29 Grover Anderson – Process-Oriented Writing Instruction  

Grover Anderson (he/him) is a Graduate Student from Murphys, CA. He currently lives in Calaveras County, California, with his wife and daughters. Grover teaches high school Theater and English, and has released five albums of original Americana music. This work was prepared for Jackie Kauza’s Eng W500, who states, “Grover synthesizes scholarship with incredible skill in his exploration, while also engaging in thoughtful self-reflection. This is an excellent piece.”

Process-Oriented Writing Instruction

Though the development of transferable skills is presumably a goal of any first-year composition (FYC) course, the pedagogical method that has struck me as most valuable—transferrable—during this course’s survey is that of process. Barnhisel, Stoddard, and Gorman note that process pedagogy “fosters writing competency…among a wide variety of writing situations” (463), and most sources for this paper, even those critical of it, make some similar acknowledgement. Thomas et al. amend the pedagogy’s label to “process orientation,” which centers writing as “a tool for learning and for developing ideas,” but their outcome aligns with that of process pedagogues who came before: a student “who walks from one room to the next with a set of experiences and skills from which to draw in addressing future tasks” (83). Though my research and thinking about this topic is framed for the potential FYC course that I will one day teach, I was struck in my research by process’ potential for universal application throughout a scholar’s journey, from the expected collegiate experience (Barnhisel, Moneyhun) down to elementary education (Barrs). Though much of the information gathered for this paper was published in journals focused on collegiate study, many of the concepts explored also apply to the ninth grade English course I currently teach. In fact, my research has already led me to alter some of my writing assignments, which I will discuss later.

Barrs begins her critique of process pedagogy sardonically, “Everyone likes the word ‘process’” (829), and she is not wrong. For a field that seems anxious to justify its existence—with good reason, as “students and academic departments alike tend to view ‘freshman comp’ as something to be endured, avoided, or tested out of” (Banhisel et al. 461) and “many non-writing faculty expressed a lack of understanding about what the writing courses do” (469)—there are decades of publications connecting process pedagogy to cultural concerns reflective of their time. In 1986, Faigley attempts to synthesize, among other ideas, process’ Romantic roots with how Marxism exposes the problematic nature of writing in a social environment. Fulkerson notes in 2005 the emergence of programs that create a “safe place to share and explore experiences and viewpoints” (667) through expressivist writing centered around “fostering personal development” (668), while a decade later Dougherty sings the praises of cloud computing’s contributions to a collaborative focus on process. Though Thomas et al. seem to write off the widely-understood basic steps of process—“planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing” (82)—as banal (and make a strong case for such dismissal), it should not be ignored that each step that appears in their dreaded “writing process posters” creates a trackable product that (ideally) demonstrates student growth. One could question whether those steps are as formative in practice as they are in intention, though Barnhisel et al. make a compelling argument for the affirmative. Even a critic like Barrs acknowledges that “writing…can lead to new realizations” through “researching, revising, and polishing” (838).

Thomas et al. examine process through the frame of identity, emphasizing how it creates “agency” and “honor[s] students’ experiences” (84). They believe it requires instructors to “focus on their relationships with students” and to connect “their teaching of writing to their experiences as writers” (83). The effect of this, they argue, allows students to re-envision themselves as “writers,” and thus frames their work not as “assignments…good or bad…within agendas set by others” but as compositions intended to “communicate[]…persuade[]…delight[]” (84). While student buy-in will vary, one could argue that a pedagogy built around “acknowledging the agency of young people, [and] assuming that young people have interests and are able…to pursue those interests through inquiry” (82) would have a positive effect on the rate of student engagement and prevent some amount of emotional check-out that may occur when instruction is geared towards emulating the “Ideal Texts” that Brannon and Knoblauch point out may shepherd writing but impede a student’s authentic voice (160).

Process orientation is not immune to criticism, but much of it that I encountered supposes a failure by instructors to center the student experience, with that failure ascribed to some combination of ignorance, arrogance, and bad faith. Teachers of process must learn to “relinquish control,” a tactic that is “attitudinal more than methodological” (Brannon and Knoblauch 161). Berthoff, defending her work on process pedagogy, reminds a critic that “revision is not a stage of composition but a dimension,” and it is understandable (if not forgivable) that composition instructors may struggle to realign from the persistent teaching, especially in middle and high schools where students begin earnestly engaging with multi-page compositions, of the “‘goal-driven’ process” they were likely taught themselves (95). In my journey to the front of a high school English classroom, I took exactly zero post-secondary composition-focused classes; I tested out of FYC, then majored in Theater with an English minor heavily focused on literature. Given the keys to ninth grade compositional instruction, I relied heavily on the memories I had from high school English (where many of my teachers had graduated college prior to most published work on process pedagogy), and because I was eager to prove my worth, I vigorously defended the pedagogical methods I intended to use (usually with self-developed, un-researched justifications and the vaguest idea what the word “pedagogy” actually meant). I quickly learned that a care-full teacher must possess humility and “relearn in every class” (Berthoff 95), so when I noticed that most papers regurgitated what I had explained in class and certain individuals sang the praises of books I knew they hadn’t enjoyed, I started evaluating my instruction, working to center the students’ experiences and perceptions to inspire original writing. I used summative assessments of their writing as formative assessments of my teaching. I have yet to achieve perfection, but every year my students’ essays get a bit more interesting to read, and every year I feel like I have better served my students as writers.

