Re-Presenting Revision: Freirean-Based Teaching and Teacher Inquiry into Students’ Perceptions of Revision

Lindy E. Briggette

Revision is a commonly misunderstood practice in the eyes of first-year composition students.

Too many students that I have encountered in Freshman English courses have not been taught a

thorough revision practice, and certainly not one that is ongoing. Some students know merely to

check their work for mistakes, but even that is often in a hurry. Most of the students I’ve worked

with in my career initially define revision, in fact, as simply “proofreading.”

Additionally, I have also witnessed the sometimes-crippling anxiety surrounding

students’ attempts to complete basic academic writing assignments. Even a brief personal

narrative assignment seems to provoke deep-rooted insecurity and often leads to less than stellar

work or extreme procrastination. Through my own observations and correspondence with

students, I have learned that their unease often stems from their perceived inabilities as writers.

I believe a thorough revision practice that is ongoing and developmental may be a

solution to both of the issues mentioned above. Using an adaptation of Paulo Freire’s problem-

posing methodology, I’ve attempted to use students’ own writing processes and experiences, as

well as the revision ideas or practices they’ve been exposed to, to establish revision strategies

they can utilize as tools to approach academic writing assignments. In this case study, I will

highlight the design and implementation of a curriculum I taught at UMass-Boston in an attempt

to use students’ misunderstandings of revision to teach a true practice, and to also inspire an

improved perception of themselves as writers. I will discuss my methodology as well as why the

need for this type of revision is necessary, and I will closely examine results that may help other

teachers better understand first-year writers.

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RATIONALE

PART ONE

In October of 2012 I gave my Freshman English students a brief survey hoping to establish how

they perceived revision. One particular response sparked the idea for this project. In response to

“When you look at the word itself—“revision”—does it mean or represent anything else? What

does it make you think of? Anything besides a classroom or writing process?” one student

replied:

The word revision only makes me think of a paper that I have written. It makes

me think of corrections on a paper and other written works. I never incorporated

revision with anything outside the classroom or writing process. (H, F. Personal

communication)

While this student later realized that he and his band mates often revise their music

during practices and jam sessions, his eventual insight of out-of-classroom revision isn’t all that

inspired this project. I was also alarmed by his perception of revision as “corrections on a paper

and other written works.” While I certainly should not have been surprised that this student saw

revision as a corrective step, seeing it in his own words without any suggestion that revision

could be something other than corrective made me uneasy. His perspective suggests, perhaps,

that students need to be exposed to the meaning-making and discovery that comes from thinking

again or from looking again at a text or a piece of their own writing.

PART TWO

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Given my previous work as an academic advisor, I prefer to reach students by getting to know

them and by understanding their perspectives as best I can. One way I come to know a classroom

of students is through letters. Early in a semester I distribute a letter to my students. I include

rhetorical questions for students to ponder, and in an accompanying assignment I include a list of

questions for them to answer in their letters to me. In these letters, students often express their

insecurities and perceived writing inabilities. In coherent prose, students write about fears of

writer’s block, frustration at composing every sentence, and discomfort in writing about course

texts to which they cannot connect.

I’ve witnessed responses such as “I am not a very strong writer” and “English has never

been my best subject” throughout my five years of teaching composition. No matter my attention

to careful scaffolding, because of these internalized beliefs, upon receiving that first writing

assignment, some students not only dread the task, but they assume their writing will be terrible.

Students submit to inevitably receiving a sub-par grade before they even finish the first sentence.

This project was designed to specifically address the two observations outlined above. More

precisely, I designed this project to establish whether or not a thorough, ongoing revision process

could result in stronger overall writing practices. Additionally, through utilizing revision tools to

manage the complex writing process, I hoped that students would gain confidence in overcoming

the difficulties they so quickly point out.

FREIRE’S INFLUENCE

I will reflect on my exact methods in the sections below, though first I’d like to mention a few of

the key attributes Freire’s methodology.

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While operating in a Freirean approach, instead of allowing my own perceptions to

determine a facilitation of effective revision processes, I turned directly to my students’

perceptions. In doing this, students’ reactions and critical reflections of their lives become the

basis for learning; Freire calls it a “constant unveiling of reality” (81). More importantly, this

unveiling must be of students’ own realities. Furthermore, my responsibility as an educator

working with students’ realities is to “assist in the emergence of consciousness” and to allow

students to speak in their own active voices (Belenky, et al 218) without imposing my own

preconceived notions. Through discussion, students needed to establish their realities in their

words, and witness for themselves a reconceptualized version of revision. Students’ own

misconceptions of revision, therefore, had to become the subject of our classroom learning.

Students, too—they and their realities needed to come into our coursework.

In a Freirean model, the act of “problem-posing” students’ reflections must involve an

“organized, systematized, and developed ‘re-presentation’ ” (93) of those reflections. In other

words, problem-posing requires an educator to use students’ reflections to pose a problem by

“re-presenting” students’ own reflections back to them. Moreover, the problem that is posed

must be one that exists in students’ lived experiences and it must be one that necessitates a

solution. When a collaborative group or class is presented with an existential problem to solve,

they become “co-investigators” (Freire 106) of the problem in an attempt to solve it.

This is where the truest sense of Freire’s “problem-posing” is enacted. When course

material reflects the existential and concrete situations of our students, we must then pose those

situations to our students “as a problem which challenges them and requires a response—not just

at the intellectual level, but at the level of action” (Freire 96). The “action,” in this case, becomes

“acts of revision” that are discovered. Revision, as a more thorough process, then becomes a

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solution to problems found in lived experiences—in this case, the difficulties faced in writing

and the anxieties that go along with them.

WHY FOSTER REVISION AS A HELPFUL TOOL?

MISCONCEPTIONS OF AND RESISTANCE TO REVISION

A focus that strongly informed the development of this project surrounds students’

misconceptions of revision, as well as their resistance to any revision act that goes beyond

proofreading. The research surveyed here mirrors many of my own students’ understandings of

what revision consists of.

In “Practical Guidelines for Writers and Teachers,” a chapter written for Revision:

Theory, History and Practice (2006), Cathleen Breidenbach observes the varying misconceptions

students have of revision. She argues the most common belief is that “revising a piece is the

same as final editing” (202). Breidenbach also claims that revision suffers from being perceived

as tedious and mechanical (199). My own observations reveal this as the norm of how students

understand revision. Today’s students see it as end-of-process proofreading or editing. This

project attempts to expose students to an ongoing process.

Brock Dethier also addresses how students perceive revision in Acts of Revision: A Guide

for Writers (2004), a revision-focused textbook edited by Wendy Bishop. In “Revising

Attitudes,” Dethier writes to eager students, “You may distrust revision because you feel that…”

(2) and he goes on to list a plethora of myths that commonly surround revision’s reputation as an

annoying last step. Suspected reasons for students’ resistance include revision as “trivial,” as

“the nitpicky correcting of superficial niceties,” as a means to potentially make things worse, and

as “a waste of time” (2). Other reasons involve revision as noncreative “drudgery,” as mere

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criticism, and as an act that students either don’t know how to do or don’t have time for (3). My

students also claim they aren’t sure how to revise and therefore do not see value in it.

