View from the margins - 3

Can I begin by setting a certain older learner’s mind at rest? The Conference on Basic Writing has identified ‘re-entry students (such as displaced homemakers, older learners who are retraining, or former members of the military)’ as part of the diverse population of basic writers (Uehling, 2005, my italics). Not all older learners are basic writers in the same way that not all ESL students, socially disadvantaged or disabled learners are basic writers. Nicki asks: “If this aspect of Fiona’s thesis is incorrect, can we responsibly rely on the other assertions that she mentioned.” I hope that now you can!

I would also like to thank Nicki for bringing up the pertinent subject of stereotyping. She has positively stereotyped older re-entry students, no doubt based on her own considerable talents. I think that this shows how we all are vulnerable to making judgements about other students based on our own views. Matt, for example, assumed that the surface-level errors and lack of evidence were ‘merely the result of a lack of effort’, typical of a first-year student. Tom makes the wider assumption that process is more important than product. Here, I have used the label of basic writer – itself, an indictment of labelling educational attitudes.

We tend to think of marginalised students as somehow caught in a learning deficit because of their background, colour, ability, gender, etc. We also think of diversity and students outside ‘the norm’. We identify and label, and then we attack with our pedagogies! But this view of students on the margins is just another stereotype. Believing in it results in teachers of seemingly homogenous, traditional classrooms being ‘inclined to believe that any problems their “majority” students have in writing are the result of a lack of effort, the sign of intellectual deficiency, or a product of resistance’ (Marshall, 1997, p.231-2). Such labelling produces a kind of blindness.

What we must open our eyes to see is that marginalised students also exist in the silent corners of the average, white, middle-class, English-speaking classroom; that they may make up the majority in a classroom (Hall and Balester, 1999) without the teacher realising it. I would even suggest that we are all non-traditional students in our own way, needing to discover our own best practice to learn. Isn’t that why we are all arguing here – because we all have our own views on the best way for this student to develop, most likely based on our own experiences of learning?

Marshall is trying to prepare new teachers like ourselves and challenge our pre-conceptions. Imposing our own pedagogies, no matter how well argued, may be flawed if we do not recognise that all our students bring their own histories and problems into their literary practices. The fight that this particular student faces, with her ‘interlanguage’ (and possibly ‘interdialect’, given some of the peculiarities of phrasing), is that her marker may well see her writing as riddled with error and make assumptions, such as Matt’s ‘lack of effort’.

This dialogue is perhaps more about how we personally, as beginner teachers, approach our students than the pros and cons of different pedagogies. Mina Shaughnessy states a similar aim in Errors and Expectations:

“[This book] assumes that programs are not the answers to the learning problems of students but that teachers are and that, indeed, good teachers create good programs, that the best programs are developed in situ, in response to the needs of individual student populations and as reflections of the particular histories and resources of individual colleges” (Shaughnessy, 1977, p.6).

I would suggest that this efficacy can only come with practice, with a range of pedagogical tools to hand, and an awareness of our own controlling perceptions. Therefore, sticking to one particular stance is risky business - not for the teacher but for the student.

References

Kells, Michelle Hall, and Balester, Valerie. (eds.) (1999) Attending to the Margins: Writing, Researching, and Teaching on the Front Lines. Portsmouth (New Hampshire): Heinemann-Boynton/Cook.

Marshall, Margaret, J. (1997) Marking the Unmarked: Reading Student Diversity and Preparing Teachers. CCC 48(2), pp.231-248.

Shaughnessy, Mina, P. (1977) Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. New York: Oxford University Press.

Uehling, Karen. S. (2005) The Conference on Basic Writing: 1980-2005. Adapted from Histories of Developmental Education. Lundell, D.B. and Higbee, J.L. (eds.) Minneapolis: Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy, 2002). Available on the internet at >http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/basicbib/content/conference.html<