Learning Windows Using Reflective Writing to Promote Learning

Learning Windows: Using Reflective Writing to Promote Learning Transfer Adrienne Jankens, Thomas Trimble, Jule Wallis, Clay Walker

Overview Adrienne Jankens: Affect in student reflection Thomas Trimble: Grammatical features of student reflection Jule Wallis: Use of reflection in a genre-based pedagogy for development of genre awareness Clay Walker: The Importance of Reflection in Composing Discursive Agency

Reflection and Reflective Writing Reflection: a form of mental processing used to fulfill a purpose or achieve some anticipated outcome and applied to a relatively complicated or ill-structured idea for which there is no obvious solution (Moon 2004) Reflective Writing: “likely to involve a conscious and stated purpose for the reflection, with an outcome specified in terms of learning, action, or clarification” (Moon 2004)

Reflection and Transfer Reflection Metacognition Transfer (Bransford et al. 2011; Emig, 1977; Yancey, 1998)

2015 First-Year Writing (ENG 1020) Study Question: what are some important features of written reflection? Corpus: 106 end-of-semester reflective essays Method: text analysis

What can we learn by looking at affective moments? Code Number of Coded Excerpts Changed Feelings-Students write about past feelings and/or how a project or classroom experience changed their feelings about a task, a topic, the course, or writing more generally. 16 Degree of Confidence -Students indicate feeling sure about or prepared for a task. 34 Degree of Difficulty-Students write about struggling with comprehending or navigating a task. 24 Degree of Investment-Students’ affective phrases indicate their degree of investment in an assignment or in the course overall. 3 Inspiration/Understanding-Students write about an idea or experience supporting their understanding of a topic or task and/or inspiring their ideas for writing. 33

Metacognitive Behavior Heuristic for Development Person (emotional phrase in initial reflection draft; operates as stem) ex). . . in my first attempts at writing a genre analysis or a rhetorically structured argument I was confused and disheveled. . . Task Describe the rhetorical situation of the project you are working on. What is the purpose? Who is the audience? What genre are you expected to write in? What other assignment parameters do you have to meet? Monitoring Describe what you think about while you work through the writing task and what writing moves you make as you compose your draft. Regulation/Control Describe the different choices you make as you compose. Why do you decide to use one example and not another? How do you choose to organize your ideas? Why do you delete or move an idea? etc. Evaluation Assess the quality of your finished product. Did you meet the assignment requirements? Did you successfully develop your argument or accomplish your purpose? Did you accomplish your personal goals for writing?

Grammatical Features Sentence Subjects Corpus Occurrences Percent First person I in the head noun position: I 1129 50% other 370 16% student writing 162 7% a specific assignment 148 6. 5% a specific skill 146 6. 4% a learning outcome 133 5. 9% TOTAL SENTENCES 2249 91. 8% ex) I learned a lot in this class. A learning outcome: ex) Reading was an important skill in this course.

Using Generative Stems for Deeper Reflection Student Text Generative Stem In past persuasive or argumentative writing of mine I had been using rhetorical devices without knowing it (Mandy). Writing for this class, however, required me to. . . However, when writing my essay on rhetorical analysis, I had no choice but to use a formal style because I was writing about politics, a topic that most people in the United States don’t keep up with very much (Jon). This demonstrates something important about writing for different rhetorical situations: . . . Rather than only using the required minimum of An important element of the research four sources, I explored two additional sources process that I’ll need to remember in the that gave me more insight to what the problem future is how… was, what caused the problem, and how to address (Scardamalia et. al 1984) the problem (Sophia).

