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Application for 2013 CWPA Targeted Research Grant

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The grant funds requested will be used to develop additional sites for a study I am piloting this semester, titled An Inquiry into the Potential Effects of Self-Reflection Techniques on the Habits of Mind of First-Year Writing Students. This project investigates student writers’ self-perceptions of values that are consequential in current public debates about college-readiness. Expanding my study to secondary and other postsecondary institutions will test its reliability and increase the purview and impact of its findings.

The “habits of mind” in question derive from the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Framework): creativity, responsibility, engagement, metacognition, persistence, curiosity, openness, and flexibility. In 2011 the CWPA, NCTE, and NWP jointly advanced these values to offset the influence of high stakes writing assessments associated with the 2009 Common Core State Standards (CCSS), whose major theme is “college readiness.” But already at least 750 postsecondary institutions have purportedly agreed to use a writing placement “cut score” (Partnership for Readiness in College and Career 7) connected with the CCSS and its corporate proponents. In today’s age of accountability, WPAs will increasingly need to defend their vision of “college-ready” writing from reductionistic external representations thereof. This will require empirical evidence bolstering their values as well as data-supported alternatives to automated, standards-based accounts of writing experiences. My study will generate both.

My project regards metacognition as a potential key to non-invasively documenting the Framework’s habits of mind of first-year college writers. I seek to answer the question: when first-year writing (FYW) students practice regular self-reflection on their habits of mind, are their perceptions of these habits affected, and if so, what are the effects? This inquiry stems from research in cognitive and social sciences, educational theory, and organizational human behavior that indicates awareness of one’s internal and controllable causes for success improves one’s chances of succeeding again, and that people can learn to effectively self-monitor to improve their learning gains as such (Ambrose et al., Boice, Gute and Gute). Transfer scholarship also influences my research design, especially the importance it ascribes to students’ awareness of their own writing skills (Bergmann and Zepernick, James, Nelms and Dively).

A spring 2013 test group of about sixty FYW students has taken and will take pre- and post-semester online surveys. Throughout the semester, this group is also being given a biweekly treatment consisting of short written online self-reflections pertaining to each habit of mind—on an alternating basis. A closely matched control group takes identical pre- and post-semester surveys and conducts a placebo activity of equivalent type and scope to the treatment, but which does not pertain to the habits of mind. Potential differences between the two groups’ responses to the pre- and post- surveys will be tested for significance and error estimation. If the data shows the treatment to be beneficial to students’ self-perceptions, then a hypothesis will be formed and tested on a large scale in subsequent semesters around the country, including at secondary schools and postsecondary institutions of varying type, size, and location. I will also refine and add qualitative methods to my study at the 2013 Dartmouth Summer Seminar for Composition, to which I have been accepted for this purpose (see the enclosed letter for confirmation).

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If granted, the funds for which I am applying would compensate facilitating teachers around the country for administering my project at their institutions through the spring 2014 semester. This is my study’s only component requiring funding, but it is a necessary one. The participation of facilitating teachers at other institutions is essential for running a systematic, double-blind, reliable study. These traits not only correspond to the conditions of the study’s IRB approval,1 but they also conform to best practices in research for ensuring valid results. My facilitating teachers will not need individual IRB approval or any related training; the study takes place entirely through the anonymous and secure online surveying platform called Qualtrics. But my facilitators must read a recruitment script, deliver survey URLs to their students in accordance with my instructions, and ensure five minutes of quiet class time every other week for their consenting students to participate in the online study installments. I already enlisted several prospective college level study facilitators when presenting my research plans on a CWPA-sponsored panel at the 2013 MLA Convention. As funding allows, an additional number of facilitators, including high school teachers, will be solicited through appropriate organizations and listservs such as the NCTE, NWP, WPA-L, and ENGLED-L.

