Should we be teaching citation styles??

I thought a compelling argument to postpone the insistence on utilization of citation styles for writing projects was put forth in this article, "Citation Obsession? Get Over It," by Kurt Schick in today's (Nov. 2, 2011) Chronicle. I have excerpted some key ideas...

• "Citation style remains the most arbitrary, formulaic, and prescriptive element of academic writing taught in American high schools and colleges. Now a sacred academic shibboleth, citation persists despite the incredibly high cost-benefit ratio of trying to teach students something they (and we should also) recognize as relatively useless to them as developing writers.
•  ...the uneven quality of information available online makes it more important for writers to know how to evaluate the worth of their sources than how to parse pedantic rules and display their expertise in footnoting.
• What I advocate here is not to dispense with teaching students how to use sources but rather to abandon our fixation on the form rather than the function of source attribution.
•  The intricacies and formalities of citation become useful to scholars only when they publish their work. Until then, they need a bookkeeping system to keep track of where they found things (a system that others might later use to retrace their steps), and some means of attributing their sources and thus establishing the credibility of information for their audiences. More than anything, source attribution enables students—who, by virtue of being students, don't yet know much about a subject—to borrow knowledge and ethos from those who do. It's just about that simple.
•  Citation contents are virtually the same across styles and disciplines: author's name(s), title(s), publication information....Why, then, could we not simply ask students to include a list of references with the essential information? Why couldn't we wait to infect them with citation fever until they are ready to publish (and then hand them the appropriate style guide...
•  We could then reinvest time wasted on formatting to teach more-important skills like selecting credible sources, recognizing bias or faulty arguments, paraphrasing and summarizing effectively, and attributing sourced information persuasively and responsibly.
• If anything, we should abandon trivial roadblocks so that students can write more often in more classes. Recent research demonstrates how effectively and efficiently writing can improve comprehension of content in any discipline. Writing also enables students to practice analysis, synthesis, and other skills that constitute critical, creative, and even civic thinking. If writing provides one of our best means to enhance learning outcomes across the curriculum, then more writing equals more learning. Why would we design writing assignments with obstacles that discourage students from learning?"

On remediation and writing in higher ed

This thoughtful piece by Mike Rose (UCLA) discusses why it is so important to continue providing access to education for all and suggests we need to break out of disciplinary and methodological silos to do it effectively. As you may or may not have noticed, I frequently include posts about reading and writing in this ostensibly education oriented blog, precisely because I see being able to read and write as so essential to success in higher (or K-12 or continuing) education. My friend and writing instructor extraordinaire, Sara Jameson, wrote her thesis on Mike Rose so I always pay particular attention to what he has to say. Here are a couple of excerpts from this piece:
"...some of the problems with college remediation as it is typically executed. It is built on a set of assumptions about language and cognition that have long ago been proven inadequate, like the belief that focusing on isolated grammar exercises will help students write better prose. The work students are doing isn’t connected to the writing they are required to do in their other courses, academic or vocational.... Most of us are trained and live our professional lives in disciplinary silos. Let me give you one example of how mind-boggling, and I think harmful, this intellectual isolation can become. In all the articles I’ve read on remediation in higher education journals, not one cites the 40 years’ worth of work on basic writing produced by teachers and researchers of writing. There is even a Journal of Basic Writing that emerged out of the experiments with open admission at CUNY in the 1970s. Not a mention of any of it. Zip."

Students are writing but don't have anything to say...?

Two researchers reporting at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication said that students “...are not selecting authoritative, meaningful sources and not reading them carefully. They are not, in a word, engaging.” 164 student research papers (with 1,832 research citations) produced in first-year composition classes were analyzed. Institutions in 12 states from diverse regions of the country, including community colleges and four-year public universities, private colleges and universities, and religiously affiliated and Ivy league institutions were represented.
"Only 9 percent of the citations were categorized as summary [ as opposed to quotes, paraphrasing or patchwriting]. 'That's the stunning part, I think: 91 percent are citations to material that isn't composing,' said Jamieson. 'They don't digest the ideas in the material cited and put it in their own words.' "
Read a fuller report of their findings in today's (April 11) Inside Higher Ed.

Advice for writers

Kerry Ann Rockquemore has a regular column on dealing with the tenure-track, but her focus is often on writing. I think her suggestions would also be useful for graduate students working on dissertations, so thought I would post a link to her latest piece. (Inside Higher Ed, Nov. 15, 2010).

Teaching the academic essay as conversation

Having myself written a couple of articles about using conversation as a metaphor for the research process, I immediately jumped into this post by Dr. Kelli Marshall where she talks about her students' writing problems as a result of never having been taught that "they need to “enter a conversation,” using what other people say as a springboard for their own ideas/thesis." I couldn't agree more. Even if you're not familiar with the Burkean Parlor metaphor, experienced writers will recognize the need to read widely in order to write well. As Peter Elbow also addressed this conversational nature of academic writing when he said, “this is what we academics do: carry on an unending conversation not just with colleagues but with the dead and unborn” (1995, p. 79).

Advice for dissertation writers and the advisors thereof...

Interesting post in today's Chronicle (Nov. 1, 2010) directed primarily to faculty advising students working on dissertations. The suggestions however are useful as well for those actually writing the dissertation, so I encourage both groups to have a look. Here are the major areas addressed:

• Create a collaborative environment.
• What is your student really interested in?
• Steer them away from the beginning.
• Perfect is the enemy of done.
• A time to read, a time to type.

Writing assignments can improve minority school achievement

A recently published study finds that personal writing assignments can improve both improve GPA and reduce the level of grade remediation. This is particularly effective for low achieving African American students. You can see the full article here.
Geoffrey L. Cohen,^1* Julio Garcia,¹ Valerie Purdie-Vaughns,² Nancy Apfel,³ Patricia Brzustoski³ (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, Vol. 324. no. 5925, pp. 400 - 403

Draft legislation to emphasize adolescent literacy

Bills are moving forward in both houses that would:

• increase funding for literacy education overall
  
• increase the proportion spent on older students
• designate monies for staff development
• emphasize the connections between reading and writing

This article in Education Week provides more detail on the proposed bills and brings together opinions of interested parties.

NAEP report on writing shows some improvements

Results from "The Nation's Report Card: Writing 2007" are now available, detailing performance of eighth- and 12th-graders nationally. Improvements were seen across many student groups since previous assessments in 2002 and 1998.

Results are also reported for eighth-graders in 45 participating states, the Department of Defense schools, and 10 urban school districts.

Since the last assessment, 19 states, three districts, and the Department of Defense schools made gains.

For complete results and to download the report, visit
http://nationsreportcard.gov