As we are going to be asking our students to be writing essays that draw on multiply sources in order to development well argued essays, I suspect the last thing we want to see is a “dogmatic approach” to the assignment. Something tells me however, we will see many such an approach come fall term. With this in mind, I thought Slattery’s suggestions as outlined in the Pedagogical Implications” section of his article to be of interest. Specifically, I am referring to the point he makes about asking students to “identify and examine their own points of view on the topics about which they are writing” BEFORE they begin to do any research. He claims that these questions are simple but challenging – “designed to help them probe assumptions and biases. The argument follows that if the students are able to “explicitly acknowledge their preconceptions about a topic, they have a better chance of recognizing and understanding arguments that challenge their opinions.” And thus, one would hope, they will have a better chance of falling into a dogmatic approach too early in the process of their research writing. Some of the questions that Slattery has his students answer are listed below. In looking at them, I couldn’t help thinking that I too could benefit from answering some of them before I launched into my own process of writing the dreaded research seminar paper. I wonder if one regresses in these stages? Does that ever happen? Hmm.
Some of Slattery’s questions:
What is your current position toward the topic of your paper?
How did you reach this position?
Does it reflect your religious beliefs, political affiliation, or personal experiences?
Does it reflect what you have heard your family or friends say, what you have read, or what you have seen on television?
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4 comments:
I like Slattery´s article. In our classes we already discussed students who might have difficulties with seeing multiple perspectives. Slattery simply gives a term ¨dogmatic¨ to such approach.
The questions about sources of one´s knowledge are really challenging. I cannot imagine how much they can puzzle a student. The author backs up his argument with his own previous successful experience though. It may worth trying.
I think Slattery's questions (listed by Greg) could be really helpful. I think that I'll use an approach like this for my first paper (making students argue a position on an issue) but I think a challenge I'll face is getting students to ask themselves these questions without making them feel attacked. Students, particularly students with a socially or politically conservative ideological background, seem to be made to feel marginalized within the university system (we've probably all seen this at the writing lab, and Donna's discussion of the dichotomy of perception of Mizzou's religious atmosphere is certainly telling). I'm not sure whether this feeling of marginalization comes from the University environment itself, or from rhetoric that seeks to portray universities as hotbeds of radicalism. Probably both, I guess. But I want to be mindful of how easy it is to make people, who may already be feeling vulnerable or othered, to feel attacked. I'm not sure how to get around this.
Multiple sources are tricky. In the writing lab, I've seen so many papers where the students will find quotes from outside sources and stick them into their papers for seemingly no reason other than that the assignment required the use of multiple sources. I think the questions are a great idea--they get the students to think of their own viewpoints first, and then think of what could be used from an outside source to help back up their own viewpoint second. I agree with Claire, that questions are tricky as well, because all questions can be viewed as loaded questions, and a conservative-minded student could take such questions (intended to make them think more open-mindedly) in a hostile manner. That is not to say that conservative students are not open-minded, but they do tend to be more hostile to such questions, thinking that the question is an automatic challenge to the way they are thinking (which is sometimes true).
I wonder if we could make these questions seem less threatening by making it clear that these are only for the students' own personal benefit--perhaps not even handing them in. Potentially they could be given 10 minutes of class time to work on answering these questions, but then just have their answers for their personal use.
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