Essayist Literacy Plus (2007 4Cs)

Annual Convention of the Conference on College
Communication and Composition 2007,
New York

Essayist Literacy Plus: an Activity-based Analysis of Texts in Curriculum Change

Rob Oliver
Institute of Education, London

For references used in this presentation see my research bibliographies online at
www.robsresearchbibs.blogspot.com

For my blog on literacy, texts and language see http://www.multimodaltexts.blogspot.com/

Summary

This presentation focuses on how student writing is shaped in institutional ways in systems of activity which simultaneously span disciplines, curriculum and schooling. I consider the textual practices and ‘genre set’ which characterise literary education in one prestigious high school programme, the International Baccalaureate Language ‘A’ Programme. My examples come from a study involving international school students in Belgium and the Netherlands .

I am interested in how the genres and modes of student composition and assessment are institutionally shaped ‘high up’ the activity system by a host of centralised ‘meta-genres’ which regulate the conditions in which students produce texts and get assessed. These genres stabilise disciplinary cultures within much broader and more diffuse activity systems such as academic literacy, university preparation and schooling itself.

In literary education in most European systems the disciplinary culture is largely practised through the mode of writing and using the genres of essayist literacy. Certain key criterial terms – eg. ‘evidence’, ‘argument’, ‘textual reference’ – are hallmarks of this literacy at the level of official assessment and shape the ways in which students (can) compose successfully.

However, new ‘opportunity spaces’ for student production are being created, allowing in new genres in potentially different modes (eg. visual and multimedia texts, oral presentations, drama). These new spaces bring a degree of instability into activity systems.

I shall today try to read one ‘new’ type of student composition in terms of this instability and the ensuing tension between essayist and non-essayist practice. I will suggest that a necessary ambiguity and vagueness enters the activity system as new types of text are made and traditional criteria for disciplinary assessment are challenged and redesigned. My analysis suggests that the student texts produced in these new, fluid and relatively unguarded spaces are both and answer and a challenge to the official guidelines.

Genre Set

My presentation today gives an overview of the ‘genre set’ of literary education in this particular curricular situation, the IB Programme. I identify four different ‘clusters’ of texts/genres which indirectly shape student writing by creating the institutional conditions for its assessment:

Official syllabus documents and assessment guidelines
Examiners’ reports and commentaries
School-produced guides for students
Teacher feedback and advice

The discourses which regulate writing often circulate through these four clusters, recontextualised each time. For students, these meta-genres have varying degrees of visibility. There are other ‘meta’ genres we could add to this list, for example commercially produced study guides and web sites.

Innovations in Literary Education

Curricular change designed to encourage more student-centred learning and greater inclusion, engage new technologies and meet demands for improved ‘communication skills’ has led to the creation of new spaces which are encouraging new kinds of student production. The effect is a less homogenous, less stable, more tentative activity system with a greater diversity of genres, and modes other than writing, figuring in official assessment contexts.

In the IB programme one such space has been the ‘creative presentation’, an assignment worth 15% of the overall grade which is described in the official syllabus as:

“ an assignment, other than a conventional critical essay or commentary, which
allows the candidate to apply the principles or techniques of literary criticism or
appreciation in an informed, imaginative manner.”

Observations

*new spaces for student composition, initiated at the policy level and outlined in official syllabus documents, can lead to a diversification of the genres and modes outside essayist norms. Participation by students in disciplinary cultures changes.
* as the edges of ‘texts’ and ‘genres’ become more blurred and hybrid, ‘multi-modal’ texts emerge, traditional assessment criteria are implicitly challenged.
* assessment guidelines, however, frequently ‘carry over’ key disciplinary terms without taking account of the new diversity of outcomes, especially regarding ‘evidence’ and ‘argument’ in literary response
* new assessment spaces can open up ‘creative instability’ in activity systems, but only where improvisation (eg by teachers at the local level) is valued and where the redesign of some of the ‘meta genres’ regulating the system is encouraged

Extracts from Student and Teacher Interviews

“[the creative presentation] gave me a chance to do something new and different, it was both English and Art. It was not the same as doing an essay. You were more ‘on your own’ and able to give a new perspective on the book. I did not feel that I had to quote so much, although my presentation does include quotes. Because the [collage] can be rearranged, I was not making a single argument like with an essay, or how I would see an essay. It was more about ‘moments’ in the book rather than an argument. But I did get into the book, probably deeper than I would have done with an essay.”

Extract from student interview on Andre Brink collage/presentation


“It’s a great development, but I find [the student texts] hard to judge. Who knows what is ‘valid’? In particular, what is ‘evidence’? Things like ‘referring to the text’ change with a visual response or a role play, for example, compared to an essay where you kind of know what’s coming. The essay is more tightly structured.”

“I find myself asking questions which the assessment guidelines don’t cover. How is this a response, a ‘personal response’, as they say? What commitment does it show? How does it make me see the literary text in a new way? The assessment criteria – they don’t really help much and in some ways we have to make new ones.”

(Extracts from two separate teacher interviews on assessing the creative presentation).