Learning to Unlearn the Teaching and Assessment of Academic Writing

Abstract

The last two years have raised important questions about how we can make the teaching of academic writing more equitable. In fact, the current moment invites us to “learn to unlearn” ways of teaching academic writing that perpetuate inequity. In this reflective article, I draw on decolonial theory and antiracist theory to unwind the ways coloniality has shaped the way that I have taught scientific writing for two decades. This work begins with a discussion of the idea of learning to unlearn from decolonial theory. I then examine how that perspective can change the way we teach scientific communication—for example, in contextualizing the development of scientific knowledge as a series of epistemological developments and exchanges, rather than from a zero point of Western thought. Spiraling outward from the classroom, I reflect on how scientific writing is part of a larger matrix of institutional structures that unwittingly compound colonial legacies inequities. In the end, if we are to address inequity in the teaching and assessment of academic writing in new ways, then we need to acknowledge and challenge the legacies of coloniality in the teaching and assessment of academic writing.

Disrupting Institutional Models of Writing

“…For all this difference, a shared Discourse and Writing/Rédactologie Volume 32, 2022 http://journals.sfu.ca/dwr foundation exists: the university inherits ideas of model students developed through the thinking and goals of coloniality, something la paperson (2017) makes clear by presenting examples of such ideas and of students who elude those plans for them. Teachers operate with, in Poe's (2022) description, "well-worn 'channels ' of thinking, acting, and living [that] are rooted in the legacies of modernity" (p. 70). Institutions inherit models, and each individual teacher in the university teaches from that inherited ground, whatever else we do on it.…”

“…The first is easier to do, to discuss, and to replicate. As Poe (2022) explains, It's tempting to take a "quick fix" approach-join a book group, add Black writers to the syllabus, change a grading practice, and suspend a testing policy. This approach to addressing inequity in the teaching and assessment of academic writing is likely not going to change much because it does not address the epistemological and structural contexts in which academic writing is taught and assessed.…”

Spacious Grammar: Agency and Intention in the Teaching of Research Writing

“…As Makmillen and Riedlinger note, "teachers of writing have a growing role in supporting students to explore and negotiate their subjective and collective identities as writers" (Makmillen & Riedlinger, 2020, p. 181). Students will also encounter the need to include positionality in oral and informal commentary-as Poe points out, research articles, grant submissions, and proposals are not the only textual practices that support research communication (Poe, 2022). In other words, expressions of one's positionality are relevant whether one is able to use them in written scholarship or elsewhere.…”

Student Inclusion through Theoretical Reframing

“…Especially notable was the frame's exclusion of certain voices. If I wanted to make responsible administrative decisions, especially in the aftershocks of COVID-19, I needed to "learn to unlearn" (Poe, 2022) my comfortable process.…”