In “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers” Nancy

Sommers expands on students’ perceptions of revision. To establish the revision habits of

experienced writers and inexperienced writers, Sommers conducted a study of the strategies

enacted by twenty writers from both groups. Results revealed that students “did not use the terms

revision or rewriting” as part of their writing processes, but rather employed self-defined

strategies such as “scratch out and do over again,” “reviewing,” “redoing,” “marking out,” and

“slashing and throwing out” (380-381). These are the same replacement strategies I’ve often

witnessed in my own students’ work—even when I suggest they reconsider an entire concept or

passage, they rearrange or omit the selection or only address word-choice issues.

Lastly, revision pioneer Donald Murray attempts to demystify the reasoning behind

revision’s negative reputation in The Craft of Revision. He notes that writing strips away our

“intellectual clothes” and shows the world what we know and what we don’t know (2). Any

suggestion for a change, Murray claims, can be seen as a “personal insult” (2). Considering the

fact that students do reveal themselves by their writing performances, recommendations for

revision may be received as mere criticisms. Students have yet to realize, as Murray puts it, that

revision involves a “process of using language to see the subject again and again” (4) until we

can see it clearly. Students’ misunderstanding of revision demonstrates the need to advocate for

an ongoing practice in our classrooms, but only after we can assure that students properly

understand what revision can do for their writing.

TEACHER COMMENTARY AND REVISION

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Another focus in much of the scholarship on revision examines the influence different types of

written feedback have on the varying revision methods students apply to their work.

In “Getting the Most Out of Time Spent Marking Compositions,” Hillocks, Jr. questions

what evidence exists that teacher comments result in better writing (80), yet he makes little

mention of revision acts. His findings suggest that instructional activities that are “in preparation

for writing” (81) have more effect on student writing than the assignment alone (83).

Furthermore, his findings also suggest that pre-writing activities are more important to

improvement than “lengthy comments by the teacher” (83). He concluded, “activities help to

give the comments more meaning” (83), and without them, long comments are seen as criticisms

and may have a depressive effect (83).

Hillocks ignores the relationship between comments (long or short) and steps that

students must take in order to improve—acts of revision. He merely constitutes that pre-writing

activities bear more influence on students’ writing than that of comments, and he fails to mention

the action that is expected once comments are given. I agree that preparation activities ground

both students and teachers in a common context, and in fact I myself use them in my classroom,

however an examination of written comments as they relate to students’ revision decisions is

missing from this study.

In “Improving Student Writing Through Effective Feedback: Best Practices and

Recommendations,” Underwood and Tregidgo argue, “feedback is most effective when used for

formative improvement, as in the case of multiple drafts of writing” (90). The authors’ survey of

scholarship related to how feedback is received by students (73) also includes a collection of

practical recommendations for giving feedback, yet results neglect to mention what students

must do with that feedback. Most recommendations Underwood and Tregidgo present, in fact,

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suggest that a student must utilize feedback, however they do not mention specific acts of

revision. The authors further conclude that “Students should be able to relate feedback to their

writing products, choose which pieces of feedback are important and relevant, and understand

what needs to be done in order to improve their writing” (90).

Recommending that through feedback students should be able “understand what needs to

be done in order to improve their writing” (90) suggests that students must act upon the

feedback, yet the recommendation also suggests that students must decide for themselves what

steps are necessary. While I believe the omission was intentional, I would argue that any steps

taken after feedback is received are acts of revision, and further, students must know what those

acts consist of in order to enact them. If feedback is to lead to an improvement of writing,

students must appropriately use it as a guideline. Furthermore, students need to know how to

make those decisions as well as how to revise based on each individual decision that is made.

Richard Straub promotes commentary that serves to do more than simply “label errors

and mark problems” (374), by examining commentary through a different perspective than

Hillocks, Jr. and Underwood and Tregidgo. In “Teacher Response as Conversation: More Than

Casual Talk, an Exploration,” Straub advocates for commentary that creates two-way dialogue.

By closely examining the words, phrases, tone, and references to the original assignment in six

sets of teacher comments on a sample piece of student writing, he demonstrates that a more

productive use of conversational response will “turn students back into the chaos of revision

[and] foster independent, substantive thought in their writing…” (375). Straub goes on to

summarize six strategies for giving comments that establish co-investigative dialogue1 with

student writers.

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While all six strategies are highly practical to adapt into a response practice (as I have),

they assume students understand “revision,” and what it means to engage in revision acts. One

particular strategy assumes revision is initiated by the student: Comments must “provide

direction for student’s revision, but they do not take control over the writing or establish a strict

agenda for that revision” (389-390). Strategies assume students understand which writing and

revision steps to consider after receiving feedback or suggestions, though specifics of what

“revision” consists of are missing. Furthermore, if students misunderstand revision to be a

corrective last step (as determined above), is it possible they will interpret any suggestion as

simply something to be corrected within those last steps? Assuming students know how to

proceed may only perpetuate the misunderstanding of revision’s total effect.

David Fuller adds a layer of student perception to the conversation surrounding written

commentary. In “Teacher Commentary that Communicates: Practicing What We Preach in the

Writing Class,” Fuller examines his own realization that students may not fully understand his

comments. When forced to observe his own style from the student perspective, he realized that

his comments on students’ papers appeared “messy and rude” (307). He confesses to losing sight

of the “rhetorical aims of communication” he advocates for as a teacher (308), and acknowledges

that he often commented as a detached critic tending to ignore “the writer who produced the

text” (310). He was not the “interested reader” (310) he admits he should have been.

Fuller claims further that when teacher commentary shifts between varying “reader

roles,” students often misinterpret the message and are left feeling more confused. Reader roles

such as experiencer, examiner, and evaluator (Cowan quoted in Fuller 313) result in different

categories of comments, all with differing tones. He observes, too, that when it comes to teacher

commentary, the bridge between teachers and students “must be corresponsive” (Kehl quoted in

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Fuller 316). Still, while I admire and agree with Fuller’s intended changes to his own response

style, especially the concepts of co-responsiveness, he too neglects to mention how students

understand what to do with even the most carefully worded comments.

Richard Straub also explores the differing categories of teacher commentary and

feedback responses in “The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of

“Directive” and “Facilitative” Commentary.” By examining sets of teacher comments on

samples of student writing, he illustrates the difficulties teachers encounter when commentary is

reduced to broad categories of directive and facilitative response. Furthermore, he posits that the

best response styles to encourage steps for revision are ones that allow teachers to productively

interact with students, and ones that allow teachers to make comments that are ways of teaching

(248). His findings suggest that students must be allowed to develop their own ideas, make their

own writing decisions, and learn to make better choices in their work (248).

While I agree with Straub, again I must point to the importance of making certain that

students know how to appropriately utilize teacher feedback. Acts of revision are steps that

teachers hope will lead to an improved product and stronger skills, but students must first know

what the steps consist of. One way to assure that this takes place is to establish what students

understand revision to be and guide them toward an ongoing process that includes revision as a

tool for continuous discovery, and to perhaps inspire writing improvement.

SELF-JUDGMENT AND FEAR

A third influence and driving impetus for the work within this project (and the work I’ve been

doing with students for all of my adult life) stems from the self-judgment and fear that students

often bring to our classrooms. Some scholars have addressed the hindrance students’ negative

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self-perceptions can have on their writing abilities and approaches to academic writing

assignments. Students’ ingrained fears of writing cannot be ignored, and later in this report I will

also examine a few examples from my own course that demonstrate the scholarship discussed

here.

