Disrupted Routines: A Thoughtful Response to Controlling Student Writing

ABSTRACT

This article uses a quasi-spiritual lens to examine why some teachers feel compelled to inappropriately control student writing. For almost half a century, professionals in composition studies have engaged in vigorous conversations about the problem of teachers co-opting, correcting, and rewriting (essentially appropriating) student texts as part of their teaching practice. Most agree this prescriptive approach discourages students from owning their texts, while simultaneously short-circuiting the learning process. However, few have asked why the compulsion to control student writing persists for some teachers. Applying ideas from Jerome Miller’s book The Way of Suffering: A Geography of Crisis, this paper offers one possibility: The urge to inappropriately control student texts may come from our unwillingness to suffer. Can we, as teachers, allow our safe routines – our orderly worlds – to be disrupted by imperfect student writing?

KEYWORDS:

• Composition
• pedagogy
• rhetoric
• assessment
• public writing
• spirituality
• post-secondary education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

W. Keith Duffy

W. Keith Duffy, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English at The Pennsylvania State University. He teaches academic writing, composition pedagogy, and classical rhetoric. Research interests include nontraditional forms of writing instruction. He records electronic music, and his musical compositions have appeared in numerous films and television shows, such as HBO’s The Sopranos. He has used musical composition in the post-secondary writing classroom and published research on this approach.