The Place of Basic Writing at Wedonwan U: A Simulation Activity for Graduate Level Seminars

Marcia Buell

ABSTRACT: Buell describes a basic writing graduate curriculum and analyzes a simulation activity for which students adopt stakeholder perspectives on a college-wide debate about mainstreaming basic writing students or moving basic writing to community college.

Despite the potential value of graduate courses focused on basic writing, such courses rarely appear in composition studies graduate programs.¹ Moreover, students who enroll in basic writing graduate courses often want to focus primarily on learning how to teach: they may not readily understand how pedagogical possibilities depend upon material conditions or appreciate the importance of educational politics, theory and history. However, as Shannon Carter argues, graduate instructors should guide their students toward questioning terms (such as basic writer) and promote the study of political influences on basic writing program structures in socio-historical contexts ("Graduate Courses in Basic Writing Studies"). Because basic writing embodies a complex mix of social policy, institutional history, and cultural orientation, explicit instruction and repeated practice in analyzing social contexts and institutional issues afford valuable learning activities for graduate students preparing to teach basic writing. 

In recognition of the need for professionally prepared basic writing instructors, I have developed a curriculum for an elective graduate seminar offered at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU).² This graduate course provides opportunities for students to learn about various definitions of basic writers and basic writing contexts, analyze basic writing program configurations, explore challenges to basic writing programs, and evaluate various pedagogical approaches. In order to encourage analysis of teaching and learning issues, I have developed a simulation game that has proven especially effective for the diverse students  (high school teachers, college teachers, and students without teaching experience) who have enrolled in my course. In this essay, I will outline my graduate course curriculum, describe a simulation/role-playing activity designed to foster critical thinking, and discuss the benefits of this curriculum for future basic writing instructors.

The Curriculum

The basic writing graduate course I've developed covers several broad and sometimes overlapping topics:  definitions of basic writing and basic writers; historical contexts for basic writing education; evaluations of pedagogical approaches; theory and practice of response to student writing; and future directions for basic writing courses and programs. My students read several chapters of Mina Shaughnessy's Errors and Expectations in order to explore ways in which uses of the term basic writer are relative to specific educational contexts. We examine Bruce Horner's analysis of tropes defining basic writers (“Mapping Errors and Expectations for Basic Writers”) and discuss ways that writing abilities can be perceived differently in various contexts. We also consider samples of student writing that appear in David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” and debate alternative meanings of "good writing"  (e.g., as technically correct prose focusing on safe or mundane topics or as writing that addresses complex, controversial topics, sometimes at the expense of technical correctness).

To challenge my graduate students' assumptions about good writing, I have recently required students to produce impromptu writing on the question of whether or not Japanese anime should be exported to Korea. This writing assignment challenged graduate students to write about a topic situated in an unfamiliar cultural context while encouraging them to examine their own assumptions about their own "writing abilities." They soon recognized the importance of familiar topics and cultural contexts. Such discoveries allowed students to speculate on how cultural disconnects might similarly affect the writing of undergraduates enrolled in basic writing courses.

As we continued to consider our assumptions about writing abilities in that graduate course, we discussed the dangers of viewing basic writing students solely in terms of their deficits while contemplating the possibility that instructors might sometimes fail to recognize students' existing literate practices and cognitive processes. We also examined arguments advanced by well known scholars in widely read publications, e.g.,  “This Wooden Shack Place” (Hull and Rose), “Remediation as Social Construct: Perspectives from an Analysis of Classroom Discourse” (Hull, Rose, Fraser and Castellano) and “Cultural Dissonance in Basic Writing Courses” (Ybarra). Collectively, these scholars show us how student writing can be misread and how students' thought processes can be misunderstood when instructors fail to recognize their students' cognitive and verbal abilities.

