Hello! Welcome to my dissertation research study – “Knowledge Growth”: English Literature Instructors Composing Knowledge for Teaching Composition. My name is Kathleen Richards, and I am a Ph.D. Candidate, studying English Composition and TESOL (Teaching English to Students of Other Languages) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I have received a Master’s degree in English Literature, but I decided to continue my English studies surrounding the areas of Eng Comp/TESOL for many reasons. Some reasons may sound familiar to you….
Once I received my Master’s in English Lit, I began working part time in a junior college and a university as an adjunct instructor. My appointments included teaching basic writing and first year writing, both of which I knew how to do but did not know how to teach. As beginning teachers, we are thrown into a ‘sink-or-swim’ situation, hoping that what methods we use to instruct others are ‘correct’ by the standards of the institutions where we are employed.
So what did I do? I played it safe. Since I was given a teacher’s textbook, I simply devised my syllabus around the lesson plans suggested by the text. Elementary you say? Not so. Not every textbook I was given was appropriate for all students. The textbooks were essentially generalized and Americanized; yet in some of my classrooms the majority of my students were not American. While I was teaching from the textbooks to the students, I was not allowing time for students to digest, question and understand the assignments and materials.
As an Eng Literature graduate student, I was taught by means of lectures, but lecturers are not needed in writing classrooms…. writers are. I later reflected and found that I was implementing teaching techniques that I had learned from my professorial lecturers…..”monkey see, monkey do.”
As the weeks and months progressed, I stumbled through and over obstructions and hurdles, wondering where I could go for assistance and how I could obtain further knowledge for teaching writing. As teachers, we constantly seek out and construct new knowledge…it’s what we do….it’s our job…..to stay one, two, three steps ahead of the students we teach. Therefore, the answers to the questions I seek, and the knowledge I have comprised and constructed throughout my teaching/learning life molds my dissertation study. I am curious to find out how and what other English Literature teachers do to construct knowledge needed to teach the diverse student bodies who fill our composition classrooms every semester.
Your stories may be similar to mine or they may be different. Either way, they are important because they will help to enlighten what English Literature teachers do to construct the knowledge needed to teach writing to students.
Thank you for participating!!