This research project is certainly “replicable, aggregable, and data supported” (Haswell 201), but that fact alone means far less than if the study is replicated and its data aggregated, which I am ready to do starting fall 2013, pending sufficient resources. In addition to funding the pilot study and offering matching future support, my home institution is also generously paying for me to develop my project at the aforementioned Dartmouth Seminar. But the large scale, longitudinal expansion of the study that I envision deserves underwriting from the appropriate national organization, which in this case is the Council of Writing Program Administrators. I will accept partial funding if the total amount I have requested is not available. I also intend to apply for an NCTE Research Foundation Grant when they next become available.

IMPLICATIONS OF MY RESEARCH

To my knowledge, no systematic inquiry into the Framework has been published, even though its success as a policy likely depends on support from data supported research. This is why I seek funding to run a multi-site longitudinal version of my project: doing so will increase its statistical reliability, strengthen its findings, and thereby encourage confidence in the reality of the effects under consideration. A foundational tenet of this type of research is that larger base sizes and multiple executions by varied investigators will raise confidence in what results from the study—because of the greater scale and reduction of possible investigator-introduced bias or location effects. In essence, controlling of confounding variables will be achieved.

There are many potential final users of my project’s data. Initially, this includes conference and workshop attendees where I will present my findings, and, by extension, their students and colleagues. Subsequently, this hopefully includes readers of refereed publications in Writing Studies where I intend to report and analyze my findings;2 memberships of the CWPA, NCTE, and NWP; and FYW- and cross-curricular teachers of writing at postsecondary and secondary institutions around the nation. Perhaps even the general public could become aware of my

1 The study has been granted IRB approval; see the enclosed letter for confirmation.2 First consideration for publication of my findings will be given to WPA: Writing Program Administration.

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results if the aforementioned habits-based self-assessment regimen takes root—as I hope it does—as an alternative or supplement to externally-derived writing assessments.

Although the Framework’s habits of mind clearly possess intrinsic value, it remains debatable whether they should be assessed as outcomes or, in college-readiness terms, as “incomes” (Reiff and Bawarshi 313). My project maintains that the habits may be fruitfully employed at least in student, faculty, and program self-assessments. Subsequently, I will investigate whether reflection on one’s own habits also correlates to improvements in conventionally measured outcomes categories, as the Framework’s authors suggest. That is, if my expanded study’s results in fall 2013 affirm its hypothesis, then I will adapt the project in spring 2014 to investigate correlations between my findings and traditional standards such as those of the CWPA’s Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition. Such a correlation would provide the (greater) field of Writing Studies a verifiable connection between desired incomes and outcomes, which is valuable in itself as well as in the campaign to resist external high stakes writing tests.

If writing educators were to rally behind the Framework as a basic global foundation on which local iterations could be modified as needed, such unity would be a huge asset in negotiating with ill-informed or ill-intended representations of college-ready writing, including from administrators, boards of trustees and governors, accrediting agencies, corporations, politicians, and students and parents. In other words, there are a lot of external parties who want to know what makes for good college level writing, and if we, the experts, do not provide clear and concise answers (we haven’t so far), then these stakeholders will find answers elsewhere. As Gerald Graff contends: if we “decline to use sound bites,” then we “become vulnerable to the sound bites of others” (1049). Linda Adler-Kassner echoes this sentiment more closely to home, warning that if we do not define college-ready writing, “there are plenty of people who will do it for us” (“The Companies” 135). Ed White has been making this same point for decades.

But the nature of the conflict is not as simple as us versus them; it also entails us versus us. Our field remains undecided about what comprises college-ready writing, which is where the Framework comes in as a general and flexible enough policy to agree upon as a field. But Writing Studies’ own published reception of the Framework (albeit a small one so far) has mostly detracted from the statement. Scholars have criticized the Framework for being too narrow; unclear in its purpose and audience; skewed toward individual, cognitive, and intellectual skills and away from social, emotional, and general language skills; inattentive to issues of access; poorly organized; incomplete; essentializing; formalistic; managerial; and vocational (Hansen, McComiskey, Severino, Summerfield and Anderson). Nevertheless, I endorse the Framework and want to encourage others to do the same, mainly because of the potential it possesses for becoming a common denominator around which K-16 literacy educators can unify. By “common denominator” I mean a minimal set of values that we can all agree on. Obviously we do not all agree on the Framework, but I believe that its critiques can be accommodated by supplementing rather than rejecting the document.