After reading basic writing scholarship, my students demonstrated their ability to make complex interconnections among institutional histories and contexts, pedagogies, personalities and social factors during class discussions. However, when these same graduate students viewed a documentary film showing scenes of basic writing and remedial math classrooms (Discounted Dreams), they focused uncritically on pedagogy as decontextualized practice and intentional technique. For example, during a discussion of scenes in the film, some students remarked on the individual failures of specific teachers rather than commenting on institutional failures and social realities beyond the institution. During our discussion, we considered one case of notably disengaged teaching: while seated behind a desk at the front of the room, a basic writing instructor was pointing out semi-colons to three or four students while the remaining students tuned out. During a filmed interview following the classroom scene, the teacher comments on not receiving training in the teaching of writing while being assigned remedial courses because senior colleagues avoid that teaching assignment. Despite this teacher's comments on institutional realities, what seemed salient for several students was the poor quality of the instructor's teaching.

Several members of the class expressed concern about instructors who unapologetically teach badly. One student wondered why such disengaged instructors fail to seek other professions. Such comments reflect these graduate students’ earnest desire to become caring teachers dedicated to helping marginalized students who are often unwelcome in higher education. However, responses such as these also reflect adherence to the cultural myth of the hero teacher—that is, a mindset which honors extremely dedicated teachers who, despite “grotesque” material conditions (Horner 26) and limited professional preparation, teach so expertly that their students make remarkable progress.  When other teachers cannot live up to this image, they are vilified as being uncaring or lazy.

There seemed to be a disconnect between these students' analytical practices while reading basic writing scholarship versus their analytical practices while viewing a documentary film portraying teachers and students at work.  To foster my students' critical thinking, I developed a simulation game that would involve students in role-playing activities. For this in-class learning activity, graduate students were asked to speak through their own experiences while exploring the perspectives of more and less visible stakeholders in institutional debates about basic writing instruction.³ Similar role-playing simulations can be found in urban planning graduate programs (Reckien and Eisenach), environmental planning, and educational evaluation (Orr).  These activities help participants learn about competing perspectives on social and institutional controversies while exploring various approaches to problem-solving.

For the simulation activity that I developed, stakeholders included writing program administrators, marginalized adjunct instructors, full-time composition professors, full-time faculty uninvolved in teaching writing but centrally involved in policy decisions, and students. These role-playing opportunities created a space in which different voices could come together in conversation about issues that are too often narrowly viewed as issues of good or poor teaching.  I will first discuss how this role-playing activity was set up in my course and then offer suggestions for graduate professors who might want to adapt this learning activity to their own institutional realities and graduate courses.

Simulation Activity: General Background

The idea of using simulation games in basic writing classrooms was originally proposed in 1975 by Lynn Quitman Troyka and Jerrold Nudelman:

Simulation-games originated years ago with the so-called 'Pentagon war games.' Like war
games, simulation-games for the classroom are replications of a real environment that call for the participants to take action and make decisions as if they were actually operating in that environment. Social scientists have adapted simulation-games to the classroom to teach not only content . . . but also the underlying human, social considerations that help shape decision-making. (vi)

Like Troyka and Nudelman, Candace Mathews advocates using simulation games for classroom learning. In a textbook designed for college-level ESL students, Matthews presents general civic scenarios and invites students to debate issues as involved stakeholders. Because the dialogic format of simulation games allows different voices to come together, arguments can be juxtaposed and directly responded to, instead of being examined in isolation. Simulation games allow into a debate voices that do not always communicate directly.   

In the context of my basic writing graduate course, a simulation game allowed students to explore basic writing debates and the interplay of stakeholder perspectives with varied interests and positions of power.  After we had discussed various approaches to defining basic writers and basic writing contexts, I introduced a simulation game that would consume about ninety minutes of a three-hour class meeting. First, I projected the following text on our classroom film screen:

Background

Wedonwan U is a small urban university. Within the past 20 years, demographics have shifted and it is now a multi-ethnic institution with students of all ages. Across the campus, some believe that writing and other basic skills seem to have weakened over the past decade to such an extent that it has become a major controversy for the university. Currently we run a two-semester composition sequence and a small two-semester pre-composition (basic writing) sequence. Students can test into either sequence. We also get many students from Soyathinkyacangota College, our local community college.

