Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
KNOWING WHERE THEY’VE BEEN: ENGAGING STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES AND DISPOSITIONS TOWARD ACADEMIC WRITING
Bronwyn T. Williams
University of Louisville, Louisville, USA
Much research in literacy and writing studies in recent years has focused on the social and institutional factors that shape literacy practices, but paid less attention to questions how students’ previous experiences of writing shape their current attitudes and dispositions toward writing. Students’ responses to academic writing situations are shaped not only by what takes place in the classroom, but also by their experiences of writing both in and out of school that influence whether students perceive themselves capable of engaging a given writing situation with confidence and skill. In this presentation I draw on observations and interviews with university students in the UK and the US to explore how their dispositions toward writing have developed both in and out of the classroom and the implications of these dispositions for how students perceive a sense of agency. I examine the influence such perceptions have on how students respond to academic writing assignments and argue that attending to such dispositions can help us design writing assignments and respond to student writing more effectively as well as foster a greater sense of agency in student writers. Although student perceptions of agency are shaped by many forces, including power, technology, rhetorical awareness, and material conditions, I will focus on how emotional dispositions created through embodied experiences influence students’ understanding of their abilities to engage in writing. I conclude by suggesting that considerations of emotion and agency can challenge our understanding of the dynamics of writing in university settings and I address implications of this awareness for writing pedagogy.