Rethinking remediation: Toward  a social-cognitive understanding of problematic reading and writing (Hull & Rose, 1989)

In this article the authors are trying to argue that the traditional methods of evaluating the writing skills of higher education students are lacking.  Many students are assigned to “remedial” writing courses based solely on the content and structure of their writing samples, but several factors fail to be taken into account, namely the student’s background and education (specifically regarding literacy instruction and feedback), as well as their aspirations for personal development.  Though their writing skills may fall below the expected standards, they can still demonstrate the more fundamental process of internalizing external source material for personal reflection and application.  The authors review some case studies on remedial writing courses at various community colleges, state colleges, and universities, and then present as an example their own analysis of a 19-year-old student named Tanya, studying the process she undertook to summarize an article written by a nurse dealing with a difficult patient.  Though her thoughts were very disjointed and often showed an incomplete understanding of plagiarism, she demonstrated a strong desire to prove herself, and to relate the article to her own experience.   It became apparent that her past experiences with writing in schools had damaged her confidence in writing, but with some coaching, she was able to improve her performance considerably.  This approach to writing analysis seems to follow a social cognitive outlook, because it attempts to focus less on behaviors (syntax, spelling, placement, etc.) and more on things like sociocultural background, understanding, transfer, and motivation.

"To be part of the story": The literacy practices of gangsta adolescents (Moje,  2000)

This article deals with the “literacy practices” of “marginalized” (or gang-affiliated) adolescent students.  Although literacy generally refers to the ability to read and write, the author addresses a broader spectrum of gang-related “literary practices” among these students, including written discourse (poetry, parody, tagging, graffiti, letters, and notes), body discourse (dress codes, gestures, and movements), and oral language discourse (words, accents, and plays on language).  In the classroom, these students’ literacy practices are typically viewed by their teachers as deviant, disrespectful, or lazy; the students are therefore assumed to be illiterate, and are treated as such.  The author of this article argues, however, that these “unsanctioned” literacy practices have some literary value, because they allow such students to express and identify themselves within their frame of reference, or “to be part of the story.”  So while it would be ineffective to teach these students solely within the context of their extracurricular lives, teachers should be aware of and respect the purposes behind unsanctioned literacy, and should use this knowledge to help these students learn how to better communicate in other contexts and environments.  In this way the author espouses a social cognitivist approach to learning, where both students and teachers bring ideas and methods into the learning process.

For her case study, the author observed and interacted with five gang-affiliated minority youth in Salt Lake City between 1995 and 1997, by (1) taking daily field notes and daily audio and video recordings; (2) conducting formal and informal interviews with peers and teachers; (3) collecting artifacts, documents, and photographs from the students and their peers; and (4) keeping a journal of her impressions and notes.    She explored the incredibly complex and purposeful communication rules that these kids learned as part of a “community of practice,” and suggests that they were not illiterate at all; they simply had little use for and context with which to apply the type of literacy taught in their schools.  She explored their various motivations for learning and applying these alternative forms of communication, such as establishing or maintaining their identity and commitment as members or affiliates of particular gangs, making sense of their everyday lives in and out of school, expressing their feelings and experiences, and gaining respect from “homies” and fear from outsiders.

Promoting academic literacy with urban youth through engaging hip-hop culture (Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002)

In this article, the authors discuss how relatable hip-hop culture is in literacy and how teachers can use that to engage their students in writing. They argue the relevance of hip-hop music culturally, socially, and academically. They state that hip-hop texts are “rich in imagery and metaphor...can be used to teach irony, tone, dictation, and point of view…]and] can be analyzed for theme, motif, plot and character development.” It discusses that teachers can tap into this culture to better engage their students interests in writing. 

The authors created a senior poetry unit integrating the use of hip-hop culture. The purpose of this was to 1) utilize student’s involvement in hip-hop culture to scaffold critical and analytical skills, 2) provide students students with awareness and confidence to transfer skills into/onto literary texts, and 3) enable students to critique the messages sent to them through popular cultural media in their everyday lives. The unit consisted of teaching basics of poetry and its historical periods, comparing popular songs with a canonical poem, researching poems and songs that contain certain poetic elements, writing their own poems that dealt with political, social, or economical issues, and then presenting their original poems to the class. The authors concluded their study supported basic tenets of critical pedagogy that allowed the students to use their own experiences, required critical dialogue and critical engagement of the text, and then related the text to larger issues socially and politically. They found from writing this unit there are countless possibilities for urban educators to allow their students to make their own connections to their learning and their lives. This approach to writing seems to follow and social cognitivism approach in that it focuses on social backgrounds and pulling from the student’s own experiences to produce their own writing and learn from others.

Summary & Reflection

Writing has been viewed from one perspective for so long. Many educators and educational practices have placed a lot of focus on teaching content and structure, while still important, are not the only fundamental skills in writing effectively. As we have seen from these articles, students who struggle with the basics of writing are not illiterate or remedial writers. They can effectively internalize their writing and comprehension from their background knowledge. It is important to take these high risk students and incorporate their culture and background into their instruction rather than just classifying them as remedial or illiterate. These articles give examples and ideas on how teachers can do that.