Implicit response : instructor values and social class in the literacy narrative assignment.

Abstract

I offer special thanks to my students. The joy I find in teaching comes from the fact that teaching at its best is a dialectical activity-the learning always flows both ways.Thanks to the students I taught at Abilene Christian University, the University of demonstrates that the focus of instructor assignments on description and other narrative elements is perhaps misdirected. Two other features also carried cultural capital with instructors but to a lesser extent than argumentative moves: literary elements, including vivid description and metaphoric language, and appeals to shared values. Instructors were more likely to flesh out the connections for students when value-appeals were present, vii particularly ones that promote middle-class perspectives. This finding is problematic because students from more privileged socioeconomic and educational backgrounds seemed more able to invoke these shared values, which thus suggests that working-class students' texts were seen as less reflective, and hence, were less successful in fulfilling the goals of the assignment. These results lend some empirical support to claims that the literacy narrative assignment reinforces middle-class perspectives; as such, it may not be as beneficial for marginalized groups of students as advocates of personal writing have asserted. This research suggests educators should be more aware of class assumptions that may influence how they respond to student writing.I conclude by presenting recommendations on how writing instructors can more effectively teach literacy narratives, including more clearly articulating their goals for the assignment and how they will assess these goals in student writing. By emphasizing what instructors really want, both high school and college writing instructors can make writing assignments more equitable and begin to defend against their own social-class biases in the classroom.