January 31, 2008

Tutors Constructing Knowledge: Handouts Revisited

(Article length 2764 words)

Susan Dinitz, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
Jean Kiedaisch, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT

Editors intro: Writing tutors understand the importance of handouts in terms of organizing and presenting essential information to students.  However, as writing center directors Susan Dinitz and Jean Kiedaisch have found, as helpful as handouts can be, they can also limit the creative ability of the tutor and sometimes may not fit the writing needs of the student in a particular situation.  Moreover, there is the challenge of finding the particular handout when it is needed for a session.  The following article examines the usefulness of handouts in varying tutoring situations as well as some handout modifications which will ensure organized and effective tutoring sessions.

As directors, we have felt conflicted about the use of handouts in our writing center at the University of Vermont, as they seem to contradict our philosophy. Handouts seem by their nature to be reductive, prescriptive, and rule-driven, to suggest that knowledge is passed on rather than constructed. In Andrea Lunsford’s terms, they seem to support the idea of a writing center as a “storehouse” rather than “a collaborative Burkean parlor based on the notion of knowledge as always contextually bound, as always socially constructed” .

And so over the past several years we have come up with a local, contextualized use of handouts. The University of Vermont (UVM) Writing Center is staffed by undergraduate peer tutors from across the disciplines, mostly juniors and seniors, who take a two-semester training seminar. For years, one of their assignments has been to give presentations on writing in their own disciplines, for which they create a handout. These handouts were originally gathered in folders and made available for tutors to use with students. Eventually the folders became so full of materials that one class decided to organize each folder into a notebook on writing in that discipline, with sections covering a variety of topics and copies of each handout for use during sessions. Now, in order to create a class presentation, each tutor reads through the notebook from her or his discipline, recommending what should be removed, inserted, or revised and updated, and then constructs a handout that will add new material or a new perspective to the notebook.

We have come to realize that these handouts collected into notebooks, rather than contradicting our philosophy, actually embody our writing center’s views of writing and of tutoring. Rather than buying into the “banking” system of education, they embody the view of knowledge as constructed by people within the disciplines that form academic communities.

TUTOR-CREATED RESOURCES ON WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES

The notebooks often begin with a general overview that connects conventions for writing to the making of knowledge in a discipline. For example, in their handout “Writing In the Discipline of History,” Frank Jones, Alex Korn, and Francis Lennon look at what it is historians do to explain conventions for writing in that discipline:

Something to keep in mind is that the “field work” for historians consists of sifting through mountains and mountains of primary writing sources . . . . In order to be able to find what they are looking for, historians need universally accepted systems for categorizing and cataloging everything they come across. Out of this need originates certain peculiarities specific to historians such as an emphasis on the format and clarity of a paper and an incredibly disciplined adherence to certain bibliographic forms.

This explanation may help account for why, for example, historians like to see a footnote at the bottom of the page to fully identify a source the first time it is cited rather than to see an in-text
citation.

Following an overview, each notebook includes handouts describing in more depth common types of assignments in that discipline and what the expectations are for those types of writing.
These make it immediately apparent that disciplines are unique communities with their own

Promoting the exchange of voices and ideas in one-to-one teaching of writing. ways of writing, and that being a good writer in college involves learning those ways of writing. For example, Clayton Trutor begins his guide to writing in political science by explaining, “The strange history of political science makes writing in this field of study uniquely challenging because its diverse influences have had many different reasons for considering the polis.” He contrasts the Greek conception of the field as “the most noble of intellectual pursuits” because it is value-based with the more modern view of it as empirical social science. This leads to his explanation of four subfields in the discipline (American Politics, Political Philosophy, International Relations, and Comparative Politics), which in turn leads to his explanation of the varied types of writing in the discipline, from Philosophically Analytical Essays, which “come to political science through the humanities,” to Case Study Essays, which come through the social sciences.

The genre of lab reports provides an interesting lesson in how genres of writing and writing assignments can be found in multiple disciplines but still vary according to the discipline. Though tutors at first thought that they could create one handout on lab reports, they soon discovered that they needed separate sections on chemistry and biology lab reports and a whole separate notebook on lab reports in the field of natural resources. For example, according to the tutors with experience in chemistry, the lab reports for introductory chemistry classes should include the results and discussion in one section. However, the biology majors suggested that students separate these sections for biology lab reports. And unlike chemistry lab reports, biology lab reports were to include an abstract section and a review of the literature as part of the introduction. The Lab Report Notebook also contains a section on scientific articles, including one written by a tutor in a Biomedical Technology class, Ann Cwik. This article, set up as it needs to be for publication, illustrates for students how the lab report genre informs the professional genres and the scholarship in the field.