Cathleen Breidenbach, again in Alice Horning and Anne Becker’s Revision: Theory,

History and Practice, argues that students often assume there to be two kinds of writers in the

world: “those who write well and those, who, like themselves, struggle to get ideas on a page and

are ‘not good at writing’” (200). Breidenbach adds that students assume writing comes easily if

not effortlessly to published writers, teachers, and journalists (200), when the truth is that

“writing is a struggle” (200) for all who make the attempt. Most of the students I’ve taught

would categorize themselves into the latter group, and they have on many occasions labeled

themselves just as she claims they do.2

Lynn Holaday, in “Writing Students Need Coaches, Not Judges,” also discusses students’

perceptions of themselves as writers. No matter the writing ability, she claims, nearly all of her

students “hate and fear writing” (35). She observes that her students are “generally negative”

about their own abilities, and that they are fearful of exposing their clumsiness and of having to

perform in writing (35). Breidenbach and Holaday’s observations mirror many of the same self-

defacing opinions my students often have of themselves.

Mina Shaughnessy expands on the reasoning behind the negative self-perceptions in the

introduction to Errors and Expectations (1979), an account of open admissions at City

University in Manhattan. Though the writers Shaughnessy describes may be somewhat different

than those who attend UMass-Boston in 2013, their damaged self-perceptions remain the same.

Shaughnessy observes, “By the time he reaches college, the [basic writing] student both resents

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and resists his vulnerability as a writer. He is aware that he leaves a trail of errors behind him

when he writes” (7). Even non-basic writers carry with them a fair amount of resentment and

vulnerability as writers. And some do leave a trail of errors. It’s become increasingly important

to recognize these resentments and vulnerabilities so we can more accurately understand how our

students receive our assignments and comments.

Shaughnessy goes on explain that written English “has become so confusing,” and,

“worse, [basic writers] have become resigned to this confusion, to not knowing” (10). It’s

probable that today’s first-year composition students experience the same levels of confusion,

and that they, too, are resigned to not understanding. Furthermore, I expect the resignation is not

uncommon in classrooms nationwide considering the fact that I have encountered students who

experience this confusion in all ten of the composition courses I have taught.

Since so many students believe wholeheartedly “English is not my best subject,” I

suspect going into a writing task without confidence can hinder academic performance. In “Style

as Politics: A Feminist Approach to the Teaching of Writing,” Pamela Annas explores the

hindrances—she asks her students to face the confusion by examining the “writing blocks” (67)

they encounter in their writing processes. Compiling a list of writing blocks is one of the first

things she does with her students as they apply a more conscious approach to personal writing

and style (67). The aim is for students to identify the blocks as well as closely consider what

underlies them. The following collection of “blocks” is a sampling of the most common that tend

to surface in her Writing as Women course:

…perfectionism, fear of criticism or judgment, depression, numbness or

blankness, fear of taking risks, fear of success, coping with an alien subject

matter, fear of one’s own power or anger, worry that one has nothing to say,

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writing for an audience indifferent or hostile to what one wants to say, fear of

knowing oneself, getting stuck between objectivity and subjectivity, fear of being

trivialized or conforming to what’s expected, private vs. public writing, talking

vs. writing, having the right to one’s opinions, discomfort with the mechanics of

writing and organizing a paper, fear of being boring, dumb, insignificant or

ridiculous. (67)

Other “writing block” influences include self-depreciation and censorship; Annas argues

that some students censor themselves so well, in fact, that “they don’t know what they think”

(68). With blocks such as these being the norm, she observes that her students end up “self-

fulfilling their expectation of failure” (67). This very well may be a silent problem in all of our

composition courses, regardless of level, and I agree with Annas’ practice of asking students to

become aware of their own writing processes in order for the blocks to become “less mysterious”

(69). I also agree that for first-year composition students “sometimes simply knowing a writing

block is there, lurking around that particular corner in the process, makes it slightly less

terrifying” (69).

Nina Wallerstein, whose adaptation of Freire’s “problem-posing” methodology I use in

this project, also discusses blocks that influence students’ learning experiences; she calls them

“hidden voices.” Hidden voices are emotionally charged assumptions that students bring with

them to the classroom, and she claims they are important for educators to uncover “as they have

the power to block learning” (35). She suggests that educators must listen for a deeper

understanding and establish what emotions create students’ “hidden voices” (35). This particular

facet of listening—one of the steps involved in her adaptation of problem-posing—includes

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being aware of surfacing concepts or ideas that “have high emotional impact” (35). This type of

listening can contribute to consciousness-raising that surrounds writing process anxieties.

MY CALL FOR A REVISION THAT IS DEVELOPMENTAL

Because I am addressing the need for students to re-conceptualize their understandings of

revision, it is important for me to expand on the particular type of revision I am advocating for.

As a teenager I wrote and revised nearly two hundred pages of manuscript in my portfolio-based

English classes. Nearly all writing assignments required four to five revisions. The constant

revision I engaged in became automatic, and eventually I knew no other way to write. Most of

my Freshman English students have not been exposed to this style of revision. Students see

revision as proofreading; however the type of revision I’ve started to actively encourage is a

constant and consistent part of the writing process, from brainstorming to a last and final read-

through. This type of revision is also developmental over time—as students write and revise,

they also learn more about themselves, their experiences, and about course content.

Of the collective trends that are named in “Definitions and Distinctions,” Catherine

Haar’s contribution to Revision: Theory, History and Practice, “revision as growth,

development, and discovery” (15) is the best way to characterize the revision I aim for.

According to Haar, a process-centered approach to revision “blurs the distinction between

composing and revising…(18), and I would add that composing then becomes revising, and

revising then becomes composing. Rather than working through the “fix it up” (Haar 15) type of

plan, I encourage my students to “jump around in the process” while perhaps even “restructuring

in big bold steps, then fussing with a paragraph or sentence, then rereading a source and

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introducing a quotation…” (Haar 18). I challenge students to discover and utilize an ongoing

practice they can do their best work with.

PROBLEM-POSING

FREIRE’S METHODOLOGY

In order to establish the realities of my students in their own words, as well as allow them to

witness a reconceptualized version of revision, I adapted elements of Paulo Freire’s problem-

posing methodology for a first-year level pedagogical sequence in composition. In Pedagogy of

the Oppressed (1970), Freire claims that an authentic problem-posing process is one that wholly

relies on the particular perspectives of students who are involved. As noted earlier, Freire claims

the process must involve a constant unveiling of learners’ realities (81), and that unveiling must

lead to critical reflection and action.

A primary element of the process is dialogue. Freire posits, “Dialogue is the encounter

between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world” (88). Dialogue allows students

to realize and discover their own realities, which then become a central focus of classroom

inquiry. When students recognize their conscious thoughts or perspectives about the way they

operate, they must verbally or in writing name what they realize. The dialogue students have

with each other, with their teacher, and with themselves, then, becomes “[acts] of creation” (89),

versus “ideas to be consumed by the discussants” (89). Within this project, when students

identify and name the difficulties they’ve encountered in writing assignments, they can more

consciously speculate why those difficulties arise. Likewise, when they identify the value of

looking back, they more consciously consider the act of “re-vision.”

