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Articles Conference Reviews |
2007A01McClureA.01: “Institutional Forces as Shapers of Identity” This panel was comprised of current and former members of the First-Year Writing program in the Department of English at the University of Tampa. Speakers shared their highly personal experiences and struggles in attempting to create an identity for composition within their department and across their institution. In her presentation, “From Techne to Identity: A Theoretical Framework for Ways Institutional Forces Can Shape Identity,” Joanna Castner applies techne to provide a conceptual frame for the group’s collective experience at the University of Tampa. Castner, now a member of the English Department at University of Central Arkansas, explains how techne provides a model of knowledge that views knowledge as always changing and, as such, transformative itself. Castner then uses this definition to demonstrate how institutional forces can shape a first-year writing program’s identity. Castner believes that institutional forces as techne never provide a representational body of knowledge; they are constantly in action, making for a physical and human geography that continually affect the topography of composition and the pedagogy used in support of it. Following Castner, Rebecca Ingalls shares her story as a basic writing teacher at the University of Tampa who works within a rhetoric of brokenness and negation in “‘She Taught Me More than I Thought She Would’: Resisting the Dumbing-Down and Reconstructing the ‘Rank’ of Basic Writing.” According to Ingalls, this rhetoric results from students’ and teachers’ perception of “basic” and creates an environment that resists curricular and pedagogical innovation. In fact, Ingalls believes the lore of basic writing is still very much present, so much so that views popular in the 1970s persist and the term, title and rank of “basic writing” courses devalue students, teachers and the courses themselves. Despite her situation, Ingalls has attempted to reconstruct a rhetorical space to rebuild basic writing in ways that bolster it and do not demean it. Next, Anne Meade Stockdell-Giesler discusses what she has found to be an unexpected level of diversity in first-year writing programs and the departments that often house them in “Voice and Identity: Putting First-Year Writing in its Place.” Stockdell-Giesler presents her amazement at how institutions and faculty define themselves and how these definitions shape writing, especially when conflicting definitions exist. Citing the work of John Alberti, Stockdell-Giesler believes the liberal arts model of writing instruction is ineffective for second-class schools such as most state universities and community colleges and creates an identity crisis for institutions, departments and first-year writing programs. Further, Stockdell-Giesler notes this identity crisis compartmentalizes writing faculty and perpetuates notions of writing as a second-class activity. In other words, first-year writing programs and their faculty find themselves trapped by a confrontation of the practical with the visionary. Despite this conflicted, troubled identity, Stockdell-Giesler argues first-year writing courses “can effectively mediate the ivory tower and the marketplace.” Tracy Ann Morse shifts the discussion away from the theoretical analysis and ideological conflict of identity to the identity created by physical space(s). In “What does Physical Space Suggest about Our Perceptions of Who We Serve,” Morse relies on disability studies and “universal design” learning to suggest that the physical space of the institution affects the perceptions of students and the work of the teaching of first-year writing. Morse provides several examples of the physical space at the University of Tampa and how these spaces fail to acknowledge issues of accessibility, space design and use that influence the identity of writing students and teachers. Morse uses her examples to draw parallels within the space itself and between students and writing instruction, and questions how often institutions create inclusive spaces for writing. Morse closes by extending the argument of universal design from spaces to course designs, questioning whether our first-year writing courses have universal, inclusive designs that accommodate learning styles, spaces and artifacts. Mike Donnelly closes the session with an impromptu version of “Glimmers of Hope, Moments of Despair: Reflections of an Untenured WPA.” Donnelly’s narrative emphasizes how mission statements and course descriptions of first-year writing programs raise their accountability, how inclusion is defined and shaped by institutional forces and memory, and how innovation is affected by these forces. Donnelly then shifts from the program to the personal. He discusses how administrative requirements and demands, placed on writing program administrators, reconfigure the teacher within the terms of his commitment to learning and often lead to an emphasis on reporting instead of teaching. Despite the tenuous situation at the University of Tampa, each presenter offered, borrowing Donnelly’s term, glimmers of hope for first-year writing program faculty and administrators. The session on the whole provided cautionary tales and valuable lessons for all of us who teach college composition. Comments? |