ENGLISH 401: COMPOSITION IV: THEORY & RESEARCH

Composition Studies, Spring 2005 by Mulvaney, Mary Kay

COURSE DESCRIPTION

English 401: Composition IV: Theory and Research is designated in the Elmhurst College catalogue as "a writing course that introduces students to the scholarly field of composition studies." It is part of a series of courses for English majors pursuing a degree with "Writing Emphasis," for students seeking teacher certification, or for any interested upper-level students who have completed an advanced writing course beyond the traditional first-year composition sequence. Elmhurst College, located in the western suburbs of Chicago, is a four-year, comprehensive, liberal arts college (granting bachelor and masters degrees) with approximately 2,550 students, including traditional, non-traditional, resident, and commuter students.

INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

This course is an upper-level course that is offered as part of the writing sequence option within the English major. The audience is primarily English majors-most of whom are secondary education minors. A significant secondary audience is communication majors-some are interested in academia, some are pursuing corporate careers.

This course structure reflects the strength of the English department as a whole. The department allows students to select a traditional literature or a writing concentration. Within that elected "emphasis," there are options not only for the more common "journalism" and/or "creative writing" offerings, but also for a substantial emphasis on Composition Studies and formal rhetorical study including this advanced composition theory and research course-not a common offering in most undergraduate English programs-especially at a small college. This course provides a valuable introduction to the theoretical groundings and to the practical realities of Composition Studies.

The inclusion of the "mentoring" component of this course complements three institutional characteristics: 1) the significant number of students who are seeking secondary education certification, 2) a campus-wide emphasis on service learning (though this course linking does not specifically meet that definition, the spirit of meeting human needs through reciprocity and the focus on learning through reflection upon that service were a significant part of this course design), and 3) a minimally developed Writing Center.

This course thus addresses the interests and needs of advanced-level students and simultaneously provides peer support for freshman composition students on a campus with minimal institutional support for the Writing Center, which is staffed by a handful of well-intentioned peer tutors but supervised by a faculty member who receives neither compensation nor release time for running it and, thus, is unable to provide substantial, ongoing tutor support.

THEORETICAL RATIONALE

This course aims to accomplish five things: 1) expose students to the rich complexity of the theoretical dimensions of Composition Studies; 2) raise awareness that Composition Studies is informed by a nearly 2,500-year history of writing instruction; 3) provide avenues for integrating theory and praxis; 4) hone upper-level research skills and nourish personal inquiries in Composition Studies, and 5) introduce students to various aspects of Composition Studies as a vibrant profession. Each of these five goals is motivated by significant theoretical, often overlapping, positions.

1. Complex theory

The first goal necessarily engages students in the exploration of composition theory by requiring extensive reading and discussion of composition theory and current research. Since I believe that theory is best presented at this level as a "work in progress" with a myriad of dissenting factions, I selected the Villanueva anthology that, while organized around salient topics, also notably offers conflicting views regarding those topics. In my second teaching of the course, I was able to broaden the currency of the assignments by using Villanueva's second edition. Most significantly, I introduced the notion of "post-process theory," utilizing Lee-Ann Kastman-Breuch's excellent article summarizing and integrating the strands of post-process theory. By definition, post-process theory defies a neatly packaged explanation. Her ultimate argument that two factors-dialogue and the rejection of mastery-are the essence of the relevance of post-process theory to pedagogy were especially relevant to this course.

I had previously taught this course as a kind of "dialogue of theories," which reflects my commitment to the Bakhtinian notion of dialogism as the most credible way to view knowledge-making in any field. But the Kastman-Breuch article made that necessity even more apparent. Admittedly, students found the entire notion of post-process theory unsettling as it rejects simplistic definitions, singular perspectives, or highly "teachable" solutions. The need to continue dialogue, not accepting one approach to composition as doctrine, is the major underlying principle I hoped to communicate. Of course, students' confusion and mental "stretching" was direct evidence of the Vygotskian principle of the "zone of proximal development" at work-another major contributor to my overall theoretical framework. Students gradually came to understand that there are no easy answers in this field and that scholars are continually wrestling with indecision, new ideas, challenges to complacency. I continually encouraged them to view knowledge-making as a disturbing and sometimes painful process, pushing them to resist the comfort of single-faceted answers and to embrace the Bakhtinian notions of heteroglossia and intertextuality which inhere in language itself and, therefore, in all theories and practices employing language.