Public stakeholders no longer take teachers’ word for it that our pedagogy works: not while external assessment mechanisms and popular media continue to produce stats and stories about dire educational failures. WPAs are going to have to shift the terms of debate (see Adler-Kassner, The Activist WPA) about college-readiness beyond standards and assessments to also

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include healthy writing habits and experiences. But we cannot win this campaign armed only with counter-narratives and internally circulating policies. We also need empirical evidence to verify the value and efficacy of common denominator values held by writing educators, and a corresponding public relations campaign. For this reason, in addition to initiating my research study, I am discussing with the CWPA leadership and Framework authors the potential creation of a national task force for publicizing the Framework and its related scholarship. My formal proposal for this initiative is on the agenda for the CWPA’s Executive Board meeting at CCCC this March. The task force I am proposing would amplify WPAs’ voices in consequential internal and public discourse about college-ready writing, and it would gather and disseminate evidence to curtail the growing influence of external standardized assessments on our and our students’ work.

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TIMETABLE OF ACTIVITIES

Activity Date

Application submitted to NCTE annual convention to report on my study 17 Jan. 2013

Pilot study began at my home institution 28 Jan. 2013

Dartmouth Summer Seminar for Composition Research begins in virtual mode Feb. 2013

Apply to CWPA annual summer conference to report on my study Feb. 2013

Apply to CCCC annual convention to report on my study Apr. 2013

Begin recruiting facilitating teachers to conduct expanded study at other institutions in fall 2013 semester (pending additional funding) Apr. 2013

Pilot study ends at home institution 6 May 2013

Dartmouth Summer Seminar for Composition Research 28 July - 9 Aug. 2013

Fall 2013 study facilitating teachers receive my documents and instructions 11 Aug. 2013

Conduct expanded and revised multi-site version of study at high schools and other postsecondary institutions nationwide, including test and control groups

Recruitment, consent process, and study survey #1 Week 1

Fall Semester 2013

Study treatment – Creativity (test group) Week 2

Study treatment – Responsibility (test group) Week 4

Study treatment – Engagement (test group) Week 6

Study treatment – Persistence (test group) Week 7

Study treatment – Curiosity (test group) Week 9

Study treatment – Openness (test group) Week 11

Study treatment – Flexibility (test group) Week 13

Study survey #2 Week 15

Submit preliminary findings to WPA: Writing Program Administration for first consideration of publication Oct. 2013

Work with new Framework Task Force to create online clearinghouse, wiki, public relations campaign, etc. (Contingent on approval from the CWPA)

Fall 2013 - Spring 2014

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Develop and continue study, including addition of qualitative elements and outcomes correlations inquiry (same activity sequence as fall 2013 calendar); analyze results, present findings, and seek publication in refereed venues

Spring - Fall 2014

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BUDGET

Item Date Cost

$200 stipends for two facilitating teachers at

doctoral/master’s institutionsFall 2013 semester $400


baccalaureate institutionsFall 2013 semester $400


associate’s institutionsFall 2013 semester $400


special/tribal institutionsFall 2013 semester $400


secondary institutionsFall 2013 semester $400


doctoral/master’s institutionsSpring 2014 semester $400


baccalaureate institutionsSpring 2014 semester $400


associate’s institutionsSpring 2014 semester $400


special/tribal institutionsSpring 2014 semester $400


secondary institutionsSpring 2014 semester $400

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Total expenses3 $4,000

3 I will accept partial funding if the total amount I have requested is not available.

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Application for 2013 CWPA Targeted Research Grant 9


SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION

Dartmouth College The Institute for Writing and Rhetoric

[email protected]

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/

6250 Baker/Berry Library, Room 204

Hanover, NH 03755

Phone: 603.646.9748

Fax: 603.646.9747

January 2, 2013

Dear Professor -------------------,

We are pleased to announce that, after competitive review of a higher-than-usual number of applications, we have selected your project, studying the effect of reflective activity on students’ habits of mind, for inclusion in the 2013 Dartmouth Summer Seminar for Composition Research. You will be working with colleagues from around the country and overseas, and from a range of institutions; we expect you to develop fruitful relationships with other composition researchers as you move forward with your own research.