I share my experience not as a model to be praised, but with the knowledge that I am no exceptional teacher. The majority of teachers with whom I work want to improve, and such pursuits demand humility and the willingness to de-center oneself as “authorities” with “conception[s] about what the developing text ‘ought’ to look like or ‘ought’ to be doing” (Brannon and Knoblauch 158). Yet criticism of process pedagogy often assumes the worst of straw-men teachers who manipulate students into only one process. Barrs recounts two anecdotes where teachers push students into (presumably) subpar, immature writing in service of process, creating self-conscious writers who fret about “the reader-over-the-shoulder” in service of writing that “will strut, gesture and demand attention” (834-835). While I agree with Barrs that, in these anecdotes, the student has been pushed too early in the process to focus on certain aspects of process pedagogy, I also believe that every writer I encountered who favors process would question whether these anecdotes count as process pedagogy in action. Thomas et al. favor “supporting the development of students and their writing abilities” over “developing pieces of writing” (83); surely they would share Barrs’ concerns about the examples she references. Barnhisel et al. cite “the act of repeatedly going over one’s ideas as expressed in written language” as a benefit of process (463), which may have some connection with Barrs’ stories, but it is important to note that while they reflected delivery (“the hard-boiled sub-editor teaching the new reporter how to lead into a story with a punch” [Barrs 835]), here our recursive examination is of ideas expressed within the language. This is not just some touchy-feely 21st Century idea; in 1982, Brannon and Knoblauch use a fascinating case study in which dozens of teachers are more concerned with their beliefs about what student writing should be than what it can be (159-161). Instead of reflecting process pedagogy, Barrs’ examples would more align with what they would label “single-draft writing assignments” which “do not allow writers to assert control” and demand writers “accept a teacher’s pronouncements without the opportunity to reassert their points of view or to explain what they were trying to do” (161-162). So yes, Barrs does point out some major flaws in what she perceives to be process pedagogy; unfortunately for her, the process she takes down would not earn the name in the minds of its proponents. Process is not merely re-writing a sentence because one was instructed to; it is forgoing the idea that “the teacher’s agenda is more important than [the students], that what they wanted to say is less relevant than the teacher’s impression of what they should have said” (Brannon and Knoblauch 158).

One of the first concepts I needed to accept in working with process pedagogy was expressed by Berthoff in response to a critic of her textbook, Forming/Thinking/Writing. She claims that her book omits “anything about ‘pre-writing’ or ‘re-writing’” as eagerly as it does theses or “the banalities of the so-called rhetorical tradition” (95). Though she appears to have been quite a character (and perhaps a bit of a process zealot), her stated goal is “providing opportunities for students to discover their own minds in action” (95). Transferrable skills must be an objective of the ninth grade English and FYC courses I will be teaching, so I must be careful not to fall into the trap that critics accuse process pedagogues of—revision for the sake of revision, re-writing solely as editors. At the same time, there are certainly standards of writing to which stakeholders will reasonably expect me to hold students. How to avoid prioritizing editing over ideas? Brannon and Knoblauch suggest that “what might be regarded as ‘errors’ on a single-draft assignment may be seen as opportunities to clarify or refine relationships between intention and effect” (162). My initial response is that such a recommendation may be too idealistic—treating every student weakness as an opportunity requires levels of optimism and wells of energy that I do not possess—but it does reflect the level of commitment that they and other proponents believe is required to meaningfully utilize process in the writing course. (For all the researched and published refutations of process pedagogy, I’m learning through this research that the true downsides are less lofty and more practical: it moves slowly, it requires a non-negligible amount of humility for an instructor to de-center oneself, it requires students to unlearn habits of writing they’ve been previously taught, and it has the potential to be exhausting with certain types of students.)

