Getting Uncomfortable: Identity Exploration in a Multi-Class Blog

September 15th, 2013

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 In the United States, K-12 student population, especially in public education, is increasingly of children of color and Hispanic origin, while the population educating these children remains largely Caucasian. In 2010, only 52% of American students were white, ¹ while 84% of teachers were white. ² Educational research suggests white, middle class teachers are often poorly prepared to effectively teach students from minority and lower income backgrounds, ³ meanwhile, a significant achievement gap persists between students from low-income and minority backgrounds and their white, Asian, and middle-class peers. ⁴

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 To understand why achievement disparities exist, preservice teachers need to explore issues of power, privilege, and prejudice, and to understand institutional and societal structures impeding the success of affected populations. This is often easier said than done. Teacher educators frequently report student resistance to discussing race. ⁵ Students deny race as a salient factor in their lives and see racism as a problem of the past. ⁶ They claim not to notice race ⁷ and to adopt what is known as a colorblind perspective. ⁸ Colorblindness suggests that because race should not matter; it does not matter. It coincides with a belief in the United States as a meritocracy and the world as a fair and just place. ⁹ From a colorblind perspective, acknowledging a person’s race as an important characteristic is offensive and suggestive of underlying prejudice. ¹⁰ Accordingly, race is treated as an invisible characteristic that polite people neither see nor discuss. Such beliefs make frank discussions of power, privilege and prejudice challenging for educators and students.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 2 The Assignment
The purpose of the Identity Exploration Assignment (in this volume) was to have pre-service teachers write and share identity narratives in a multi-course blog. Assignment designers hypothesized that preservice teachers who reflected on their own childhood identity development in addition to reading and commenting on identity narratives from a diverse group of peers would gain appreciation for the influence of group memberships in the interactions that shape K-12 students’ identities. The instructors hoped that such an appreciation would increase preservice teachers’ receptivity to discussions of race and ethnicity in students’ educational experiences. When students interact with peers from different racial/ethnic groups and discuss racial/ethnic issues there is often a positive effect on educational outcomes. ¹¹ In a profession that is 84% white and 84% female, ¹² education courses may suffer from homogeneity. Pre-service teachers may not have the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts from students of different backgrounds. Web 2.0 applications that allow students to share work across a more diverse student cohort can address this deficiency.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Click to view Identity Exploration course site in a new tab/window.

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 A pilot effort began with five sections of an educational foundations course offered at Old Dominion University in Spring 2013. Working with a writing instructor/digital humanities scholar, three participating instructors designed The Identity Exploration Assignment, a heavily scaffolded web writing project in which students engaged with texts about identity development, reflected on their own membership in various social groups, produced “This I Believe” ¹³ style essays, and posted them to a course blog. ¹⁴Students tagged their posts with group memberships enabling classmates to identify and respond to students they perceived as similar to/different from themselves. Students concluded the assignment with a final piece of reflective writing.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 2 Several considerations made identity development the ideal topic for the assignment. First, the literature suggests attitudes associated with colorblindness are typical of white students in the first stage of racial identity development, what Helms ¹⁵ calls the contact developmental status. ¹⁶ Assignment designers hoped that students who studied identity development would become more aware of their own identity development, and to understand that developmental growth can be accompanied by feelings of anger, guilt, and discomfort. Second, the students are future teachers who may profoundly impact the identities of young people. Reading stories of young people’s identity development — especially ones recounting the influences of teachers and peers — illuminates the powerful role, and thus responsibility, teachers have in shaping students’ identities. Stories can illustrate how teachers’ beliefs about various groups, conscious or unconscious, affect their interactions with members of those groups. Finally, engaging in reflective writing and thinking, exploring personal histories, acknowledging membership in different groups, and learning about the lives and experiences of other groups are specific activities suggested for education students to become culturally responsive teachers. ¹⁷