You will receive follow-up information and a hard copy of this letter soon, but please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Because we have so many excellent candidates and a substantial waiting list, we ask you to confirm your acceptance as soon as you can. By February 2nd, 2013, we will need a non-refundable $150 deposit. The remainder of the fee will be due in June. Details on the deposit will be sent when you reply confirming acceptance.

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Congratulations! We look forward to working with you.

Christiane Donahue, for the Summer Seminar committeeDirector, Institute for Writing and Rhetoric

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Works CitedAdler-Kassner, Linda. The Activist WPA: Changing Stories about Writing and Writers. Logan: Utah

State UP, 2008. Print.---. “The Companies we Keep Or The Companies We Would Like to Try to Keep: Strategies and

Tactics in Challenging Times.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 36.1 (2012): 119-40. Print.

Ambrose, Susan A., Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman. How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Print.

Bergmann, Linda, and Janet Zepernick. “Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students’ Perceptions of Learning to Write.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 31.1-2 (2007): 124-49.

Boice, Robert. “Work Habits of Productive Scholarly Writers: Insights from Research in Psychology.” Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. Eds., Gary A. Olson and Todd W. Taylor. Albany: SUNY P, 1997. 211-228. Print.

Graff, Gerald. “Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty.” PMLA 115.5 (2000): 1041-52. Print.

Gute, Deanne, and Gary Gute. “Flow Writing in the Liberal Arts Core and Across the Disciplines: A Vehicle for Confronting and Transforming Academic Disengagement.” JGE: The Journal of General Education 57.4 (2008): 191-222. Print.

Hansen, Kristine. “The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing: Better than the Competition, Still Not All We Need.” Symposium: On the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Spec. issue of College English 74.6 (2012): 540-43. Print

Haswell, Richard. “NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship.” Written Communication 22.2 (2005): 198-223. Print.

James, Mark Andrew. “The Influence of Perceptions of Task Similarity/Difference on Learning Transfer in Second Language Writing.” Written Communication 25.1 (2008): 76-103. SAGE Journals. Web. 2 Feb. 2013.

McComiskey, Bruce. “Bridging the Divide: The (Puzzling) Framework and the Transition from K-12 to College Writing Instruction.” Symposium: On the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Spec. issue of College English 74.6 (2012): 537-40. Print.

Nelms, Gerald, and Ronda Leathers Dively. “Perceived Roadblocks to Transferring Knowledge from First-Year Composition to Writing-Intensive Major Courses: A Pilot Study.” WPA: Writing Program Administration 31.1-2 (2007): 214-240. Print.

Partnership for Readiness in College and Career. “PARCC Overview PPT.” The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. July 2012. PowerPoint file. Web. 17 Dec. 2012.

Reiff, Mary Jo, and Anis Bawarshi. “Tracing Discursive Resources: How Students Use Prior Genre Knowledge to Negotiate New Writing Contexts in First-Year Composition.” Written Communication 28.3 (2011): 312-37. SAGE Journals. Web. 2 Feb. 2013.

Severino, Carol. “The Problem of Articulation: Uncovering More of the Composition Curriculum.” Symposium: On the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Spec. issue of College English 74.6 (2012): 533-36. Print.

Summerfield, Judith, and Philip M. Anderson. “A Framework Adrift.” Symposium: On the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Spec. issue of College English 74.6 (2012): 544-47. Print.

White, Edward M. “Writing Assessment Beyond the Classroom: Will Writing Teachers Play a Role?” Composition in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis and Change. Eds. Lynn Z. Bloom,

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Donald A. Daiker, and Edward M. White. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996. 101-11. Print.

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