After much deliberation, the academic dean of Wedonwan U decided to call an open meeting to gather ideas about how to improve the writing skills of our university students. This has already been hotly debated in English department faculty meetings, so the dean decided to open a broader community meeting to discuss some new possibilities and get a better understanding of key problems. Right now, there are two broad proposals on the table. One is to expand the writing program, which could have good long-term results. The other is to move remedial and even composition programs out of the university and reduce admissions (a trade-off whereby fewer students would matriculate but retention and graduates rates might improve).

This scenario mirrored issues that had emerged in class discussions, such as the question of whether or not basic writing belongs in four-year institutions, and reflected policies being considered in nearby colleges.

The Simulation Activity
Before class, I cut each role description (below) into a separate strip of paper. Students each chose one role to play and then had to present arguments as stakeholders on the given question or related issue. I advised students that sharing a stakeholder role did not mean that all students would have to speak in a unitary voice or agree on strategy or goals.

After reading the town-meeting scenario, I projected these instructions:

The roles that I created for my simulation game are composites gleaned from published scholarship, from Council on Basic Writing (CBW) and Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) listservs, from class discussions and departmental discussions; they are not based on any one individual's viewpoint or statements. The specific roles reflect the local considerations we discussed in class, but they are not exhaustive. For example, I did not present the viewpoints of high school teachers or legislators among the possible roles although these stakeholders can certainly be worked in to a similar simulation activity. Also, the number of roles can vary depending on how many students are in the class.

Roles

The roles were written to offer some talking points but invited embellishment and individual spins.

The Class Discussion

The stakeholder roles that I created allow for exploration of the ecologies surrounding pedagogical approaches. For example, in contrast to adjunct instructors who were teaching in multiple institutions, the full-time instructor had more time to devote to a given class and could explore more labor-intensive, culturally validating activities, such as questioning particular language practices in comparison to Standard English uses. Challenges to Standard English are somewhat at odds with the views embodied in the role of the literary critic and the Renaissance scholar, whose perspectives were deliberately written to place a low value on student language variation in academic contexts. While playing their roles and articulating different perspectives, course participants were able to recognize that definitions of good or appropriate pedagogies vary even within departmental borders. What might be seen as liberating by some teachers may be viewed as detrimental or counterproductive by other teachers.

In part, simulation activities are valuable because they allow students to influence the flow of conversation and the direction of their own learning, as was true in my own class.  Here is what happened: Course participants worked together for about thirty minutes in particular stakeholder groups to determine their positions and key arguments. We reconvened as a whole class to discuss the broad question of whether or not the basic writing class should remain at Wedonwan U. At first, students needed some prodding to adapt to their roles and begin speaking extemporaneously (rather than reading prepared remarks). However, as the discussion proceeded, students gained confidence in their roles and in articulating their competing agendas from particular viewpoints as invested stakeholders.

As might be expected, a graduate student playing the role of a disgruntled first-year undergraduate complained about his placement in a mainstreamed college writing class and criticized his classmates' written work and poor writing abilities. This comment triggered complaints from graduate students playing senior faculty who wanted students to be admitted only after becoming academically prepared for written work assigned in advanced English seminars. An alliance was formed between the disgruntled mainstream student and the literary scholar, who both called for removing the basic writing program and perhaps even first-year composition.

As we continued our discussion, a conflict of ideals was mediated by demands of practicalities. The graduate student playing a community college teacher commented on the problematic logistics of channeling students from a senior college to community colleges, noting how full community college classes were already and how adding more students would prevent them from teaching what they believed were the foundations that students needed. She also noted that she thought they were doing a pretty good job at teaching writing, reading and math but articulated those basics as traditional skill-based building blocks.  At play here were notions of how pedagogy could be imagined and enacted through the material constraints of the situation and questions about writing curricula and learning objectives.

