One of the things that I learned early on in my university writing classes is that it can be very dangerous and short-sighted for a teacher to pre-suppose that his or her class automatically obtains the skills necessary for thoughtfull and constructive criticism. I would hazard a guess that everyone in our cohort has had at least one bad experience in either workshopping or receiving criticism on a paper that was editied by their peers...
During my career as an undergraduate at the U of M, I took several writing classes, and unfortunately, I took to the habit of disregarding much of the peer feedback I received simply because of the way that the workshop clinics were set up and the lack of experience many of my peers had (I include myself in that lot). The blame must not belong to the individuals, however. I blame a lack of sufficient time - both for the appropriate instruction of what the workshops aimed to truly accomplish, as well as sufficient time to digest the work in question. Often we would workshop three 15 page papers in a 50 minute period (that would be to include reading time). This was ineffective at best, for the sake that it was so hard to get into a paper in such a short time as to give feedback that was beyond the surface level.
I cannot help but think of the same problem as I read the selected peices for this week's class session. I beleive whole-heartedly that thoughtful and appropriate assessment is a crucial aspect of the learning process - especially when it comes to writing. In the Spandell reading for this week (right #7), there is much thought given to the way we assess student writing, both in the classroom and for standardized testing. She then speaks to the credit of carefully developed rubrics that very accurately define what is being assessed. I especially liked her reccommendation of providing specific examples of writing that would correspond to each level of a given rubric - if an instructor cannot do this, then the rubric should be revised. She then insists that the class as a whole discuss the writings and the rubric together, and identify the elements of the writing that qualify it to be on either the "needs development" or other column.
I really like this idea.
I'm just scared about what might get pushed out of an already tight curricular unit in order to make time for the advanced rubric development and discussions.
1 comment:
I think Spandel's ideas regarding advanced rubric development and such are of that "in a perfect world" nature. In a perfect world, we would have enough time to do all of these things for our students, but in the imperfect world we live in, we just can't fit it in.
On the other hand, I think peer workshopping skills are extremely important (and I agree that most of us could have been taught this better). I would definitely make teaching peer criticism a priority, and if that meant cutting out time for class-constructed rubrics, I'd have to be okay with that.
Post a Comment