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- All Subjects: Writing
- Creators: Roen, Duane
- Creators: Early, Jessica
Description
This dissertation shares findings from a yearlong qualitative case study of Young Voices Rise (YVR), a diverse spoken word poetry group in the urban Southwest. The study examined the group's characteristics and practices, adolescent members' views of their writing and themselves as writers, and changes members attributed to their experiences in YVR. Data sources included interviews with six adolescent poets and two adult teaching artists, observations of writing workshops and poetry slams, collection of group announcements through social media, and collection of poems. Sociocultural theory guided the study's design, and grounded theory was used to analyze data. This study found that YVR is a community of practice that offers multiple possibilities for engagement and fosters a safe space for storytelling. The adolescent participants have distinct writing practices and a strong sense of writing self; furthermore, they believe YVR has changed them and their writing. This study has several implications for secondary English language arts. Specifically, it recommends that teachers build safe spaces for storytelling, offer spoken word poetry as an option for exploring various topics and purposes, attend to writers' practices and preferences, encourage authentic participation and identity exploration, and support spoken word poetry school-wide.
ContributorsWilliams, Wendy (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
ABSTRACT Controversies surrounding multilingual language programs, disparities on educational achievement measures, and tracking represent some of the conflicts concerning race that continue to take place in school districts around the country. These debates are especially significant today as schools experience shifts in demographics. Racial and ethnic minorities now account for at least one-third of the nation's population (United States Census Bureau, 2010), and schools are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). The continued importance of race in education serves as the impetus behind this dissertation's inquiries into race and language in the high school English classroom. This study explores how one group of students, attending a predominately White high school with growing racial and ethnic diversity, write and talk about race in the English classroom. I examine how explicitly or implicitly students engaged in everyday language, school talk, and school writing about racial and ethnic identity, as well as how students responded to an English language arts curriculum devoted to issues of race and equity. On a broader scale, this study seeks to understand the school, community, and larger social context of racial and ethnic division and unity, particularly the role language and literacy pedagogies can play in addressing these issues. Blending two qualitative methodologies, including ethnography and the design and implementation of a race-conscious English curriculum, I spent eight months in one high school classroom, resulting in an analysis of a series of field notes, student writing, and in-depth participant interview transcripts. Findings from this study may help complicate researchers' and teachers' notions of how racial and ethnic identity operates in classrooms with shifting demographics. This study also highlights the importance of bringing race-conscious literacy activities to the forefront of English classrooms where structured discussions and carefully crafted writing prompts can facilitate discourse on race that might otherwise be muted in the context of traditional English language arts curriculum. Finally, this dissertation calls for a greater focus on collaborative research and teaching teams comprised of classroom teachers and university researchers.
ContributorsDeCosta, Meredith (Author) / Roen, Duane (Thesis advisor) / Early, Jessica (Committee member) / Paris, Django (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Increasing numbers of courses are offered online and increasing numbers of students are pursuing post-secondary studies. At broad-access institutions, such as land grant universities and community colleges, this presents a particular concern around student persistence--that is, the number of students who complete diploma, certificate, or degree requirements from an institution. Such increased access and increased enrollment also present unique challenges to first-year writing instructors, who are often the first professionals with whom first-year students are in contact. Here I explore the many reasons why student persistence should interest first-year writing instructors, in particular, those who are teaching online. Student persistence has important civic, economic, ethical, institutional, and disciplinary implications that first-year instructors cannot ignore. I propose a persistence-based pedagogy that involves six essential elements: designing learner-centered online writing courses, demonstrating mattering by valuing student writing, fostering self-efficacy by making assignments relevant, fostering student connections through collaboration and community, engaging virtual learners by fostering a sense of place and presence, and recognizing the challenges and minimizing the risks of teaching online. Such an undertaking is necessarily transdisciplinary and draws on scholarship in rhetoric and composition, instructional design, educational psychology, applied linguistics, and higher education administration. It connects pedagogical principles advanced nearly fifty years ago with digital pedagogies that are in their infancy and attempts to balance the social epistemic nature of writing instruction with the real-world demands of diverse student populations, increasing course sizes, and ever-changing technologies. Perhaps most importantly, this dissertation focuses on strategies that online writing instructors can adopt regardless of their theoretical leanings, academic training, or institutional requirements. While persistence-based instruction does not change the purpose or outcomes of first-year composition and does not replace proper placement measures or address early-term drop rates, it does provide a framework for facilitating online courses that is rooted in rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy and promotes informed teaching and lifelong learning.
