Week 7: A Return to Andragogy

 Engage in discussion about something that captured your attention over the past few weeks in the course. Relate it back to specific class discussions, readings, and your grading/teaching when possible.

Although there have been a number of aspects pertaining to the methodologies and focuses of teaching composition, all of which we have studied and addressed this semester, the idea of andragogy has struck me as one of the most valuable concepts.  In class, we continue to discuss the versatility of approaches for teaching first-year composition; in light of this wide variety of methodological practices in teaching this discipline, I think that it is of utmost important to acknowledge the adulthood that students enrolled in these classes are coming into.

Although many composition programs limit the agency of instructors through strict curricula and prefabricated syllabi, the concepts of andragogy can still be implemented within the classroom, allowing students to actively participate in the construction of the class itself.  Although I think that the entirety of andragogy, in terms of Knowles’ definition (which can be found further down on this blog page), is important in all of its ideas, I believe that there are two concepts which hold the most import in terms of a first-year composition class: students should be involved in the planning and should be given a certain degree of autonomy when it comes to assignments and scheduling, and learning should be problem-centered.

By giving students the ability to actively affect the syllabus and their assignments, I believe that they would engage with these assignments and readings with much more depth.  By allowing them to play a role in the development of the class, students feel as if their opinion in regards to what they learn truly matters; consequently, I believe that students would place a higher emphasis upon the quality of their work. As we have discussed in class, and I as I have observed within my own grading experience, students seem to be generally disinterested in the assignments they are given, resulting in work that is not inspired, to say the least, and that follows a formulaic pattern.  I find that students often repeat the same mistakes in different assignments, indicating the insignificance that these assignments seem to hold in their eyes.  I believe that we can overcome this disengaged writing by allowing students to select the readings (from a list of selected works) that they will engage in, as they will gather a sense of the true import that these assignments hold; students would see that, by being given the opportunity to aid in developing the course, their education is indeed important to those teaching them. This form of constructive and active engagement would allow for students to begin producing work that they find meaning in.  By engaging with the course materials in this way, students’ writing would indeed serve to teach them as they advance their skills in this discipline, leading to Nancy Sommers’s idea that good “writers recognize and resolve the dissonance they sense in their writing” (51).  I believe that this aspect of andragogy would set students in the direction of becoming experienced writers, as defined by Sommers, who “seek to discover (to create) meaning in the engagement with their writing” and  who “seek to emphasize and exploit the lack of clarity, the differences of meaning, [and] the dissonance…that writing…allows” (51-52).

Additionally, I believe that centering first-year composition courses around problem-based learning would greatly impact the amount that students actually learn and take away from assignments. In cadence with Bizzell’s idea of centering studies around contact zones, I believe that we should, indeed, arrange our courses “in terms of historically defined contact zones, [or] moments when different groups within the society contend for the power to interpret what is going on” (463).  I think that organizing first-year composition around these areas of conflict would result in a much higher participation rate within the classroom, and I believe that students’ writing would be much more engaged; as a result, it would make teaching them to express their ideas much easier, as they would have a desire to express with clarity their stances. Additionally, as Bizzell argues, this method would allow students to address the world in which they live in terms of power struggles and the inequities that effect their social lives (whether directly or indirectly), teaching them to argue for or against issues in appropriate manners.  I think Bizzell’s idea is powerful, in terms of andragogy, because, rather than having to engage with material from which students are generally detached, they would have to learn HOW to discuss these topics, how to consider a variety of perspectives, and how to recognize the ways in which these perspectives are presented (rhetoric). 

Personally, I believe that andragogy, more specifically the two aspects I have touched upon, is essential for successfully teaching students how to write and how to engage with the topics at hand.  Not only would these practices benefit students in terms of writing, but they would also teach students how to appropriate the incessant stream of information that our technologically-based society throws at them; this would provide them with the skills to determine the validity and importance of this information, and it would teach them HOW to actively engage with a society of which they are an integral part.

Bizzell, Patricia. “‘Contact Zones’ and English Studies.” Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. 3^rd ed. Eds. Victor Villanueva, Kristin L. Arola. Urbana: NCTE, 2011. 459-466. Print.

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. 3^rd ed. Eds. Victor Villanueva, Kristin L. Arola. Urbana: NCTE, 2011. 43-54. Print.