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE: CONVENTIONS AS SOCIALLY
CONSTRUCTED WAYS OF CONVERSING

Of course, it is possible to go to an OWL or handbook and find plenty of guides to writing in the various disciplines. Why not just refer student writers to these sites? Are the handouts collected in
our notebooks different in any important ways?

For one thing, the notebooks embody and thus model the nature of disciplinary conventions not as rules but as agreed upon ways of talking, ways that change over time as a community changes. For example, in “A Few Words on Writing History Papers,” Jesse Lawson explains:

Problems with personal voice come in when asking whether or not to use “I.” It used to be standard convention never to use the personal pronoun, but this practice has become more commonplace in recent years. Adding personal dimension to a historical work can often crease its depth and be pleasurable for the reader. Some might even trust a historian more if
s/he takes you into his/her confidence. He quotes Thucydides to support this point, then adds “On the other hand, a historian is supposed to be an authority on the topic discussed, which means that saying ‘I think’ or ‘In my opinion’ can suggest that the author does not trust his/her own opinions—so why should the reader?” Jesse makes it clear that there’s not a simple answer to whether or not to use “I.” And he doesn’t just say what the conventions are, but also why, suggesting that the reasoning can change and thus the conventions can change.

Indeed, the notebooks themselves are an open rather than a closed form, changing year after year. Each reading by a new class of tutors is an invitation to revise and update the information they present about writing in that discipline. Thus the notebooks embody the reality that disciplinary conventions change over time.

The handouts also embody the reality that conventions for writing in the disciplines are subjective rather than objective—created by people, used by people—not a set of rules (from who knows where) that must be followed, as generic handouts often seem to suggest. The handouts usually are not written in an objective style or tone; you can hear the writer’s personal voice. Consider Clayton’s choice of a title—“Clayton’s Super Political Science Writing Guide”—and of headings—“ A few morsels of information on format.” And he chooses to include his own opinion of some of the conventions, as in this third “morsel”:

Political Scientists improperly use MANY words to suit their purposes; don’t be surprised to see Jimmy or Susie Polisci come to the writing center with a paper full of this rubbish (e.g. the words “liberalism,” “materialism,” and “idealism” describe things completely foreign to their common usage).

In addition to writing in their own voices, the tutors often explicitly encourage students to develop and use the students’ own voices—to not position themselves as simply following a set of rules or guidelines. In the first section to her handout on Philosophy Papers, Laura Mattison emphasizes the following: What makes a philosophy paper difficult is not only the difficulty involved in the analysis of philosophical texts, but also the challenge of creating original and engaging thoughts of one’s own and then being able to relate all the ideas together in a coherent whole. . . . It is important to realize that a philosophy paper is not simply a regurgitation of others’ ideas, but an opportunity to refl ect on the writings of others and to draw one’s own analysis and conclusions.

In another example, Ben Doyle begins his essay “Writing in My Discipline” (which is English) by explaining  I don’t read books, I rewrite them. This is the essential activity that must take place fora successful assessment of a literary text. Before a reader/writer can begin writing a paper on a book, they must rewrite the book through the process of reading it. In English circles this activity
is called “a close reading.” People reading a text are always going to be grounded in their own particular point of view, ideologies, and prejudices and so different people’s contradictory readings of the same text can both be considered correct, providing of course that there is evidence in a text to support their interpretation. . . .

So, how do you write a paper for the discipline of English? Take a stand. Don’t just read a text, rewrite it from an ideological perspective, let your reader be aware of that perspective and why
you have chosen to embrace and interrogate it . . . .

Like Ben, Liz Fenton encourages the writer, not the guidelines, to be at the center of the process of writing an English paper. Her method for empowering the writer is to encourage play. She advises, “Write a wacky introduction. One common misconception about introductions to English papers is that they must be seven to ten sentences of dry outline ending in a thesis. This is not always true. If your professor seems game, try something different. . . .” Similarly, she encourages writers to “Play with form. Not all essays are eight paragraphs, and not all begin with a thesis and end with a conclusion. Experiment. . . . Try to hit on a form that matches your style, so your paper’s shape will add to your argument.”

ENGAGING STUDENTS IN THE CONVERSATION

Promoting the exchange of voices and ideas in one-to-one teaching of writing.