After focusing on incoming first-year undergraduates, course participants began considering the perspective of transfer students. A graduate student articulating that perspective noted that she had completed the community college coursework and worked as a literacy coach in her high school but was still failing her college English courses. She pointed out that she had taken the community college writing course and done well, but was still not succeeding in her college courses: her professors said she could not analyze texts. She also noted that she and other transfer students would not be served well by the proposed move of basic writing courses to the community college: she had taken a composition course at her local community college, learned the requisite skills and was still failing in her senior college classes. This commentary put a human face on the implications of moving basic writing and basic writers out of the university. Techniques in teaching were not challenged, but the value of what had been taught in a community college was being questioned. In addition to referencing past class discussions of defining basic writers, these points also highlighted the questions of transfer across contexts, an issue that had been scheduled for in-depth discussion later in the term (Goen-Salter; Hassel and Giordano).

Students playing adjunct instructors noted that they would like to add more complexity into their assignments, but they did not have the time to do so when they had to teach up to a hundred students and commute for hours from one site to another. Because the debate involved many perspectives and issues, we did not resolve the question of whether or not to remove basic writing from Wedonwan U. Nevertheless, students left the class with greater levels of understanding writing program structures and the affordances underlying various ideologies.

The simulation activity that I used in my basic writing seminar engaged students in meaningful experiential learning and facilitated their critical thinking about pedagogy, institutional structures, stakeholder perspectives, and the influence of material constraints on decision-making. The activity also paved the way for discussing the transfer of literate practices from one context to another.  To introduce that topic, I invited students to read Sugie Goen-Salter's "Critiquing the Need to Eliminate Remedial Writing." We then discussed Goen-Salter's analysis of students' literacy needs during their first year of college, the potential transfer of literate practices from one context to another, and students' literacy needs in courses that follow a first-year reading and writing course. In that same essay, Sugie Goen-Salter probes issues related to communication between community college faculty and faculty in senior colleges and universities. A few students referred to their simulation activity experience when discussing the concern of a transfer student's question about the value of her community college writing courses. While these graduate students may have reached similar conclusions without participating in a simulation game, the issues and possible solutions became more salient as a result of the simulation activity.  It also created a common point of reference for subsequent class discussions.

Applications for Other Graduate Classes

Teacher educators who want to use a similar simulation activity in their graduate courses will need to modify the activity for their own contexts. And while I presented it fairly early in the term, it could also work later in a course, when students can refer more directly to ideas and arguments that they have read about in their course. The activity could even be used as a capstone project that would help students make connections between concepts and theories introduced all through the semester. Use of the simulation activity early in the semester enabled me to introduce the complexity of upcoming topics on literate practice transference and the roles that institutional stakeholders play in decisions about basic writing courses.

When guiding students through the simulation activity, I suggested that they draw on the readings, but reference to published texts was not required since the preparation and simulation took place during a single three hour period.  Some students did choose to make textual references such as “This is similar to the student in Hull and Rose” or “As Barthalomae says about…”; other students spoke through their own understandings and imaginings of the situation. Because the students came in with different levels of exposure to writing theory, more advanced students could readily discuss issues through a disciplinary lens while others could draw on experience from different contexts, such as relationships between high school teachers and principals.

An alternative approach would be to present the simulation activity in one class period and then implement it in a subsequent class meeting in order to allow students time to gather evidence from assigned readings. For my class, the simulation was a non-evaluated activity designed to generate discussion and open up issues that would be examined throughout the semester. However, it is possible to make the stakes a little higher and bring in writing after the simulation. One option would be to require individuals or groups to write arguments for increased funding of the writing program and arguments for moving basic writing out of the university. This argumentative writing could rely on supporting and opposing arguments articulated during class discussions, which might even be videotaped. A multimodal approach to composing arguments could be used in place of or in addition to a print-based writing assignment.