ContributorsBergin, Jeffrey R (Author) / Roen, Duane (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / James, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Writing is an important lifelong skill. Most college freshmen are required to take first-year composition (FYC) to meet the needs of writing across disciplines. Yet, a great number of students enter college unprepared. To combat this, the writing process should be practiced as part of a solid writing program. The Common Core State Standards, the “WPA Outcomes for First-Year Composition,” and the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Education address the use of the writing process as a lifelong skill. Using Emig’s (1971) work on the composing process and Flower and Hayes’ (1981) cognitive process theory as a theoretical framework, this study seeks to define the components of the writing process and how these evolve for students in an online FYC course.
A qualitative, descriptive case study approach was used to explore qualitative documents. These documents were coded according to themes gleaned from the writing process literature. These emerging themes: invention work, multiple draft production, and the collaborative and social aspects of writing were used throughout the process-based curriculum. Participants made changes to their general writing process by conducting more invention work than they had before and finding the practice worthwhile, by producing more drafts than they had on previous writing projects, and by reflecting more about what the collaborative and social aspects of writing mean to them. The online FYC course curriculum gave students the tools to build and shape their existing writing practices, or as one participant wrote, “I wasn’t reinventing the wheel, just operating the tools.”
ContributorsWilliamson, Melissa (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Committee member) / Nilsen, Alleen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation shares findings from a qualitative case study of Latina adolescent girls (ninth and 10th graders) and their mothers and fathers participating in Somos Escritores/We Are Writers. Somos Escritores was a five-week bilingual writing workshop for Latina adolescent girls and their mothers and fathers that invited them to write, draw, and share stories from their lived realities on a variety of topics relevant to their lives. The stories, voices, experiences, and ways of knowing of the Latina adolescent girls, mothers, and fathers who allowed me a window into their lives are at the center of this study.
This study explored the ways a safe space was coconstructed for the sharing of stories and voices and what was learned from families through their writing about who they are, what matters to them, and what they envision for their futures. To understand Somos Escritores, and the Latina adolescent girls, mothers, and fathers who participated in this space and the stories that are shared, I weave together multiple perspectives. These perspectives include Chicana feminist epistemology (Delgado Bernal, 1998), third space (Gutiérrez, 2008), Nepantla (Anzaldúa, 1997) and sociocultural theories of writing (Goncu & Gauvain, 2012; Prior, 2006). Data were drawn from the following sources: (a) postworkshop survey, (b) audio recording and transcription of workshops, (c) interviews, (d) workshop artifacts, and (e) field notes. They were analyzed using narrative methods. I found that Latina adolescent girls and their mothers and fathers are “Fighting to be Heard,” through the naming and claiming of their realities, creating positive self-definitions, writing and sharing silenced stories, the stories of socially conscious girls and of parents raising chicas fuertes [strong girls]. In addition, Somos Escritores families and facilitators coconstructed a third space through intentional practices and activities. This study has several implications for teachers and teacher educators. Specifically, I suggest creating safe space in literacy classroom for authentic sharing of stories, building a curriculum that is relevant to the lived realities of youth and that allows them to explore social injustices and inequities, and building relationships with families in the coconstruction of family involvement opportunities.
