Risky Pedagogy: Using Dialogic Feedback to Encourage Student Voice in the Writing Classroom

Tialitha Macklin (@timacklin)PhD Candidate, Rhetoric and Composition

Washington State University

My Story

Photo Credit: blogs.bedfordstmartins.com

FGS Relationships

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“difficulties in understanding professors’ expectations [are] more extensive than the problems encountered by more traditional students”

- Collier & Morgan

Problematic Response

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“Instead of habitual, automatic reactions, our words become conscious responses based firmly on awareness of what we are perceiving, feeling, and wanting. We are led to express ourselves with honesty and clarity, while simultaneously paying others a respectful and empathetic attention”

- Marshall Rosenberg

Compassionate Response

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• Observation• Feeling• Need• Request

CCP Components

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Observation

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• Class Discussions• Surveys• Conferences• Prompted Writing

• Learning Styles• Pedagogical

Accommodations

• Puzzled?

• Excited?

• Pessimistic?

• Previous Experiences?

Feeling

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Need

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• Praise?• Global concerns?• Editing-type

comments and symbols?

• Type?• Form?• Quantity?• Medium?• Scope?

“Make response a two-way street – or, better yet, a free-flowing highway”

-Richard Straub

Request

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“Students who get to raise issues for responders to address will likely see the comments as less controlling than comments that are initiated solely by the teacher, according to her agenda. They might even feel encouraged to take a more active role in their work as writers”

-Richard Straub

Request

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Request – Phase 1

Phase 1

Students must be given the opportunity and

afforded the respect to request that their

needs be met through teacher response

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Request – Phase 1

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Request – Phase 1

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Request – Phase 2

Phase 2

Consider the practice of response itself as a

request from reader to writer

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“simultaneously tentative and goal-driven [… and where] their tentativeness seemed to originate in their attempt to weigh options, toss the responsibility for making decisions back to the writer, and offering possibilities for a better text”

-Chris Anson

Request – Phase 2

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Serving FGS

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Complicating Risk: First-Generation Self-Identification, Pedagogies,

and Programmatic Support

bbuyserie@wsu.edu

@sanrac

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Photo Credit: Today Online