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 1 Assignment designers wanted students to do most of their intellectual work, as well as demonstrate their learning, through writing for three reasons. First writing-to-learn is a well-documented pedagogical strategy that provides students with (usually lower-stakes) writing assignments that allow them to think through what they are learning. ¹⁸ Students needed to slow down and take the time to really think through what they were learning about the importance of group memberships, especially in education, and connect it to their own identity development experiences. Second, students would improve their writing skills while writing to learn. Raimes argues “[w]hile we agreed that it was not the business of biology or art history teachers to be teaching and correcting the basic mechanics of writing, it was nevertheless important for them to assign plenty of writing to teach students their subjects”. ¹⁹ And part of learning any discipline is understanding its theoretical and philosophical underpinnings which are present in the type, style, and genres of writing privileged in that discipline. Writing to learn would help the students process their own learning; learning to write would help them mature as future educators.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Assignment designers layered the project so that students could write their way through their learning and continue to build upon their thinking in a scaffolded manner. As discussed above, students’ belief systems make it difficult for them to understand how power, privilege and prejudice operate within educational systems and in their own interactions. Faculty who teach writing typically argue for scaffolding larger assignments, ²⁰ especially research projects, ²¹ as a way to help students break up the tough intellectual labor of finding, analyzing, and synthesizing information from the just as difficult work of arranging and presenting their thinking through writing. Rosenshine and Meister ²² demonstrate that scaffolding can be used to teach higher-level cognitive strategies. In a scaffolded assignment, students used write-to-learn activities to help process what they were learning about diversity and their own identity development and then worked through steps to present what they learned in a more formal, polished manner.

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 2 Assignment designers had students post, read, and respond in a blog for three reasons. First, the functionality of a blog served the purposes of the assignment objectives. As an online repository for the work, students could easily post and then see and comment on one another’s postings. Many scholars suggest benefits of various Web 2.0 applications ²³ including the ability to share work more widely, and with a more diverse audience. Tagging allowed students to efficiently find peers with similar/dissimilar group memberships. Having students develop new user accounts within an instance of a WordPress blog outside of any institutionally affiliated software, gave student the option of using pseudonyms which enabled them to discuss sensitive issues freely.

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 2 Second, by writing in the “public” space of a blog, available to anyone with Internet access, where “real” people might read their work, students might take their writing more seriously. Early scholarship in computers and writing hailed the “achieved utopia” of networked classrooms; however, articles like Selfe and Selfe ²⁴ and Taylor ²⁵ quickly demonstrated that culture still carried into cyberspace. Recognizing difference in digital spaces becomes important to scholars demonstrating that students benefit from writing in more “public” spaces, defining either the class ²⁶ or the wider internet as the potential “public” audience. ²⁷ Students realize that their public audience is potentially different from themselves. Accepting that cultural cues migrate in digital spaces and that “public” writing helps students learn both content and writing, instructors like Tougaw ²⁸ as well as Hull and James ²⁹ explicitly use digital writing environments to get students to explore aspects of their identity and cultural experiences.

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 3 Third, having students work within the digital writing environment of a blog helps develop a variety of “21st Century Literacies.” As of August 2013, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has 21 position statements related to “21st Century Literacies.” ³⁰ In 2008, while working with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and their Framework for 21st Century Learning, ³¹ NCTE adopted “The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies.” ³² The Identity Exploration Assignment, especially as it is developed in a blog, helps students meet four of six elements in NCTE’s definition; the assignment’s learning objective is to explicitly “build intentional cross-cultural connections.”

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 The Results
Although not perfect, students who completed the Identity Exploration Assignment appeared to meet both the primary objective of improving understanding of diversity as well as the secondary objective of improving writing skills.

¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Identity Development and Diversity
Students enrolled in a foundations of education course participated in the Identity Exploration project. Approximately 80% of participants were female; 75% were white, 15% Black and 10% were other racial/ethnic backgrounds. Four sections were taught face to face and consisted primarily of traditionally aged college students. One section was taught online and included more older and non-traditional students.

¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 Prior to an instructional unit on diversity, instructors administered a pretest consisting of demographic questions and three diversity related scales. The Professional Belief Scale ³³ measured students’ beliefs related to teaching. The Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale ³⁴ assessed students’ racial attitudes. Fifteen items from the Multicultural Sensitivity Scale ³⁵ assessed interracial personal and teaching interactions. The questions in all three surveys were coded so higher values indicated greater discomfort with diversity/denial of racial and ethnic influences. At the end of the course, instructors gave a posttest including the three diversity scales and a researcher-designed survey evaluating students’ attitudes toward the project.

¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Researchers ran paired samples t-tests with a Bonferroni adjusted p-value to control for family-wise error to compare participant attitudes on the three diversity measures pre- and posttest. There was a significant difference in students’ Professional Beliefs from pretest (M=2.32, SD=0.38) to posttest (M=2.19, SD=0.38); t(49)=4.957, p < 0.001. The mean score was lower at the posttest suggesting students had attitudes more accepting of diversity and more knowledgeable of institutional inequities at the end of the course than at the beginning. To uncover how the students’ attitudes were changing, paired sample t-tests were run on the individual survey items. Items with significant changes are reported in Table 1 below.

¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Table 1. Professional Beliefs Scale Items Yielding Significant Pre/Post Differences (N=53)

Question	Pre	Post	T	p
The traditional classroom has been set up to support the middle class lifestyle.	2.79	2.40	2.763	.008
Students and teachers would benefit from having a basic understanding of different (diverse) religions.	1.83	1.57	2.184	.033
The attention girls receive in school is comparable to the attention boys receive.	2.92	2.58	2.475	.017
Tests, particularly standardized tests, have frequently been used as a basis for segregating students.	2.83	2.49	2.231	.030
Teachers often expect less from students from the lowest socioeconomic class.	2.60	2.26	2.231	.030
Large numbers of students of color are improperly placed in special education classes by school personnel.	3.09	2.55	3.869	.000

¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 Note: All items coded so lower scores (1 to 5) reflect greater awareness/support of diversity.

¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 Researchers found no significant difference in students’ Colorblind Racial Attitudes from pretest (M=3.18, SD=0.69) to posttest (M=3.10, SD=0.63); t(49)=1.397, p = 0.169 suggesting students’ beliefs about the salience of race did not change significantly pre to posttest.

¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 There was a significant difference in students’ Multicultural Sensitivity from pretest (M=2.05, SD=0.77) to posttest (M=2.32, SD=0.72); t(49)=-3.863, p < 0.001. The mean score was higher at the posttest suggesting students were more insensitive to multicultural interactions at the end of the semester. Looking at individual items with significant pre to post changes (see Table 2), students reported greater discomfort interacting with people from racial/ethnic groups other than their own at the posttest.

¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 Table 2. Multicultural Sensitivity Scale Items Yielding Significant Pre/Post Differences (N=53)

Question	Pre	Post	T	p
I have a tendency to trust students of my racial/ethnic group more than I trust those of other racial/ethnic groups.	2.11	3.00	-4.768	.000
I feel most secure when I am in the presence of members of my racial/ethnic group.	2.89	3.23	-1.970	.054
I feel less comfortable when I socialize with persons outside my racial/ethnic group.	2.19	2.49	-2.308	.025
In order to be accepted by persons of other racial/ethnic groups, I frequently find myself altering my behavior.	2.11	2.43	-1.991	.052
I naturally respond more favorably to students of my racial/ethnic group.	2.17	2.66	-3.238	.002
I prefer teaching students with whom I can identify racially/ethnically.	1.92	2.23	-2.358	.022
I would feel more relaxed if I could work with students of my own racial/ethnic group.	2.09	2.43	-2.691	.010
I classify students on the basis of obvious racial/ethnic characteristics.	1.72	2.08	-2.657	.010

¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 Note: All items coded so higher scores (1 to 5) reflect greater discomfort with other racial/ethnic groups.

¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Students evaluated the Identity Exploration Assignment very highly (see Table 3). The great majority of students found it a valuable learning activity and enjoyed participating.

¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 Table 3. Student Evaluation of the Identity Exploration Assignment (N=91)

Survey Question	Percent agree (somewhat or strongly)	Mean
By completing the Identity Exploration Assignment. . .
I learned about identity development.	85	4.20
I learned about myself.	83	4.17
I learned about the effects of group memberships on people’s identity.	91	4.41
I learned how other students’ group memberships affected them in ways I hadn’t previously considered.	86	4.38
Section 1 (Watching the videos, reading the articles and posting on the VoiceThread) helped me understand the effect of group memberships on identity development.	86	4.26
Section 2 (Completing the “Remembering Yourself” worksheet) helped me understand the effect of group memberships on identity development.	85	4.13
Section 3 (Reading the This I Believe stories of the high school students) helped me understand the effect of group memberships on identity development.	89	4.28
Section 4 (Writing your own story) helped me understand the effect of group memberships on identity development.	85	4.27
Section 5 (Reading other people’s stories and making comments) helped me understand the effect of group memberships on identity development.	90	4.49
Section 6 of the Identity Exploration project (Reflecting on the whole project) helped me understand the effect of group memberships on identity development.	91	4.43
The Identity Exploration project was beneficial to me as a future teacher.	89	4.38
I enjoyed participating in the Identity Exploration project.	84	4.16
The Identity Exploration Assignment was a good opportunity to practice my writing skills.	78	4.07
The WordPress site we used for the Identity Exploration project was easy to use overall.	76	3.98

¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 Note: Higher scores (1 to 5) indicate more strongly agree.

¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 The multi-course blog allowed students to explore the influence of group memberships on identity development with a diverse cohort of peers. Findings suggest students better understood the effects of group membership on interpersonal interactions and educational experiences at the posttest. Students’ awareness of educational inequities increased pre-post as evidenced by the changes in students’ professional beliefs. The most interesting finding was the increase in students’ Multicultural Sensitivity Scale scores showing that students perceived greater discomfort interacting with others outside their racial/ethnic group at the posttest. Caution must be used interpreting this finding as it is not clear whether students actually became less comfortable interacting interracially, if they became more aware of their discomfort, or if they are more willing to admit discomfort. In any of these cases, the result can be interpreted as a cautiously optimistic sign of students’ willingness to acknowledge race/ethnicity as a potentially important demographic characteristic warranting consideration in educational interactions. It also opens the door to explore students’ previously unacknowledged biases. At the same time, the results are also a call to action for the course instructors and program coordinators. Thoughtfully planned and scaffolded instruction is clearly needed to help students explore their racial and ethnic biases and the reasons behind discomfort they may experience in intercultural interactions. If further exercises are not implemented, instead of opening a door to explore prejudices, this writing exercise might only serve to make implicit prejudices explicit and to deter future teacher from working with diverse populations.

¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 In a colorblind perspective, acknowledgement of race/ethnicity suggests underlying prejudice. ³⁶ That participants in this study were more willing at posttest to admit they notice race/ethnicity and concede that interracial interactions are less comfortable for them to negotiate can be seen as a positive development. This discomfort may be indicative of the second stage of racial identity development, disintegration ³⁷ where individuals become conflicted over unresolvable racial moral dilemmas, like believing one is nonracist yet not wanting to work with students of a different racial group. By sharing stories of identity, students may have progressed in their own identity development.

¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 1 While students reported more discomfort in interracial interactions after the diversity unit ended, they found the project to be a valuable learning experience. This suggests discomfort may be a valuable part of the learning process. To take that a step further, students may have to be willing to get uncomfortable if they are going to learn to be culturally responsive teachers.

¶ 28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 2 Writing
The primary goal of the assignment was to increase student understanding of diversity-related issues within the American education system, in particular how students’ identities are shaped by their group memberships and interactions with others. However, in using writing as a primary tool to help facilitate this learning, a secondary goal was to help students improve their writing. As already shown in Table 3, 78% of the students somewhat or strongly agreed that the assignment “was a good opportunity to practice my writing skills.” Of the 91 students who responded to the survey evaluating the assignment, 32 made general comments about the benefit of reading and learning from one another’s text; they may have become more aware of themselves as potential audience members. Six made comments that demonstrated their awareness of the others reading their work; some of these comments included:

¶ 29 Leave a comment on paragraph 29 0
When people commented on my story they gave praise and I knew that they were engaged into what I was saying.
I was a little disappointed because I really put myself out there and only received feedback from one person.
At first I was apprehensive about others being able to read my story.
I did not feel comfortable sharing my story at all, and did not feel comfortable reading others as well.

¶ 30 Leave a comment on paragraph 30 2 And one student who claimed “It should be simply turned in on Blackboard” missed the assignment objective of learning from reading other students’ work as well as learning from comments left by other student. Four more students emphasized that the assignment was “hard work” and took a lot of time. Three more mentioned the scaffolding, one praised the assignment being broken up into smaller pieces and the other two think it should have been smaller/shorter and had fewer sections.

¶ 31 Leave a comment on paragraph 31 0 The general positive feedback on the assignment, especially the benefit of reading one another’s work, suggests students both learned and were metacognitively aware they learned through writing, reading, and comparing.

¶ 32 Leave a comment on paragraph 32 3 The Conclusion
Students who participated in a multi-section blog assignment as part of an introductory education course found the writing-to-learn activity to enhance their appreciation of diverse perspectives and a good opportunity to practice writing skills. Survey results also suggest students felt less comfortable interacting with individuals of different racial and ethnic backgrounds after a diversity unit than before. It is unclear exactly what caused these results. The class discussions on diversity-related topics, the Identity Exploration blog assignment, and 30-hour classroom observation placements may all have been contributing factors. More research is warranted to elucidate the reasons for the shift in attitudes.