ENG 3010: Reflection and Genre Awareness ENG 3010 Overview ENG Course Objectives ● Read: Analyze genres from the student’s discipline or profession ● Write: Flexible writing process that address the expectations of the student’s disciplinary or professional discourse community ● Research: Write research genres, use research methods, and conduct primary and secondary research to produce an extended research project relevant to the student's discipline or profession ● Reflection: Use reflective writing to describe developing knowledge about writing ● Carter (2007): Metadisciplines and metagenres ● Writing IN (WID) and Writing ACROSS (WAC) ● Genre-based pedagogy

Data Collection Data Set One: Research Proposal Mini. Reflection Data Set Two: Reflective Portfolio Description of Research Proposal Objectives What did I know? Read What did I want to know? Write What did I learn? Research What changed? Reflect Description of Reflective Portfolio

Research Description Research Question: Do students reflect genre awareness in their reflective essays and do students show evidence of a growing development of genre awareness between their Research Proposal mini-reflections to their Final Reflective Portfolio? Methods: Collected Research Proposal minireflections (n=10) Collected Final Reflective Portfolios (n=10) Directed Coding (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) drawing from ENG 3010 assessment codes and assignment objectives Dedoose: web application for mix

Table One: Genre Parent Codes Code Definition Textual Example Genre as a Concept Student shows an understanding of genre as a concept Throughout the first few days of this course, I was introduced to the idea that it is not just my field of business administration that uses this idea of discourse community, genre, and genre conventions, but each student in my class has their own discourse community with different genres they use that contain specific genre conventions for various contexts of communication. Genre Recognized Student recognizes the features of genre(s) A research proposal is a type of research genre used in my discourse community. Genre Described Student describes textual features of genre(s) Each step of the Research Proposal required adding an additional section: an abstract, the introduction, a literature review, a methods section, a discussion section, etc. Genre Analyzed Student analyzes genre(s) I learned that genres allow expressions of thought to occur by establishing communication among people through the textual structures and conventions of a genre. Genre Revised Student revises for genre based revision needs I revised my abstract as you can see in example D so that it contained the necessary components of the what researched, why researched, how researched, and what found.

Table Two: Genre Child Codes Code Definition Textual Example Structure Student recognizes, describes, analyzes, or revises genre structure The genre structure of a literature review must mirror the introduction and provide background information with many sources if it is to be correct. Conventions Student recognizes, describes, analyzes, or revises genre conventions I had to revise the introduction to match the genre conventions of the introduction for the class: Problem and Investigation, Statement of the Problem, Rationale, Assumptions and Limitations. Social Student recognizes, describes, analyzes, or revises social features of genre I now know that genres are always meshed and used to communicate ideas and research to other members within a particular discourse community. Audience Student recognizes, describes, analyzes, or revises genre for audience The literature review has an audience that expects there to be a lot of sources in order to show credibility of the researcher.

Findings Between Data Set One and Two ● Highest frequency of gene awareness in data set one was genre recognized (n=34); one of the lowest levels of genre awareness ● Highest frequency of genre awareness in data set two was genre analyzed (n=123) one of the highest levels of genre awareness ● Second highest frequency of genre awareness in data set one was genre revised (n=24) (focus of course assignments) ● Second highest frequency of genre awareness in data set two was genre revised (n=102) (focus of course assignments)

Discussion of Findings Genre Analyzed was the most significant findings

Discussion of Findings suggest that students demonstrated genre awareness in their reflective writing Findings suggest that reflection, when used in stages, develops students growth of genre awareness and helps students reflect upon their prior, current, and future learning in their writing However, child code analysis indicate that genre awareness was still building as students place the most focus upon the structure and conventions of the genre rather than the social components of a genre.

The Importance of Reflection in Composing Discursive Agency “The body has to learn to play itself like a musical instrument in this world’s compositions” (Kathleen Stewart “Worldling Refrains” 341). Agency as maneuvering or navigating – the practice of practice (Trimbur) Agency as free won’t – narrowing down a field of potential actions (Schwartz and Begley) Agency as a library of I-Can’s (Noland) Reflection – or some sort of self-aware feedback – is critical for actors to cultivate the discursive gestures that actually emerge from the field of potential actions

Questions & Discussion thank you!