with more experience to make future work more fruitful. I can see developing a group of peers organically to help review future work. Additionally, I want to emphasize how critical it is to develop effective writing techniques in order to convey the “talking about ideas” part of the course. The lines should naturally be blurred because without one, you can’t have the other. Lastly, I really enjoyed the structure of the editing process presented in Aitchison. So often editing can be too broad and lose it’s power, but this structure provided targeted ways to interact with the writing and peers.
Tosha Yingling:
ReplyDeleteI found the idea of discovering or reifying identity through writing a really cool nod to things we typically take as abstractions, but realistically, words and sense of self have quite material impacts on our lives and bodies. As I was thinking about a couple weeks ago in a Becker blog, there is something radical and beautiful about writing and collaborating, “creation of knowledge through mutual engagement,” meaning-making in an academic setting that doesn’t have the best track record for inclusivity. I think of a time right as I was matriculating and supposed to be writing my master’s thesis, but I was sick and training a service dog, and my brain wasn’t working at all like it used to. To move beyond the cliché of being a life-long learner as a teacher, I really did have to think of new ways of articulating new thought that I don’t think would have been possible if I did not have to explain my snobby grad school ideas to a room full of baby feminists so that I had to really dissect my own ideas, and make them super accessible as well as buildable and layered; I still get a kick out of scheduling one-on-one final paper workshops with my kids where we can collaborate and push each other into the more solidified sense of self and perception sometimes simply by validating each other’s ideas. Writing is such an intensely personal thing, I can see why we’re embarrassed to share it, and the idea of academia being sharing in this way a lot makes me a little queasy (turns out when you get a service dog, you begin to fetishize flying under the radar) but the engagements, encounters, and affirmation we have potential for is a nice offset.
Elizabeth Severson-Irby:
ReplyDeleteAs we have discussed: who do we want to read the research and how should the research be presented. The Aitchison (2009) article touches on this when she discusses the use of language and making meaning within the text. One of the respondents even noted that they gained skills in quickly finding the argument, specifically in a paper outside their discipline, and this in turn helped them be clearer in their own writing (Aitchison, 2009, p. 912). Both articles speak to the usefulness of writing groups to not only learn technical skills but also to develop an identity as a scholarly writer. They also both discuss the value of writing groups comprised of people with different areas of expertise. This can help make writing stronger by having their input, but can also help make writing clearer and less full of domain-specific jargon and nuances. I feel like Dewey would be a proponent of interdisciplinary writing groups as a way to tap the knowledge of others in order to increase one’s own knowledge. Becker also sees the value of a community of writers and points out the usefulness of people who can read your work, make comments, and help you improve (Becker, 2007, p. 21). Writing within these groups gets people talking about the content from many different angles, which can raise questions for further research or force questions about the applicability of the research.
All of the readings shed light on making a move from the isolated writer to a more social, group-oriented way of drafting, editing, and rewriting. Are there writing groups within the school of education or at VCU?
Kori Nicolai: It has come up through multiple conversations, the difficulty of researching constructs that do not seem very measurable. I think the Aitchison(2009) article is a great example of researching a construct that does not seem easily measured, how we learn to write, particularly through the want to and receiving/ providing feedback in an informal setting(where no grading is taking place). Becker's book more reflects our class structure of talking and coming to conclusions, Becker does not conduct any research to find his conclusions. Aitchison(2009) and Becker find similar conclusions that learning how to write is partly done through revising or critiquing written drafts. Aitchison(2009) reports results that may have been common sense or found in other writings but it was conducted through systematic research and shows the importance of doing research to come to “common sense” conclusions. Now the writing groups program has research to explain how they are working and can be implemented with a greater understanding of the concept.
ReplyDeleteJia
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading these articles from this week. I see a good option of helping me with Ph.D. level writing that is a research writing group. At this phase of my Ph.D. study, I see my weaknesses in academic literacy. As mentioned in these two articles, Ph.D. students are not trained systematically on how to write a high-quality academic paper. Most of the time, we are writing alone. The group editing can break the isolated studying status and help us make progress in writing as well as identity formulation. So, I wonder if this course can help us to experience the benefits of having a research writing group. For example, at the beginning of the semester, under guidance by the lecturer, five students form a writing group, to help each other to complete a high-quality discipline paper. Group meetings start from the beginning to the end of the semester by focusing on topic idea discussion, outline sharing and commenting, rough draft peer editing, etc. In this way, group members can have a whole picture of how the writing group works, and decide if the group is more effective for their writing or not. They may also touch a little on the identity transformation from a student to a scholar through working with the supervisor (the lecturer of the course). This one-semester writing group may be too short as compared with Aitchison and Lassig et all’s studies, but the group would not be bothered by people leaving and coming due to the completion of the dissertation. Also, the writing group may provide opportunities for students to network with people from different tracks, so prepare for their future dissertation writing group.
P.S. Do we have research writing groups at VCU?
Alison Dossick
ReplyDeleteA large part of the readings this week were about letting go of your work and allowing others to view, comment, and assess it. While going through the National Board Certification for Teaching, I had a few trusted colleagues read and critique my work. I was able to incorporate their suggestions while learning how to look at my writing with a critical eye. The NBCT process helped tighten up my narratives as there are strict page limits for each section. While then serving as a mentor for many NBCT candidates, I was able to offer (hopefully) helpful comments. I also learned how to critique others’ while being kind and not critical.