The handouts in the notebooks, then, in addition to making visible and explicit the subjective nature of conventions for writing in a discipline, emphasize the important role of the writer in relation to these conventions. Another way in which they embody the nature of conventions as socially constructed lies in their being collected in notebooks to be used during tutoring. Thus they imply that in order to learn these conventions, a writer must learn how to participate in a conversation and can’t just be “handed” a set of guidelines.

The handouts convey this sense of being part of a conversation through their construction of audience, voice, and purpose. In Liz’s title, “Writing in English, English in Writing (a friendly guide to writing literature papers),” you can hear her adopting the stance of a peer acting as a guide to the uninitiated. She often writes in the first person, as in her aside, “When I get stuck, I tape Xerox paper all over my walls and make six-foot outlines of ideas-in-progress. I also write first drafts in crayon. It really works.” And she directly addresses the reader, creating this sense of conversation, in her advice to “Make sure your paper follows your introduction or vice-versa. If you find out after finishing your paper that you have written about something other than what is in your introduction, you may need to alter your introduction. That’s okay; do it.”

Many of the tutors choose to create their handouts in the form of an outline or set of notes, clearly inviting explanation and conversation during a session. Similarly, sample papers are often included in the notebooks, and they’re almost always annotated in a way that helps to create a conversation. On the first page of her sample sociology research paper, Kerri Riveley includes glosses noting “introduction outlining a topic”; “clear mention of hypothesis”; and “literature review—presentation of findings found in various published articles and books.” The annotations connect the paper back to her one-page explanation of “Detailed Components of a Sociological Research Paper.” Thus the paper becomes not a model to replicate but part of a conversation between documents in the notebook and between tutor and student.

The tutors are also very aware that they are helping people with a process, not teaching a list of writing rules or conventions to follow. Liz’s “friendly guide to writing literature papers” has sections on the various parts of the process: Reading, Getting Started, The Body, The End, Revision, Editing and Proofreading, Citation, Some Suggested Readings. And the tutors are aware that this process may vary with an individual’s learning and composing styles. For example, Jesse’s “Few Words on Writing History Papers” begins with a section on “Getting Started.” After discussing how to select a topic, he explains, “Having chosen the topic, the procedure will be different depending on the student,” and then goes on to describe how the procedure may vary.

CREATING THE NOTEBOOKS: A CRASH COURSE IN WID FOR TUTORS

A final way in which the notebooks model the nature of academic writing as socially constructed within disciplines involves the actual process of creating the notebooks. Designing a handout and giving a presentation makes tutors much more aware that writing is socially constructed within their own disciplines. The English majors, who often think they know what is expected in a “good” paper, have to articulate what they know, and they often learn that other English majors have somewhat different ideas and methods, requiring extended conversations with the group to arrive
at some consensus about the English notebook handouts. And in hearing presentations by tutors in other disciplines, they learn, for example, that not every good paper begins with a thesis statement somewhere in the opening paragraph.

In some ways, then, even if the tutors never used these notebooks in sessions, the process of studying and presenting them and creating new materials serves as a wonderful training tool. The process helps tutors understand that disciplinary conventions for writing exist; that they are socially constructed within disciplines, and so are employed and interpreted in many diverse ways and change over time; and that one of their roles as a writing tutor can be to help students understand these conventions and how they relate to the student’s own voice, aims, and writing process.

In conclusion, the notebooks end up being a collection of handouts that will facilitate a conversation, handouts that do not pretend to be authoritative or self-contained, that, by design, are subjective rather than objective, a part rather than the whole, tentative rather than rule-based, an offer of help and guidance rather than a list of guidelines that must be followed. And the purpose of the tutoring conversation that the handouts facilitate is to help students learn to engage, with a voice and ideas of their own, in the particular conversations of a discipline, much as Bruffee imagined in his seminal article, “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’”

Thus, though we still remain suspicious of requests we receive for handouts, with their accompanying assumption that there must be something we can hand writers that will tell them what they need to know to solve all of their writing problems, we have ended up thinking that the way of using handouts we have described here actually models much of our philosophy of how students develop as writers and of the role in that process played by our writing center.

Works Cited
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’.” Writing Centers: Theory and Administration. Ed. G.A. Olson. Urbana: NCTE, 1984. 3-15. Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal 12.1 (1991): 3-10.

 

 

 

Filed under: Academic Learning Centers,Home Schooling,Small Private Practices,Study Tools,Tutoring Practices

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