Looking forward, I intend to follow Berthoff’s example of learning in my own classroom. I began implementing more intentional process pedagogy into my instruction as I conducted my research, and am in the midst of a “test run” as my freshmen write their second essay of the year (an analysis of a novel). My uninformed version of “process” last year was to repeatedly present students with a few specific questions as we moved through a novel, asking them to identify passages from that week’s reading that they felt were relevant to the question, and reflect on what the passages they had chosen revealed about the story and the author’s intention. I am proud to say we constantly re-examined ideas, though I admit to guiding the ideas (and often the way students engaged with them) with a heavy hand, centering my views over their discovery and closing most doors for original thought. And, though students did ample pre-work, the actual writing process was essentially Brannon and Knoblauch’s single-draft assignment—I allowed revisions, but dedicated no class time to them. This year, inspired by my study and research (and tired of reading the same five-paragraph essay 90 times), I made significant changes to the in-class writing process. I still asked students to consider similar questions at multiple points in the novel and find textual evidence, but I attempted to re-write the questions in a less prescriptive way, hopefully making the answers less obvious and more open to interpretation. Upon assigning the essay with a much more open-ended prompt, I presented students with a workflow that I recommend they (but don’t require them to) follow, and dedicated class time to each step.

1. Identify a question that the book asks of its world.
2. Revisit your collected evidence. Do you have enough supporting material to answer your question? Do you need to refine it?
3. Begin answering the question. Ideally some of this writing becomes the body of your essay, but for now it’s okay to bounce around. Focus more on ideas and evidence than perfect writing.
4. Review your answers and use them to succinctly explain how the book answers the question. [Yes, this is a thesis in disguise. Upending this particular norm will be a project for a future year!]
5. Write an introduction to your paper that presents a reader with your question and proposed answer
6. Revisit your body. Consider how your ideas have evolved since clarifying your answer. You will likely need to re-write some or most of it, for clarity and/or flow. If an idea you wrote earlier doesn’t support your answer, it’s okay to let it go; your work wasn’t wasted!
7. Consider your question and the book’s answer in conversation with our world. Are the same issues reflected? If yes, how? If not, what’s changed?
8. Proofread your paper. Read it out loud. Seriously. It helps.

In each step, I remind students that they may have to move backwards and revisit something they’ve already done. Some students are confounded and “just want to get it over with,” which will present a problem for them when I determine the best way to, as Barnhisel et al. suggest, grade “holistically—on the student’s active intellectual engagement with each stage of the writing process” (464). Additionally, I have yet to determine how I will handle the essays after they have been turned in. I plan to adopt some reflection and revision assignment, perhaps similar to Brannon and Knoblauch’s example of a writer “describ[ing] his intentions” (164), and perhaps include an additional step where they evaluate their efficacy at achieving said intentions. The compound cruelty of time and prescribed curriculum already has me fretting the number of periods this will eat up (when the alternative is to assign the essay and expect it in a week); I need to be patient with myself, as I will surely learn from this experience and be better at supporting writers in the future. As long as I remain open to my own process of learning process pedagogy, I believe I will continue to see improvement in my instruction and in my students’ development as writers.

Works Cited

Barnhisel, Greg, et al. “Incorporating Process-Based Writing Pedagogy into First-Year Learning Communities: Strategies and Outcomes.” The Journal of General Education, vol. 61, no. 4, 2012, pp. 461-487, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jgeneeduc.61.4.0461. Accessed 8 October 2024.

Barrs, Myra. “The New Orthodoxy about Writing: Confusing Process and Pedagogy.” Language Arts, vol. 60, no. 7, October 1983, pp. 829-840, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41961540.

Berthoff, Ann E. “Response to Richard Gebhardt, ‘Writing Processes, Revision ,and Rhetorical Problems: A Note on Three Recent Articles.’” College Composition and Communication, vol. 35, no. 1, February 1984, p. 95, https://www.jstor.org/stable/357686. Accessed 9 October, 2024.

Brannon, Lil and C. H. Knoblauch. “On Students’ Right to Their Own Texts: A Model of Teacher Response.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 33, no. 2, May 1982, pp. 157-166, https://www.jstor.org/stable/357623. Accessed 9 October 2024.

Dougherty, Jack. “Co-Writing, Peer Editing, and Publishing in the Cloud,” in Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning, ed. Jack Dougherty and Tennyson O’Donnell, University of Michigan Press/Trinity College ePress edition, 2014, http://epress.trincoll.edu/webwriting/chap-ter/dougherty-cowriting. Accessed 8 October 2024.

Faigly, Lester. “Competing Theories of Process: A Critique and a Proposal.” College English, vol. 48, no. 6, October 1986, pp. 527-542, https://www.jstor.org/stable/376707. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Fulkerson, Richard. “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 56, no. 4, June 2005, pp. 654-687, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30037890. Accessed 9 October 2024.

Moneyhun, Clyde. “Response to Doug Hesse’s ‘The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies.’” College Composition and Communication, vol. 63, no. 3, February 2012, pp. 520-524, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23131604. Accessed 9 October 2024.

Thomas, P.L., et al. “Speaking Truth to Power: The Persistent Relevance of a Writing Process Orientation.” The English Journal, Vol. 106, No. 4, March 2017, pp. 82-85, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26359471. Accessed 8 October 2024.