Response to Nelson and Brookfield

"What really counts”

In a discussion of “what really counts” in terms of students’ academic writing, Nelson shrewdly highlights the fact that students tend to focus on the finished product of their writing processes, instead of the actual processes of writing, as a response to what students judge is the evaluative goal of their teachers. Idealistic fool that I am, I would like to fight for the right of teachers to reward student participation in the process itself, as opposed to the giving of rewards for the production of final products, but this ideal actually raises two very contentious problems.

The first problem is that teachers, be they high school literature teachers or freshman composition instructors, work under the auspices of their departments and their institutions, and as such, are ultimately are responsible for enacting the prevailing orders of their employers. Much like the employees of multinational corporations or national governments, teachers must, in addition to their duties as educators, also serve as vendors of their institution’s party line. Part of that institutionalized party line normally involves the production of a certain quantity of finished products during the course of the semester. This entire line of finished product-centric thinking, as well as the “evaluative climate” that Nelson discusses, truly serves to place the focus on the production of work, rather than protracted consideration of the writing process (365).

It is in this climate that teachers must work, their hands effectively bound by the output requirements of their institutions. So, as much as progressively-minded instructors may want to place the foci of their classes on the actual process of writing, they must instead limit the scope of their teaching to the production of quantifiable pages.

This focus on production, instead of process, actually bears within it the seeds of a second potential problem. Even if an instructor was to attempt to buck the system and make the writing process the focus of their class, the question of evaluation remains an outstanding issue. How does one evaluate a process? One possible avenue would be to award points for student participation in various stages of the writing process, but even this course of action is problematic. If students come to perceive that instructors are awarding points for the completion of discrete steps of the writing process, do not those steps then become final products in themselves? Will not students then simply devise new ways to “get around task demands in accomplishing” this new type of “academic work” (367)?

And so the question of “what really counts” becomes a circular issue of evaluation versus process versus evaluation.


The “conspiracy of the normal”

The Brookfield article was interesting to me on a number of levels, the first of which is that seeks to debunk many of the myths by which many instructors conduct their classes, including the theory that group discussion is the “only” way to conduct a class. As is discussed on page 5, “democratic” group discussion is highly counterintuitive, as it is “a habit that is rarely learned or practiced in daily life.” And while it is true that group discussions are conducted with the (instructor’s) intent to involve all class members in equitable and moderated dialogue, what often ensues is a cross between the active participation of a few confident students and what Brookfield calls “egomaniacal grandstanding” (5).

Similar to Brookfield’s debunking of the “good” necessarily accomplished by group discussion is his treatment of the myth of “the circle” (9). This part of the article raised an issue that I have never had occasion to consider, which is the relationship between group discussion, the circle, and power in the classroom. In addition to the issues raised in the article, concerning the feeling of being forced to speak that is encouraged by the circle, the dynamics of what occurs in the circle can also be seen to support external social and cultural structures of power, as well as “inequities of race, class, and gender” (6). Much in the way that group discussions can provoke displays of class and micro-illustrations of the larger power struggles of society, the formation and enforcement of the classroom circle can, and often does, lead to student feelings of disquiet and discomfort. From this view, organizing desks in a circle can actually lead to many more complex problems than it solves.

Also raised in this article is the idea that teachers, though they seek to make themselves more accessible and less intimidating to their students, really must act like teachers much of the time, and that to act otherwise often amounts to an implicit insult of both their students’ intelligence and their own hard-earned expertise. Expanding from this idea, it is my contention that students, like young teenagers, do seek and benefit from some amount of boundary-creation as instituted by their teachers. As is discussed in the article, students are always aware, not only of their teacher’s presence, but also of the “power relationship” that exists between themselves and their teachers (11). Though the article does not delve into a detailed discussion of it, I think it is safe to conclude that students often attribute the “learner/learned” dynamic that exists between themselves and their teachers to the achievement of their teachers of a certain measure of expertise in their particular fields. In the way that the greater society did before them, students perceive this expertise as an indication of the permissibility of classroom deferral to an “expert.” Teachers should not seek to demean both their own expertness and the readiness of their students to learn by acting as though their expertise is an “accident,” soon to be rectified (10).