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As mentioned earlier, problem-posing education must include an “organized,

systematized, and developed ‘re-presentation’ to individuals of the things about which they want

to know more” (93). The organized, systematized, and developed “re-presentation” is what lies

at the heart of Freire’s methodology, and at the heart of this project. He argues that the starting

point for organizing program content of education must be “present, existential, concrete

situations, reflecting the aspirations of the people” (95), and further clarifies that we must pose

the present situation to students as a problem “which challenges them and requires a response—

not just at the intellectual level, but at the level of action” (96).

In order to present the problem to be dealt with in the classroom, a teacher or facilitator

must collect what Freire calls “generative themes” (96), and the collection process must involve

two-way dialogue created to “stimulate people’s awareness in regard to these themes” (96-97).

Discussion circles, or “concentric circles” (103) are typically used to establish those generative

themes—ideas that are characteristic of a particular group or society (103). When these themes

address aspects of students’ actual realities, students can “recognize the interaction of the various

components” (104). From the consciousness raising, what Freire names “conscientização” (104),

interaction of the generative themes “begins to introduce women and men to a critical form of

thinking about their world” (104).

In my composition classroom comprised of mostly first-year students, I have attempted to

establish students’ own critical consciousness surrounding their understandings of revision as

well as perceptions of themselves as writers—in their own words. Students’ own perceptions,

then became the subject material for our early course discussions and our first few writing

assignments.

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A crucial step in Freire’s “re-presentation” involves a coding and decoding of the terms

and themes generated by students. The lived experiences revealed through the collection of

generative themes are formed into “codes” that identify those specific situations. A decoding

then “requires moving from the abstract to the concrete” which also requires “moving from the

part to the whole and then returning to the parts” (105). Through the “description of the

situation,” a separation from the concrete allows a person or group to discover “the interaction

among the parts of the disjointed whole” (105). All parts as well as the their whole must be part

of a group’s reality—“to investigate the generative theme is to investigate people’s thinking

about reality and people’s action upon reality…” (106).

With this Freirean model, teachers and students must become “co-investigators” (106) of

a reality they can analyze based existential experiences. For a teacher and students as co-

investigators “in an interdisciplinary team” (109) the thematic investigation becomes an

“educational pursuit” (111) where generated themes from the realities of the people (or students)

“return to them—not as contents to be deposited, but as problems to be solved” (123).

WALLERSTEIN’S ADAPTATION OF PROBLEM-POSING

Nina Wallerstein’s simplified interpretation of Freire’s problem-posing methods helped me craft

a design without compromising the complex process. In “Problem-Posing Education: Freire’s

Method for Transformation,” Wallerstein outlines a practical adaptation of Freire’s methodology.

She observes that in Freire’s dialogical approach, everyone involved participates as “colearners”

(34) with “critical thinking…and action” as the primary goal of the dialogue that occurs between

them (34). Additionally, Wallerstein interprets Freire’s methodology as comprising of three

phases: listening, dialogue, and action (35).

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Listening, according to Wallerstein, involves drawing the details of a course context from

students’ daily lives (35). Freire’s codification and decodification processes then occur in

Wallerstein’s second step: dialogue. She argues that after identifying concepts or issues present

in students’ lives, a teacher should use discussion points as “codes” followed by “an inductive

questioning strategy” (37). She also claims that a code represents a “depersonalized

representation” of a conflict or problem that carries emotional or social impact in people’s lives

(38). Furthermore, plans for action, the third step, evolve from the students’ understanding of

“root causes of problems” (42) as well as from their ongoing critical reflection upon their worlds.

She claims also, “the final questioning stage takes students into a positive action” (40), and while

trial and error may occur, strategies eventually surface from the positive action (40). The specific

inductive inquiry challenges students to consider “strategies for solutions” (40).

Wallerstein argues, regardless of the level of action students may decide to take, they

learn through the “experience of action itself” (43). Allowing students to take action through

experiencing the action itself, in addition to solving a problem with the action, also influenced

my design. Furthermore, I purposefully adapted Wallerstein’s inductive questioning to re-present

emerging ideas. It was my hope that by taking students through the action of looking back and

thinking again about texts—an act of re-vision—they would learn the action by experiencing the

action, and they would see the action (or actions) as necessary to a successful writing process.

A THREE-WEEK FRESHMAN COMPOSITION CURRICULUM UNIT

DESIGN

As mentioned in the introduction, I designed this case study to analyze how I might strategically

use students’ own perceptions of revision to teach revision in a Freirean-inspired, problem-

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posing fashion. This meant establishing students’ own understandings of revision while at the

same time positing true revision—an ongoing developmental type of revision—as the solution to

a real-to-life problem present in their lives. In planning the sequence of assignments and

classroom activities for my Monday-Wednesday-Friday 50-minute class meetings, Nina

Wallerstein’s simplified three-step process acted as an outline for how I would carry out the

collection of data, how I planned to utilize that data, and, finally, how I would facilitate the

dialogical collaboration between students and their classmates.

While many of the components of my carefully organized design will appear as though

they overlap, repeat themselves, or seem to embody elements of “allatonceness” (Berthoff 61),

that is intentional. At any one time there were two moving parts involved in my implementation.

And while there are many things I do within the first few weeks of the semester, for this

particular project and the accompanying teacher inquiry, I might categorize the two components

as: the writing difficulties students identify and tools to manage them; and what occurs when

students are required to “look back” or “think again” about writing. This sequence aimed to work

through each component and eventually utilize the result of their combination to solve a

problem.

IMPLEMENTATION

In order to get students thinking about their writing processes, I first had to bring students into a

an appropriate mindset. I wanted students to see themselves as writers, not as students fulfilling a

general education element of their degree, which is a common answer to: “How did you come to

be enrolled in ENGL 101 here at UMass Boston?” To start this thinking process, on the first day

of class I asked students to name three words they would use to, a) describe themselves, and b)

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describe what writing meant to them (not what they think it should mean to them, which I made

clear verbally).

On the second day of class, students were asked to complete a simple, though formal,

writing assignment due for the next class meeting; I refer to this as “Writing Assignment A”.3 I

also asked students to keep careful record of every step they took in completing Writing

Assignment A, and I later asked them to reflect on which steps felt most difficult and least

difficult. By the end of the first week, through an adaptation of Freire’s culture- or “concentric

circles” (103) students had already established commonalities related to their basic interests, how

they felt about writing, how they perceived themselves as writers, and what difficulties they

faced in writing. These discussions stemmed from students’ responses to the letter assignment

and to Writing Assignment A.

The results of students’ writing and brainstorming became the start of my own “thematic

investigation” (Freire 104) of their writing habits—not simply the habits or processes students

anticipated having, but the ones they truly engaged in. Asking students to reflect and observe

twice was an attempt at a writing-focused consciousness-raising. I facilitated the investigative

acts by giving students a specific observation task. In order for students to become cognizant of

the “problem,” per se, it was crucial for them to pay witness to what happens when they sit down

to approach a writing assignment.

Within this consciousness-raising is also an element of analysis which Freire notes must

include an individual’s “significant dimensions” of his or her reality. Additionally, the analysis

of those dimensions must also allow an individual “to recognize the intersection of the various

components” (Freire 104). Through the assigned investigative process, my students started to

become aware of their own “significant dimensions” as well as the relationships between those

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dimensions. Students were not only acknowledging and naming dimensions of their writing

processes, but they were also considering the reasons behind why and how the dimensions exist

—perhaps for the first time. Chances are all of my students had encountered writing processes

before, along with the difficulties, however I’m not sure how aware they were of steps they take

when sitting down to write.