I felt that the articles captured the difficulties of group article writing. This is not something I have experienced and will most likely an area of growth for me. Giving up control of a piece of writing that reflects on me, will be a challenge. Practicing now to cowrite papers will be good for me. I have been part of writers’ groups that look at pieces individually. I feel like that will prove to be much easier than trying to coordinate a multi-authored article. While our discipline paper will not be multi-authored, it will be helpful to receive insights from other students that are in other disciplines as well as being at various stages of their PhD.
The readings this week definitely put some context to all the ideas we’ve been discussing throughout the semester- I appreciated getting to see some connections. In chapter five, Becker stated that “…you learn to write from the world around you, both from what it forces on you and what it makes available.” He also referenced in chapter three how students “don’t have the experience of life that would let them use their imaginations to get out of their own egocentric worlds.” These passages had me reflecting on Dewey and all the conversations we’ve had about gaining knowledge through transactions with the world around us. I could really see all of the readings this week through a pragmatic lens (I’m sure that was intentional, so THANK YOU!)- the writing and editing process that Becker describes as well as the writing group studies in the Aitchison and Lassig et al articles all reference the learning that takes place through experiencing a process that is labor-intensive and tangible. The articles take it a step further with the notion of the writing groups. That is a phenomenon I have not experienced before and I’ve always felt a bit alone in my writing process (although, not in a bad way). Until reading Becker and these articles, I had never imagined an advisor or professor who was editing my work as “in” the writing process with me. But, I can see how we are in that process together now, and can see how writing groups could benefit us in our doctoral journeys. It seems the process of being in such a group really expands one’s thinking of their own writing and how different ways of engaging in the process (based on what is learned through editing others’ work) can all be “the right way”, as Becker referenced. So, as I am connecting dots among what we’ve just read to all of the Deweyan stuff, it’s made me ask- does engaging in writing groups shift the writing process to being more in line with pragmatic thought than conducting the drafting, writing, and rewriting process alone?
ReplyDeleteAmy T.:
ReplyDeleteTo me, this class is really concerned with how we (doctoral students) acquire and create knowledge. Writing groups are related to this idea directly because of Lave and Wenger's situated learning theory which
says that learning happens within a specific context inside of a particular social and physical setting. Writing groups are situated learning environments and doctoral programs can serve as a Community of Practice in which we can begin to acquire the technical knowledge needed to be successful in the program and ultimately as academic professionals. I see what you did there!
I really enjoyed reading this weeks articles. I agree that the infusion of one's identity into writing is unavoidable. Lassig et a. talk about the social relationship that is identity. It is a relationship between an individual and their (social) environment which directly aligns with our classroom discussions about knowledge and pragmatism in particular. Aitchison writes about several pedagogies that writing groups stem from. She mentions that it comes from "Northern American college composition and rhetoric studies, and the disciplines of applied linguistics and English for specific purposes/English for academic purposes". I also find that a lot of research that draws from social aspects relate to Vygotsky's findings in Germany as well. I find multiple aspects of these article's description to be true, but I find that there are still more facets of individuality than what they describe. Both their article and Aitchison's article focus on a homogenous demographic in Australia and it is unavoidable to recognize that the United States is more ethnically diverse/ complex than Australia. More identities need to be voiced in American scholarly writing because of this additional level to identify. I am excited to continue learning about writing groups and how all of our writing can improve through this social interaction.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I really enjoyed learning about writing groups as I have never been a part of one and they seem personally anxiety inducing to me. Generally when I think about writing, I envision it to be an very personal act which is inherently tied to my identity and it has been reaffirming to see that same notion reflected in the readings for this class. Writing groups made me look at writing a little differently, in that, much like my counseling skills, it is only as good as it is in relevance to other people/consumers. Bringing a critical lens and growth mindset to a writing group allows one to understand their writing in the context in which it will be consumed (if published/presented). These readings also do work in normalizing healthy criticism as an imperative process in producing solid writing. I am often hesitant to hand over papers for other's to edit/criticize because it seems so inherently personal, but hopefully being in this program will break me of that emotional pathway and allow me to embrace this step in the writing process. I am co-authoring a couple pieces right now with faculty and that has proven as a good first step in embracing criticism and revision in the writing process. Generally, it seems like the discipline paper is set up in a way in which we already have natural writing groups (by track/concentration), though working in a writing group with my peers wasn't a natural connection I would have made in my head when assigned this project. Much like Mitchel pointed out above, there are many parallels in the group writing process to that of group therapy, which has helped me in my conceptualization of the writing process.
ReplyDeletethis is me, Kristian
DeleteI really enjoyed reading about the concept of writing groups. The Atchison article noted that as doctoral students we are expected to produce high quality and different types of writing. However, higher education experiences usually look at writing as an assessment tool rather than an opportunity to grow and learn through talking and reflecting. If we are not provided these opportunities to grow and improve our writing in coursework, writing groups are a great opportunity to do that. Lassig also acknowledges how writing groups help to form your scholarly identity. Lassig states that identity is viewed as an interactive process between the individual and their social context. In that sense, I would be interested to hear people's perspectives outside of my discipline. This also had me reflecting on Dewey and how knowledge is gained through the transactions between our environment. I can see how writing groups can facilitate this especially through discussions with people outside of your discipline.
ReplyDelete