This study explored the ways a safe space was coconstructed for the sharing of stories and voices and what was learned from families through their writing about who they are, what matters to them, and what they envision for their futures. To understand Somos Escritores, and the Latina adolescent girls, mothers, and fathers who participated in this space and the stories that are shared, I weave together multiple perspectives. These perspectives include Chicana feminist epistemology (Delgado Bernal, 1998), third space (Gutiérrez, 2008), Nepantla (Anzaldúa, 1997) and sociocultural theories of writing (Goncu & Gauvain, 2012; Prior, 2006). Data were drawn from the following sources: (a) postworkshop survey, (b) audio recording and transcription of workshops, (c) interviews, (d) workshop artifacts, and (e) field notes. They were analyzed using narrative methods. I found that Latina adolescent girls and their mothers and fathers are “Fighting to be Heard,” through the naming and claiming of their realities, creating positive self-definitions, writing and sharing silenced stories, the stories of socially conscious girls and of parents raising chicas fuertes [strong girls]. In addition, Somos Escritores families and facilitators coconstructed a third space through intentional practices and activities. This study has several implications for teachers and teacher educators. Specifically, I suggest creating safe space in literacy classroom for authentic sharing of stories, building a curriculum that is relevant to the lived realities of youth and that allows them to explore social injustices and inequities, and building relationships with families in the coconstruction of family involvement opportunities.
ContributorsFlores, Tracey T (Author) / Blasingame, James B. (Thesis advisor) / Vega, Sujey (Thesis advisor) / Early, Jessica (Committee member) / Gee, Betty (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Composition historians have increasingly recognized that local histories help test long-held theories about the development of composition in higher education. As Gretchen Flesher Moon argues, local histories complicate our notions of students, teachers, institutions, and influences and add depth and nuance to the dominant narrative of composition history. Following the call for local histories in rhetoric and composition, this study is a local history of composition at Arizona State University (ASU) from 1885-1985. This study focuses on the institutional influences that shaped writing instruction as the school changed from a normal school to teachers` college, state college, and research university during its first century in existence. Building from archival research and oral histories, this dissertation argues that four national movements in higher education--the normal school movement, the standardization and accreditation movement, the "university-status movement," and the research and tenure movement--played a formative role in the development of writing instruction at Arizona State University. This dissertation, therefore, examines the effects of these movements as they filtered into the writing curriculum at ASU. I argue that faculty and administrators` responses to these movements directly influenced the place of writing instruction in the curriculum, which consequently shaped who took writing courses and who taught them, as well as how, what, and when writing was taught. This dissertation further argues that considering ASU`s history in relation to the movements noted above has implications for composition historians attempting to understand broader developments in composition history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Notwithstanding ASU`s unique circumstances, these movements had profound effects at institutions across the country, shaping missions, student populations, and institutional expectations. Although ASU`s local history is filled with idiosyncrasies and peculiarities that highlight the school`s distinctiveness, ASU is representative of hundreds of institutions across the country that were influenced by national education movements which are often invisible in the dominant narrative of composition history. As such, this history upholds the goal of local histories by complicating our notions of students, teachers, institutions, and influences and adding depth and nuance to our understanding of how composition developed in institutions of American higher education.
ContributorsSkinnell, Ryan (Author) / Goggin, Maureen Daly (Thesis advisor) / Roen, Duane (Thesis advisor) / Matsuda, Paul Kei (Committee member) / Rose, Shirley K. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This qualitative, classroom-based study investigates how 24 middle school students engaged with grammar in an instructional approach that bridged “grammar in context” practices with writing transfer practices. This “transfer-minded” approach invited students to monitor and reflect on their grammar choices in writing as a way to foster metacognition; it also guided students to consider other and future writing contexts where they could use the grammar they were learning as a way to foster transfer and long-term writing development. The dissertation findings detail the role of individual factors on student engagement with grammar in this study. The findings also share how students thought about and used grammar in their writing. Finally, the dissertation reveals how students engaged with the instructional practices, helping map successful and promising areas for effective grammar instruction.
ContributorsScholes, Justin (Author) / Early, Jessica (Thesis advisor) / Saidy, Christina (Committee member) / Graham, Steve (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022