Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College

Composition Studies, Fall 2002 by Phillips, Cassandra M

Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College, by Anne J. Herrington and Marcia Curtis. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2000.

At the beginning of Persons in Process, Anne Herrington and Marcia Curtis cite Judith Solsken's study on childhood literacy development. That choice may seem odd, they say, considering that their own study focuses on four college students representing different cultures, genders, and classes. Yet they premise their study on Solsken because they have found that her basic principles concerning childhood literacy development can be (and are) true for adults of all ages. Students, they say, "actively use writing-including the sorts of public writing often required of them in college-for the ongoing development of their personal identities, including their sense of themselves in relation to others" (1).

The development of the self across academic genres has been addressed in several studies and by several different researchers (see Carol Berkenkotter et al, Paul Kameen, Min-Zahn Lu, Lucille McCarthy and Stephen Fishman, Elspeth Probyn). What this particular study adds to the ongoing discussion/debate of the concept of self is the detail and evidence behind the claim that college is a "time when persons are in process, recomposing themselves toward their futures" (354). In other words, it shows how the idea of self can relate to the "slippery" concept of academic writing through careful exploration of its research subjects.

Persons in Process is thus a detailed, longitudinal study that follows its subjects-Nam, Lawrence, Rachel, and Francois-as they struggle to use writing "for the ongoing development of their personal identities, including their sense of themselves in relation to others" (1). Through their subjects, Herrington and Curtis summarize, "we see students striving to bridge the gap between private and public interests, between the personal and the academic, a gap sometimes accentuated by genre conventions and teaching practices" (354). The study prides itself on its length (approximately nine years) and its presentation of the subjects as "expert witnesses" of different aspects of college writing. As a result, it devotes a chapter to each, allowing each one "to speak directly to you" (18). Throughout these chapters the researchers' close relationships with these subjects is apparent.

The methodology of this study is also quite appealing. While most of the text is written collaboratively, there are also individual narratives by each of the coauthors that detail the different foci of their research. Curtis addresses her interest in "experienced-based knowledge" vs. "text-based authority" in composition (24) as well as the influence of Heinz Kohut's concept of "selfobjects" on the way we think about students and academic writing (25-28). Herrington, on the other hand, outlines her interest in "studies of writing in contexts" (32) as well as the social and psychological effects of disciplinary expectations placed on students (33-34). The ways that these varying interests play out in this study (and they do) is intriguing. While the strengths of this methodology are apparent, Herrington and Curtis also discuss the limitations and ethical considerations of conducting research the way they do.

Because of its longitudinal nature, Herrington and Curtis's study features elements concerning student writing that have rarely been seen in such detail in previous studies on this subject-and this, I think, is the one of the biggest strengths of this book. When Herrington and Curtis indicate certain findings in the first chapter, we can read about how they came to each of those findings in many instances and experiences as they discuss different students. For example, early on they conclude that each of these writers depended on "a single impulse born of personal experience" to inspire their writing in a wide variety of settings (5). Accordingly, Nam's chapter opens with a sample essay in which he is struggling with being "different" (54-55). Throughout the remainder of the chapter, then, Herrington and Curtis show how he learns to use writing as a tool, or even a metaphor, to understand and explore these differences. We are shown Nam's struggle to understand the role of self in the essay in a variety of ways: through the paraphrase of the researchers, ("While I believe this is an instance of Nam not finding the appropriate word, the double meaning-appropriated, appropriate-still suggests the tension in Nam's relation to language" [56]), through researcher notes, ("He's having trouble again with stopping when he tries to write. Gets hung up over getting the right word and can't get stuff out" [57]), and through direct interviews with Nam:

I don't have much idea what is essay. When people say essay, I was kinda stuck. What should I do because most-in high school, I'd usually do a report paper, like a book report or history report or something like that. But come up with something that I think that nobody ever think, say what I think is, I do not have much practice so I have no idea what is essay. (59) Again, the importance of this approach is through the detail and the triangulation of the evidence. We can actually see the ways in which Nam struggles not only with the symbolic idea of an essay, but with the language used to define and represent it. This conclusion is supported in Nam's spoken words, his writings, and his observations.