When I presented a variation of this simulation at the 2011 WPA CBW session, one audience member suggested that graduate students could be provided with or asked to search for institutional documents addressing policy. Graduate students could also be encouraged to engage in active research: they might, for example, contact deans or other policy makers and interview them about how funding or hiring decisions about basic writing are made.  Alternatively, writing program directors and other college administrators could be invited as guest speakers who would address questions raised in a simulation activity. All these possible extensions can further help graduate students transition into classroom teachers and possibly WPAs by giving them practice in weighing considerations that are not always apparent when we read and discuss published scholarship in graduate courses.

The simulation also makes space for students to learn about competing views on the role of basic writing in higher education. For students at all levels, it is difficult to develop arguments that meaningfully incorporate opposing views. By allowing those views an audible, tangible voice in a role-playing activity, we can encourage graduate students to test arguments in a competitive verbal environment, to learn about the influence of situated interests on stakeholder perspectives, and to discover the complexities of institutional decision-making and policy formation.

Notes

1. For a discussion of basic writing graduate seminars, see "Reasoning the Need: Graduate Education and Basic Writing" by Barbara Gleason. 

2.The MA in English  at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) offers a concentration in composition and rhetoric with two required courses (a composition theory course and an assessment course) and a menu of electives, including a Seminar in Basic Writing Theory.

3. I have also used simulation activities in composition and advanced composition courses to explore social or educational issues.

 

 

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Journal of Basic Writing 5.1 (1986): 4-23. Print.

Carter, Shannon. “Graduate Courses in Basic Writing Studies: Recommendations for Teacher Trainers.” Basic Writing e-Journal (BWe). 6.1 (2007): n. pag. Web.

Discounted Dreams: High Hopes and Harsh Realities at America’s Community Colleges. Prod. John Merrow, David Wald, Carrie Glasser & Shae Isaacs. PBS Home Video. 2007. DVD.

Gleason, Barbara. "Reasoning The Need: Graduate Education And Basic Writing." Journal Of Basic Writing 25.2 (2006): 49-75. Print.

Goen-Salter, Sugie. "Critiquing the Need to Eliminate Remediation: Lessons from San Francisco State." Journal of Basic Writing 27.2 (2008): 81-105. Print.

Hassel, Holly, and Joanne Baird Giordano. "Transfer Institutions, Transfer Of Knowledge: The Development Of Rhetorical Adaptability and Underprepared Writers." Teaching English In The Two-Year College 37.1 (2009): 24-40. Print.

Horner, Bruce. “The ‘Birth’ of Basic Writing.” Representing the “Other": Basic Writers and the Teaching of Basic Writers. Ed. Horner, Bruce, and Min-Zhan Lu. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1999. 3-29. Print.

Hull, Glynda A., and Mike Rose. "“This Wooden Shack Place': The Logic Of An Unconventional Reading." College Composition And Communication 41.3 (1990): 287-298. Print.

Hull, Glynda, Mike Rose, Kay Losey Fraser, and Marisa Castellano.  “Remediation as Social Construct: Perspectives from an Analysis of Classroom Discourse.” College Composition and Communication 42:3 (1991): 299-329.

Matthews, Candace, and Phillip Edmondson. Speaking Solutions: Interaction, Presentation, Listening, and Pronunciation Skills. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents, 1994. Print.

Orr, Shannon K. "Exploring Stakeholder Values And Interests In Evaluation." American Journal Of Evaluation 31.4 (2010): 557-569. Print.

Reckien, Diana, and Klaus Eisenack. "Urban Sprawl: Using a Game To Sensitize Stakeholders to the Interdependencies Among Actors' Preferences." Simulation & Gaming 41.2 (2010): 260-277. Print.

Shaugnessy, Mina. Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. Print.

Troyka, Lynn Quitman, and Jerrold Nudelman. Taking Action: Writing, Reading, Speaking and Listening through Simulation Games. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Print.

Ybarra, Raul. “Cultural Dissonance in Basic Writing Courses.” Journal of Basic Writing 20.1 (2001): 37-52. Print.

 

 

 

Marcia Buell

Marcia Buell is Assistant Professor of composition at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, Illinois.