This reflective thinking and observation not only brought students’ own practices to light,

but it also allowed me to facilitate the process of “coding” and “decoding” (Freire 105). Coding

and decoding strategically brings students through steps that allow them to first recognize their

own realities, but to also recognize a more common “concrete” and “existential” reality (Freire

95) among peers. This, then, created a greater context for students to consider—a greater context

that is in one sense very much a lived reality, but also one that exists as a “depersonalized

representation” (Wallerstein 38).

In addition to asking students to list and narrate the steps they enacted to complete

Writing Assignment A, I also asked students to illustrate their processes. With each step in

critical awareness, students begin an entry into a conscious relationship with a lived experience

that is important to them, and it allows them to exist within a community—our class of students

—that has endured a similar struggle. By “coding” the difficulties students faced in approaching

the writing assignment, students were able to then illustrate their processes 4; as students use the

collection of illustrations to first witness, then “decode” the commonalities that are revealed,

students were able to move from “the abstract to the concrete…from the part to the whole”

(Freire 105).

Just as students were starting to recognize the common experience of encountering

difficulties in writing, I began to institute more fully the second component of this sequence. As

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soon as I read students’ completed versions of Writing Assignment A (without adding

comments), I returned the assignment to students, and immediately asked them to revisit the

assignment for their next homework. This time I prompted them to read through the entirety of

what they originally wrote, and to note places where they remember or know more than what

they wrote. Then I challenged them to do the following:

Use what you wrote originally (i.e., open a new document and paste the original),

and in those places where you identified where you knew/remembered more,

rewrite that passage or set of paragraphs by adding more of what you know and/or

can remember. Please be as thorough as you can.5

This was a method of looking back and seeing again—a re-vision—and an exercise in which

students could initially be exposed to the action by experiencing the action itself (Wallerstein

43). My hope was that students would be able to then identify the results of the action by closely

observing the action: reseeing, and essentially a revision, can result in new discoveries,

realizations, and, furthermore, allow for other surface level fixes.

This is the point in the sequence where I ask students, unbeknownst to them, to switch

back and forth between the two components of my methodology. While I would eventually ask

students to reflect on their second version of Writing Assignment A—and a third version—I also

felt it appropriate to start asking them to brainstorm what their own perceptions or

understandings of revision were. In between version two and version three of Writing

Assignment A, I asked students to reflect on their past and current experiences with revision, as

well as carefully explain a list of words and phrases they each associated with the term

“revision.” The results within this collection of information—revision as it is described in

students’ own words—would serve as what Freire calls “generative words” (110), and they

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would add to the overarching “generative themes” (105) surrounding writing and managing the

difficulties faced in writing.

Through small group discussion focused on the students’ word lists and past experiences,

we saw two branches of revision emerge. One branch the students named “direct revision,” acts

that involve a more direct or obvious action: editing, proofreading, correcting, spelling,

rewording, re-do, systematic, and update. A second branch they named “indirect revision,” acts

that involve critical thinking: contemplation, beautification, actualization, reassessment,

spontaneity, and decision-making based on elements the reader observes and based on what is

necessary to complete the assignment.6

Through group discussion, self-reflection, and observation, toward the middle and end of

the nine class sequence (at class meetings four, five, and six), students started to see three

concepts emerge: a set of difficulties we all face in approaching academic writing assignments;

the advantages of looking back at a piece of writing and thinking again about an experience; and

the two branches of revision, “direct revision,” and “indirect revision.” These three emerging

concepts, more importantly, were reconceptualized ideas that students had identified just a week

or so prior.

At this precise intersection, I began to present to students—or “re-present” back to

students—the possible connections between the concepts that surfaced. The established themes

or “thematics,” which came directly from the students, would “return to them—not as contents to

be deposited, but as problems to be solved” (Freire 123). Since the difficulties we face in our

writing process still existed as these such “problems to be solved,” here I used Nina

Wallerstein’s inductive questioning to ask students to consider our emerging concepts of “re-

vision” and “looking again” as possible tools for managing those difficulties. Here, my

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curriculum’s two components met and presented us with an opportunity to see them as helpful to

the writing process.

Near the end of our sixth class meeting, I asked students to consciously consider the

following: “How might “looking and thinking again,” i.e., acts of revision, become tools to help

improve writing?”7 During our seventh class meeting I was prepared to reiterate and revisit the

point by “re-presenting” our three concepts back to students as potential components that exist in

the writing process. Again, students were faced with the new and emerging concepts mentioned

above: the difficulties that exist in a writing process; valuable tools to help us “look again;” and

two branches of revision. To “re-present” our findings, on February 13, 2013 I facilitated a

discussion based on the following line of inductive questioning (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1:

A: Thinking about our Bigger Concepts…I. We value looking back and thinking again…

II. We’ve established two branches of revision acts (the editing, which requires direct attention; and the critical thinking phases, which requires more thinking and consideration)

Now: How might we actually incorporate these thinking and writing acts – which we’ve determined that we value – into our writing processes?

a) Talk through a few ideas in your groups.b) Try and come up with THREE strategies that incorporates these greater

concepts we know we value…c) Consider: What’s relevant to you? What are you willing to try? What might

be helpful?

Implicit in using the contradictions between students’ original understanding of revision,

and their newfound, positive experience with “looking back” is Freire’s notion that “utilizing

certain basic contradictions, we must pose this existential, concrete, present situation to the

people as a problem which challenges them” and which inspires action (96). The actions that I

anticipated would surface—what Wallerstein would call “positive actions” (40)—became tools

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for managing writing difficulties. The acts of revision we were now familiar with, therefore,

became those specific tools.

When I presented to the small groups the task of establishing three writing strategies that

utilized the two concepts in Fig.1, of course my students did not expect that they could form such

extemporaneous connections. Needless to say, students were apprehensive and trepidacious,

though as I encouraged them to just talk it out with their group members (“…even if it feels like

you have no idea what you’re saying,” I said to them), something wonderful began to happen. As

I casually walked around haphazardly grouped desks in my windowless, brick and mortar

classroom, I started to overhear words and phrases that alluded to writing strategies. My students

were solving a problem they had identified with strategies they had experienced and named.

The following is a list of revision strategies my students established during this class

discussion:

1. With each point you try to make, ask yourself if you are “going in the right direction,” or if you are on track with what the assignment asks for.

2. Consider: What is the personal spin you can add? Are you invested in the personal message you are relaying?

3. Carefully “unpack” your terms and statements, i.e., be sure to explain what you mean as much as you can, and again, ask why these certain statements are important to the overall essay. This might involve doing what we did with Writing Assignment A—an exercise in looking back for spots where you know more or remember more than what you wrote.

4. Make an outline, maybe before you start, or based on what you have so far in a draft (or near the end of your drafting process). Or before and after you’ve completed a draft.

5. Peer review: Can you ask someone to take a look at your work? Maybe trade papers with roommates, friends or classmates. Can you send your paper to your instructor earlier than the deadline for feedback? Your peer reviewer/s should be someone you can trust and who someone who knows something about the topic.

6. Time is crucial. You must leave some time between finishing the draft and reading through the draft so as not to allow your mind to “play tricks on you” so much that you miss your own common mistakes. If can also be helpful to leave time between doing parts of an assignment so you allow yourself to feel inspired in between.

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7. Re-read your essay carefully after you’ve finished your own draft. Consider some of the same questions above: are you on the right track? And are you answering the questions? Also, re-read after you’ve received feedback or comments from others.

