What New Writing Teachers Talk About When They Talk About Teaching

Abstract

This article explores findings from a multiyear, multisite study of new college writing instructors. First, the authors describe the principles that guide new instructors’ teaching and reveal the number of resources that new instructors draw on beyond the pedagogy seminar. Second, they delineate how the kinds of classroom narratives these instructors choose to tell points to a range of understandings about what it means to teach writing. Finally, they argue that learning to teach writing is a complex process requiring sustained mentoring and support throughout the early years of teaching.

Introduction: Rhetoric and Composition TA Observed, Observing, Observer

“…Less prevalent in the data was the integration of key principles into the development of syllabi, the design of assignments, and the grading of essays, among other facets of teaching. Focusing even more distinctly on two areas of interviews from the original Reid, Estrem, and Belcheir case study, Estrem and Reid (2012) differentiate between what the TAs might say in the presence of their graduate faculty and how their core beliefs and rationales might alternatively manifest in the absence of their faculty. Within these parameters, the liminality between the TAs' writing-pedagogy education and their actual teaching practice persisted into the TAs' second and third years.…”

A mixed-methods longitudinal study of new graduate teaching assistants’ commenting beliefs and practices

“…While none of the participants in this study had taught first-year composition or had encountered WPE before, their commenting practices were nonetheless affected by their degree program. As Estrem and Reid (2012) found, new…”

Character arcs: mapping creative writers' trajectories into the composition classroom.

“…A great deal of this work situates these writing teachers-intraining as those who: work through carefully designed and theorized training protocols and practicums, are inflected by their experiences in the classroom, and are the subject of inquiries into questions of professional identity, disciplinary identity, and intellectual and emotional experience (Pytlik & Ligget, 2002;Anderson & Romano, 2006;Dryer, 2012;Restaino, 2012). Other scholarship, however, points out that although much of this research has been devoted to understanding theories of teaching and the training of teachers, less has been devoted to studies on how instructors actually learn to teach (Estrem & Reid, 2012;Wardle, 2014).…”

“…It is likewise important to consider that while a great deal of research in Composition has been devoted to understanding theories of teaching and the training of teachers, much less has been devoted to studies on how instructors actually learn to teach (Estrem & Reid, 2012;Wardle, 2014). This is to say that we know a great deal about what is said about teaching and about how we and others run various instantiations of teacher trainings, but we know far less about how instructors of various disciplines ultimately "take up" teaching (see Pytlik & Liggett, 2002 here and in the paragraph above focuses specifically on the training of graduate students, subjects related to the negotiation of status, teaching anxieties, and the uptake of teaching find common ground with rookie and veteran instructors alike, especially when we understand that the act of becoming occurs in perpetuity.…”

“…Further, when formally-trained creative writers are mentioned within this context, it is often done so in a way highlighting a categorical, curricular-based difference, and not a values-based difference. In other words, these creative writers are less discussed with regard to their knowledge of writing and more simply identified with regard to their programmatic affiliation (see, e.g., Pytlik & Liggett, 2002;Dryer, 2012;Estrem & Reid, 2012;Restaino, 2012). I have also mentioned elsewhere in this dissertation that this omission does not represent a fault in the previously-cited studies and discussions revolving around teacher training, but rather an opportunity to add to our knowledge of teacher training.…”