8. Consider the decisions you can make about your own essay: Can you use, and how will you use your own reactions as well as the suggestions from others?

9. Read your work out loud to yourself or to someone else. Listen for awkward sounding moments or phrases. If you notice any, consider revising in a way that helps you to sound more natural—more like you.

10. A final step should involve reading through your essay to catch spelling and grammar mistakes along with any other formatting or organizational mishaps you might have missed. This can also be ongoing during the drafting process, though it greatly depends on the writer.

These strategies were later tested as students approached their first major essay assignment.

UNEXPECTED RESULTS: HOW STUDENTS PERCEIVE THEMSELVES

STUDENTS’ ASSUMPTIONS AS A TYPE OF COLONIZATION THEY EXIST WITHIN

While implementing this project, I did not expect to witness what I’d learned about the

mythological realities we live in (Freire 83) and the “assumptions in which we are drenched”

(Rich 18), which both tend to have a crippling effect on students. Even though I’ve been

collecting letters from students for five years (and for five years students have expressed self-

effacing assessments), I had not explored why the negativity remains a constant.

What I did not realize until now is how I might be contributing to these myths by not

making more of an effort to dispel them—or, rather, by not making a conscious effort to allow

students to de-mythologize (my emphasis) (Freire 83) the realities students so blindly believe in.

Fig. 2 (below) reveals how my students describe their feelings about writing.

Fig. 2

Language taken from student letters in week one:

Writing is simply something I wish I was better at. I am not a big fan of reading and writing… In general, writing may be my worse strength; I have never been a good

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writer… I do not feel like I am a good writer… Writing has always been one of the harder aspects of learning for me. …I don’t really think of myself as a good writer… I feel like good writers can overcome whatever in a short period… I don’t classify myself as a good writer, maybe not even an average writer. English has never been my strong point in school… …I do not believe that I am the strongest writer that I could be.

As mentioned, the initial design of this project included using students’ perceptions of

themselves as writers to start a consciousness-raising process, though what I now see as equally

important to explore are the deep-seated causes of negative perceptions. Early on in Pedagogy of

the Oppressed, Freire references philosopher Franz Fanon’s theories of colonization in order to

explore a possible aggressive mentality of the oppressed. Freire quotes Fanon: “The colonized

man will first manifest [an] aggressiveness which has been deposited in his bones against his

own people” (quoted in Freire 62). Freire’s use of Fanon, and perhaps Fanon himself, helps me

re-evaluate where students’ self-depreciation stems from.

Just as the oppressed man feels an aggressiveness toward himself from what Fanon

claims are deposits from his own people, so too do students display a lack of self-confidence

from the internalization of a “distrust” (Freire 63) they have of themselves. Freire argues, rarely

do those who are oppressed “realize that they, too, “know things” they have learned in their

relations with the world” and with others (63), which supports his observation that “self-

depreciation is another characteristic of the oppressed” (63). Fanon echoes this sentiment by

claiming that self-respect and self-validation, though necessary to challenge oppression, are not

“tenable under the conditions of prolonged oppression” (Bulan 139). As I considered the possible

long-term effects of self-depreciation, I began to wonder whether or not my students are even

capable of overcoming a distrust of themselves. I’m not sure overcoming insecurities is possible

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until students feel some sense of an authentically developing confidence. As teachers, can we

foster authentic confidence?

Fanon argues that the type of change students would need in order to overcome

oppression or colonization needs to be a change that is transformative, and not simply a “shift

from one style of life to another” (Bulan 115). Fanon further characterizes a true transformation

as one that requires risk taking; he emphasizes, “risk of life is a precondition for freedom”

(Bulan 115). He also warns against a “disguised freedom,” or a freedom that consists of “hollow

proclamations and camouflaged slavery” (Bulan 115). Freire, likewise, cautions us to be aware

of a type of disguised freedom that exists in the banking method of education. He observes that

banking attempts to mythicize reality by concealing authentic humanism (83), which perhaps is a

type of camouflaged slavery.

Many students’ realities consist of myths that place them in a type of less-than category,

which is only perpetuated by the fact that they may be enslaving themselves by living constantly

within their own lack of confidence. It’s possible, too, that past educators, by trying to instill

assurance in students by telling them to “be confident!” are doing a disservice—they, too, have

disguised students’ freedom. In order to break out of the myths students first need the

wherewithal to make sense of their own awareness, and teachers, therefore, must assist in

allowing students to discover confidence. Still, the process of gaining the awareness to overcome

challenges causes a discomfort. It requires taking a risk.

To extend this point, poet and feminist educator Adrienne Rich, like Fanon, calls the de-

mythologizing dangerous. She argues: “…there is a difficult and dangerous walking on the ice,

as we try to find language…for a consciousness we are just coming into…” (19). It is because of

this danger—that of working through unfamiliar language—that it seems awareness in itself isn’t

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enough to prompt transformative change. There also needs to be a call to action, as Freire

reminds us, and it’s not easy for students to tread within a transforming territory.

Here in lies part of the danger: In calling into question the “colonial situation” as Fanon

names it (37), some people simply adopt “avoidance reactions” (Bulan 142) in order to manage

what feels dangerous or uncomfortable. Students adopt the avoidance behavior as well; they are

quick to admit negative perceptions of themselves as writers (as we saw in Fig. 2), then often

times doing the work involved in reversing the negativity is altogether abandoned. When

students realize the hard-hitting—and perhaps heart-hitting—work they must face, some give up

and continue living within the myths. An “awakening consciousness” can be livening, but “it can

also be confusing, disorienting, and painful” (Rich 18). When discomfort leads to feeling

disoriented, students seem to prefer submitting to their assumptions rather than working through

what is “confusing, disorienting or painful” in order to overcome them. Submitting seems to be

the less-dangerous choice, therefore some students remain within the “assumptions in which

[they] are drenched” (Rich 18), and cannot know any improved version of themselves.

As mentioned, I have become weary of my own desires for students to identify and name

perceptions of themselves as writers without having established a way for them to adopt a

language for whatever they may discover in moving forward. Perhaps I have not been assisting

in a true transformation. It’s possible that without allowing students to gain a new language to

work with and through their own self-assigned myths, I allowed them to be what Fanon calls

“rearguards.” In The Wretched of the Earth (1963), he advocates for going forward “all the time,

night and day…” (315), and he encourages his people in the struggle against colonization:

“Come, then, comrades, we have far too much work to do for us to play the game of a rearguard”

(314). I ask students to own up to the negative assumptions that hold them back but I allow them

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to defend and protect the “I-have-never-been-a-good-writer”-mentality they define themselves

with. This is a mindset that retreats just as a rearguard would. Without a forward-moving

coherence of their own struggle, am I only encouraging a “blind will toward freedom” (Fanon

59)?

COMPARTMENTALIZATION OF ACADEMIC WRITING AND OTHER WRITING

Another unexpected result that surfaced is students’ compartmentalization of their writing

abilities and their perspectives of writing assignments. Many students seemed to clarify their

own opinions of themselves as well as the writing forms they’ve previously encountered. From

students’ initial letters, I saw a critical dichotomy emerge.

One student claimed in her letter, “I am not a big fan of reading and writing,” and

admitted later, “essay writing is not the writing I like to do.” This same student claimed with

gusto that she would enjoy writing about “amazing adventures.” She even added: “I would write

anything that my mind can imagine possible, or maybe even the impossible!” (C, Y. Personal

letter). Immediately I see that this student is enthusiastic about writing that excites her, however

the writing that she is “not a big fan of,” is academic writing and the expectations that go along

with it. For this student, writing that is exciting is separate from essay writing that is assigned.

Another student noted: “Writing, in general, has been both a blessing and a pain. Creative

writing is something very dear to me, and while I can excel at that, writing with strict

guidelines…has been somewhat of a pain… It’s mostly the anxiety that goes along with those

kinds of papers...” This student later admits that she wants to “stop dreading the results and start

enjoying the experience more” (S, K. Personal letter). This causes me to wonder what strict

assignments she has been given in the past; something led this student to dread academic forms

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of composition. This student now brings her dread to the classroom and to all of her writing

assignments.

A second-language student revealed the almost painful perception she has of her abilities,

though her letter was completely comprehendible: “I am very good at telling my feeling but

when it come to essay, I don’t have a lot of confident. Sometimes I can’t find the right words to

use. I’m very bad at writing essay or expressing my own opinion about something” (D, N.

Personal letter). Having talked to this student at length, I think she means she is unhappy with

the opinions she is asked to have of course content that is detached from her own life. Her letter,

the longest of the set of seventeen, was full of vast opinions and stories of her immigrant

experience. She can demonstrate confident opinions but does not believe she can have them in

academic writing.

While there are more examples I could share from my small sample of letters, the two

comments that follow reveal the expectations students have of academic writing. One student

claimed to like writing “…when the topic is a very interesting book or idea,” but noted she does

not like writing “when it involves unclear instructions or large deadlines” (E, S. Personal letter).

This implicitly points to the fact that she has interpreted past academic assignments as “unclear,”

which only preserves the separation: there seems to be a significant difference between how

students feel about personal writing and how they feel about academic writing. Students

automatically submit to academic writing as not being a means to make personal discoveries.

Another excerpt from a student letter echoes the separation of personal and academic

writing: “Writing, to me, has always been a struggle of mine, but I also have mixed feelings

about it. Having a specific and structured writing assignment with guidelines and rules scares the

crap out of me.” The student continues, “However, being able to write freely and openly is an

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amazing thing. I very much enjoy writing letters or funny stories to my friends…” (O, E.

Personal letter). This student does enjoy writing, and she sees the expressive qualities writing

has, as do students like her. What influences students’ perceptions of both writing and

themselves is the fear of “unclear” assignments as well as anticipating potentially ego-crushing

grades that go with them.

One reason this dichotomy may have emerged has to do with the separation students also

feel between their experiences—in their own voices—and academic writing assignments.

Students do not see themselves within academic writing assignments. Feminist poet and educator

Adrienne Rich can help us understand the levels of stigma and separation I’ve observed. She

says of the woman writer: “She goes to poetry or fiction looking for her way of being in the

world…” (21). Furthermore, Rich notes that her female students searched for “guides, maps,

possibilities”—something, anything, that represents themselves in “books written by men” (21).

She even goes on to observe “but precisely what she does not find is that absorbed, drudging,

puzzled, sometimes inspired creature, herself, who sits at a desk trying to put words together”

(21). Students too, it seems, have been conditioned to compartmentalize themselves from the

work they’ve been asked to do. They don’t see opportunities to learn about themselves when

asked to read and write about topics that at first appear to be removed from their own lives. Just

as Rich’s female students could not see relatable aspects of themselves in the mainstream works

of men, our students cannot see themselves as existing within their work, especially when they

are at the same time managing their fears of being inept.

SELF-REPORTED RESULTS

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While making an effort to understand some of the unexpected findings that surfaced is crucial to

my own growth as an instructor, it’s also important that I somehow assess this design’s

measureable effect on students. In week nine of this Freshman English course I facilitated a

reflective exercise from which I hoped to measure two things related to this project.8 First, I

wanted to determine if my students felt that their writing skills had improved based on the

revision strategies they’d established together. Second, it was important for me to establish

whether or not my students’ negative perceptions of themselves as writers had begun to improve.

Four of the nine questions I asked in the reflective survey were aimed at getting feedback

surrounding students’ new understandings of revision.

In response to “Given our establishment of at least 10 revision strategies to help you

manage the difficulties you all face in the writing process, do you feel better prepared to

approach writing assignments?” twelve out of the fourteen students who were present gave a

positive “yes” response. Of those twelve students, ten specifically commented that they felt

better prepared or that their writing had improved. One student who answered negatively still felt

as though his skills and confidence were lacking, and one student who started his answer “Yes

and no,” commented that while the strategies were completely new “…little by little” he saw

how they were helpful (J, J. P. personal communication).

In response to, “Would you say that you feel more confident in approaching academic

writing assignments based on the revision strategies and the work we’ve done thus far?” again

twelve out of the fourteen students answered in the positive. Within those twelve positive

responses, ten students confirmed specifically that they felt better approaching assignments or

specifically that they “do feel more confident.”

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I also felt it necessary to ask whether or not students anticipated utilizing the revision

strategies in future assignments. Though examining students’ long-term use of revision was not a

goal of this project, as a composition instructor, assessing students’ retention of key strategies

and concepts is a constant goal of mine, and any course I teach. This portion of the survey aimed

to see if students understood the transferability of revision acts. While four students reported that

the strategies were not new to them or that just one or two were new to their repertoire, they still

said strategies were helpful. Additionally, ten students confirmed that they do plan to use the

strategies in future assignments. Many students commented specifically that the outlining

strategy (#4 listed above) was most helpful and that they’ve already started using it.9 Two of the

ten students that anticipated using the strategies in the future commented further that they were

aware of the strategies before this semester, however they either did not know how to apply

them, or did not recognize the value of them.

Lastly, in an effort to establish what students perceived as the important pieces of our

ENGL 101 course, I concluded the reflective survey with: “What do you think are the three most

important things we done so far this semester?” Eleven of the fourteen students in this sample

listed at least one aspect related to revision in their response to this question. By fostering

revision acts and allowing students to see (and feel) the effect, they, too, now see it as a major

piece of our coursework.

LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

While the results of problem-posing revision to my class of Freshman English students proved to

be one way to teach revision, admittedly a number of limitations arose from my design.

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TRUE FREIREAN METHODS

In an absolutely authentic Freirean method—one that consists of people who, together, attempt

to learn more than they know (90)—I myself could not plan for students to identify a need for

revision. By merely implementing a planned curriculum, I deposited my own values of revision

into the classroom, which consequently is a demonstration of Freire’s banking method of

education. I would argue, though, that what Freire might call “contents” of this curriculum, my

ideas of revision in this case, came to life in the minds and lives of my students, versus becoming

“lifeless and petrified” (72) as he predicts. I did not “think for [my] students” (83) in a way that

masked their realities; instead, I engaged in a facilitation that allowed students to “develop their

power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find

themselves (Freire’s emphasis)” (83). And while I did impose a value, students do exist within

the confines of the university where it is my job to assure that students gain both the cultural and

academic capital they need to take full advantage of the education they are investing in.

DO STUDENTS UNDERSTAND MY COMMENTS?

Students in my class have a better understanding of the various acts of revision that writers

utilize, including the two “branches” they established, however I cannot confirm if students

know what do with my comments. I stayed true to Straub’s co-investigational and conversational

style of giving feedback, however I failed to make sure students knew how to make those

decisions surrounding what to do next. Students reported in a reflective survey that they mostly

understood my comments on their papers, however I don’t know for sure that students felt

confident deciding on revision steps. Making sure students know what revision consists of is not

enough to assure they know what do to post-teacher commentary. Should I implement this

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curriculum again, I would ask students to identify which branch of revision each of my

suggestions might lead to, and furthermore what particular revision act could come next.

IMPLEMENTATION FLAWS

In preparation for Essay #1, some students neglected to use any of the ten strategies designed by

the class, while others claimed they were counting on using our planned revision workshops to

institute the strategies. When asked in a written reflection if students used any of the revision

steps established by the class for the first draft of Essay #1, one student replied “Not really. I

used my own revision skills” (El, S. Personal communication).10 Furthermore, it is also possible

that due to severe procrastination, students only sought to complete the essay by the draft’s due

date and did not leave any time to revise.

CLASSROOM AND SCHEDULING LOGISTICS

On the morning dedicated to students each describing their writing process illustrations, I found

out that my classroom location had been changed by our registrar’s office three days prior,

unbeknownst to me.11 By the time class began, my students were dispersed among our former

classroom, our new classroom, and the hallways in between. In addition to starting nearly fifteen

minutes late, the new classroom was packed full of nearly sixty desk-chairs and was not

conducive to quickly displaying illustrations, or making space to walk around to look at them.

Not every student got a chance to describe their illustration, and while this did not hinder

students’ ability to identify difficulties in their writing processes (represented in their

illustrations), I saw this as a setback to a Freirean methodology.

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Finally, the curriculum I initially planned was to run for three weeks from January 28th

through Friday, February 15th. I lost two classes to snow emergency cancellations—on both days

I had planned to engage in reflection related to revision and students’ changed outlooks

surrounding revision. In order to keep with the tightly planned sequence this report would

warrant, twice I was forced to rush through gathering feedback and facilitating the planned

lesson in the brief fifty minutes I had.12

Were I to implement this entire sequence in a future semester, I would anticipate

interruptions and leave room for more flexibility. More over, to completely implement a

curriculum such as the one described here, course concepts should be a common thread that

exists throughout an entire semester.13

CONCLUSION

Compositionist Joseph Harris criticizes Freirean methodology in “Revision as a Critical

Practice” claiming that something “is missing” when goals of teaching are grounded in shifts in

consciousness rather than changes in practice (578). While there were setbacks and limitations to

this project, I believe my facilitation of a revision-focused curriculum founded in Freire’s

problem-posing methodology fostered shifts in consciousness as well as changes in practice.

Using students’ own writing processes and experiences as well as the revision ideas or practices

they’ve been exposed to as course content has proved to be one way to teach ongoing and

developmental revision as strategies students can utilize in writing. As revealed by the results of

students’ feedback, having revision strategies as tools to manage writing difficulties did have a

positive impact on their perceptions of themselves as writers. Moreover, based on the whole of

the feedback I collected, students can learn the value of looking back at and thinking about texts

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thereby overcoming their misunderstandings of revision as corrective last steps. Hence, the

curriculum outlined in this report helped to not only improve students’ writing skills, but it also

helped improve students’ confidence in approaching academic writing assignments.

NOTES:

1. Straub’s Six Strategies for Co-investigative Comments: 1) They [comments] create an informal, spoken voice, using everyday language. 2) They tie their commentary back to the student’s own language on the page, in text-specific comments. 3) They focus on the writer’s evolving meanings and play back their way of understanding the text. 4) They make critical comments but cast them in the larger context of help or guidance. 5) They provide direction for the student’s revision, but they do not take control over the writing or establish a strict agenda for that revision. 6) They elaborate on the key statements of their responses; see Straub “Teacher Response as Conversation,” 398-390.

2. An example taken directly from a student letter demonstrates this: “…I don’t really think of myself as a good writer, I don’t know why, but writing was really difficult, I feel like good writers can over come whatever in a short period [and] I just get stuck on the topic for awhile.”

3. “Writing Assignment A,” homework assignment for February 1, 2013: Please write about an educational experience that has significantly influenced you in a positive way. There is no page length; write as much or as little as you need to in order to answer the prompt.

4. A random sampling of illustrations is available to view on my UMB Wiki site: http://engl101-s13-briggette.wikispaces.umb.edu/ENGL101-02+Illustrations

5. Homework assignment for February 6, 2013

6. Results of students’ revision word-association lists that were shared during class discussions on February 11, 2013 (delayed Friday-to-Monday by snow day)

7. Discussion points/facilitation, February 11, 2013

8. Reflective survey, facilitated March 27, 2013

9. One student even noted that he used an outline to prepare for a History exam. This is very peculiar result: a revision tool learned in an English class—by way of a problem-posing methodology—allowed a student to then better prepare for a course in which he needed to learn through banking methodology. This is an unexpected sign, perhaps, of problem-posing’s transferability. I hope to explore this in a later study.

10. What concerned me about this is based on the quality of this student’s draft, he may not know what revision entails, or what basic writing skills consist of. His paper was not at the place that it should be at the college-level, therefore I was left wondering if he needs further assistance in how to

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structure sentences and paragraphs for an essay, or if he purposely ignored the strategies altogether. Or both.

11. Students received an email notification on the previous Friday afternoon, after our 9am class, however I had not received any notification by that Monday morning (nor did I ever).

12. While I am aware of the ever-present possibility to experience classroom mishaps, in order to complete the report of this project by the deadline, I was forced to plan as tightly as possible.

13. That’s not to say that concepts have not continued after this reporting. Indeed they have, but I am unable to include how they will impact the second half the course.

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Abstract:

RE-PRESENTING REVISION: FREIREAN-BASED TEACHING AND TEACHER INQUIRY INTO STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF REVISION

June 2013Lindy E. BriggetteB.A., University of Southern MaineM.S., University of Southern MaineM.A., University of Massachusetts, BostonDirected by Professor Stephen Sutherland

Revision is often misunderstood or altogether ignored by composition students. Additionally, students’ perceptions of themselves as writers—including their expected inabilities to perform writing—greatly affect their approaches to writing assignments. In an effort to address the two above issues, I designed this project to establish whether or not a thorough, ongoing revision practice could result in stronger overall writing practices, and additionally to see if gaining revision tools to manage the complex writing process would allow students to more confidently approach academic writing. To help students reconceptualize ideas of true revision—an ongoing process of looking back and thinking again about text—I began with students’ perceptions of revision in their own words. Guided by the dialogic and collaborative processes involved in Paulo Freire’s problem-posing methodology, I designed and implemented a pedagogical sequence that allowed students to first recognize the difficulties they faced in approaching academic writing tasks, and to then use new acts of revision—looking and seeing again—as possible tools for managing those difficulties. I did this by establishing what Freire would call “generative themes,” by raising students’ consciousness surrounding the writing process, and by using various (and literal) acts of “looking back and thinking again” to analyze and add to their pieces of writing. After four weeks of looking back and thinking again (…and again) about their writing processes, their understandings of revision, and what they gained from the repetition involved in such tasks, students created and defined their own two-part definition of revision as well a list of ten revision strategies helpful to a writing process. This report will emphasize the design and results of the curriculum as well as highlight the risks and implications of such a student-centered approach to teaching revision.

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