¶ 33 Leave a comment on paragraph 33 3 It is important to acknowledge that these changes are occurring in the first course in a teacher preparation program and that more instruction and intercultural interactions are needed before students graduate if these pre-service teachers are to feel comfortable and competent interacting with students from diverse backgrounds in their future classrooms. So, while discomfort is a hopeful first step in the right direction, it necessitates subsequent steps. If the initial step is left unsupported, it could result in pre-service students stepping away from opportunities to work with diverse populations. The use of writing-to-learn activities supported by Web 2.0 technologies, like blogs, can be essential tools to facilitate greater intercultural interaction which enables this process.

¶ 34 Leave a comment on paragraph 34 0 About the Authors: Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & (New) Media at Old Dominion University. She was as a full time faculty member for nine years in English and film studies at Mesa Community College in Arizona. Shelley researches how “newer” technologies better facilitate communicative interactions, more specifically teaching and learning. As well as co-authoring the first and second editions of The Wadsworth Guide to Research, Shelley was also co-editor of Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press).

¶ 35 Leave a comment on paragraph 35 0 Jennifer Kidd is a lecturer in the department of Teaching and Learning at Old Dominion University. Previously she taught at the elementary level in Chicago; Budapest, Hungary; and Newport News, Virginia. Her current research interests center on the use of web 2.0 technologies to support teaching and learning and include student-authored instructional content, peer assessment, classroom community, and diversity. She received a Digital Media and Learning grant from HASTAC/The MacArthur Foundation and funding from the National Science Foundation to support the production of a student-authored wiki textbook in her educational foundations course.

¶ 36 Leave a comment on paragraph 36 0 Notes:

¶ 37 Leave a comment on paragraph 37 0
Susan Aud, Sidney Wilkinson-Flicker, Paul Kristapovich, Amy Rathbun, and Jijun Zhang, The Condition of Education 2013, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2013, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013037.pdf ↩
Emily C. Feistritizer, Profile of Teachers in the U.S. 2011, National Center for Educational Information, 2011, 11, http://www.edweek.org/media/pot2011final-blog.pdf. ↩
Cathy Kea, Gloria D. Campbell-Whatley, and Heraldo V. Richards, Becoming Culturally Responsive Educator: Rethinking Teacher Education Pedagogy, National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCREST), 2006, http://www.nccrest.org/Briefs/Teacher_Ed_Brief.pdf; Christine E. Sleeter, “Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools: Research and the Overwhelming Presence of Whiteness,” Journal of Teacher Education 52, no. 2 (2001): 94-106, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487101052002002. ↩
F. Cadelle Hemphill and Alan Vanneman, Achievement Gaps: How Hispanic and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NCES 2011-459), Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2011, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2011459.pdf; National Center for Education Statistics, National Indian Education Study 2011 (NCES 2012– 466), Washington, D.C: Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2012, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2012466.pdf. Alan Vanneman, Linda Hamilton, Janet Baldwin Anderson, and Taslima Rahman, Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, (NCES 2009-455), Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 2009, http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2009455.pdf. ↩
Grace Cho and Debra DeCastro-Ambrosetti, “Is Ignorance Bliss? Pre-service Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Multi-cultural Education,” The High School Journal 89, no. 2 (2005): 24-28, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2005.0020; Marta I. Cruz-Janzen and Marilyn Taylor, “Hitting the Ground Running: Why Introductory Teacher Education Courses Should Deal with Multiculturalism,” Multicultural Education 12, no. 1 (2004): 16-23, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ781908; Geneva Gay and Kipchoge Neftali Kirkland, “Developing Critical Consciousness and Self-Reflection in Pre-service Teacher Education,” Theory Into Practice 42, no. 3 (2003): 181-187, http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4203_3. ↩
Ian F. Haney Lopez, “Colorblind to the Reality of Race in America,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 3, 2006, http://chronicle.com/article/Colorblind-to-the-Reality-of/12577/; Sleeter, “Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools.” ↩
Gay and Kirkland, “Developing Critical Consciousness”; Sandra M. Lawrence, “Beyond Race Awareness: White Racial Identity and Multicultural Teaching,” Journal of Teacher Education 48, no.2 (1997): 108-117, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487197048002004. ↩
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David Dietrich, “The Sweet Enchantment of Colorblind Racism in Obamerica” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 634, no. 1 (2011): 190-206, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002716210389702. ↩
Christopher D. DeSante, and Candis Watts Smith, “New Attitudes or Old Measures? Determining the Level, Structure and Role of Racial Attitudes Among the Millennial Generation” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2012). ↩
Janet W. Schofield, “Causes and Consequences of the Colorblind Perspective,” in Prejudice, Discrimination and Racism, eds. John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Haertner (New York: Academic, 1986), 91-126. ↩
Mitchell J. Chang, “Does Racial Diversity Matter? The Educational Impact of a Racially Diverse Undergraduate Population,” The Journal of College Student Development 40, no. 4 (1999): 377-395. ↩
Feistritizer, Profile of Teachers in the U.S., 11. 2011 ↩
This I Believe, Inc. “This I Believe,” This I Believe, 2005-2013, http://thisibelieve.org/. ↩
The course blog is located at http://tled301.courses.digitalodu.com/. ↩
Janet Helms, Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research and Practice (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990). ↩
Lawrence, “Beyond Race Awareness;”
Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Teaching White Students about Racism: The Search for White Allies and the Restoration of Hope,” Teachers College Record 95, no. 4 (1994): 462-476, http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=107. ↩
Heraldo V. Richards, Ayanna F. Brown, and Timothy B. Forde, Addressing Diversity in Schools: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, Tempe, AZ: National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational System, 2006, http://www.nccrest.org/Briefs/Diversity_Brief.pdf. ↩
Robert L. Bangert-Drowns, Marlene M. Hurley, and Barbara Wilkinson, “The Effects of School-Based Writing-to-Learn Interventions on Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis,” Review of Educational Research 74, no. 1 (2004): 29–58, http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/00346543074001029;
Julie Johnson, Melinda Holcombe, Gloria Simms, and David Wilson, “Write to Learn in a Content Area,” The Clearing House 66, no. 3 (1993): 155–158, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/30188984;
Michael M. Carter, Miriam Ferzli, and Eric N. Wiebe, “Writing to Learn by Learning to Write in the Disciplines,” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 21, no. 3 (July 1, 2007): 278–302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1050651907300466. ↩
Ann Raimes, “Writing and Learning Across the Curriculum: The Experience of a Faculty Seminar,” College English 41, no. 7 (1980): 799, http://www.jstor.org/stable/376219. ↩
Kathleen Dudden Rowlands, “Check It Out! Using Checklists to Support Student Learning,” English Journal 96, no. 6 (2007): 61–66, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30046754. ↩
Helen Foster, “Growing Researchers Using an Information-Retrieval Scaffold,” TETYC 31, no. 2 (2003): 170–178. http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/TETYC/0312-dec03/TE0312Growing.pdf. ↩
Barak Rosenshine and Carla Meister, “The Use of Scaffolds for Teaching Higher-Level Cognitive Strategies,” Educational Leadership 49, no. 7 (1992): 26–33, http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_199204_rosenshine.pdf. ↩
Mark J. W. Lee, and Catherine McLoughlin, “Teaching and Learning in the Web 2.0 era: Empowering Students Through Learner-generated Content,” International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning 4, no. 10 (2007), http://itdl.org/Journal/Oct_07/article02.htm. ↩
Cynthia L. Selfe and Richard J. Selfe, “The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones,” College Composition and Communication 45, no. 4 (1994): 480–504, http://www.jstor.org/stable/358761. ↩
Todd Taylor, “The Persistence of Difference in Networked Classrooms: Non-negotiable Difference and the African American Student Body,” Computers and Composition 14, no. 2 (January 1997): 169–178, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S8755-4615(97)90018-9. ↩
Beverly C. Wall and Robert F. Peltier, “‘Going Public’ with Electronic Portfolios: Audience, Community, and the Terms of Student Ownership,” Computers and Composition 13, no. 2 (January 1996): 207–217, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S8755-4615(96)90010-9. ↩
Gina Maranto and Matt Barton, “Paradox and Promise: MySpace, Facebook, and the Sociopolitics of Social Networking in the Writing Classroom,” Computers and Composition 27, no. 1 (March 2010): 36–47, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2009.11.003. ↩
Jason Tougaw, “Dream Bloggers Invent the University,” Computers and Composition 26, no. 4 (December 2009): 251–268, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2009.08.002. ↩
Glenda A. Hull and Michael Angelo James, “Geographies of Hope: A Study of Urban Landscapes, Digital Media, and Children’s Representations of Place,” in Writing and Community Engagement: A Critical Sourcebook, edited by Thomas Deans, Barbara Roswell, and Adrian J. Wurr, 72–93 (Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010). ↩
National Council of Teachers of English, “21st Century Literacies,” NCTE, 1998-2013, http://www.ncte.org/positions/21stcenturyliteracy. ↩
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, “Framework for 21st Century Skills,” P21, http://www.p21.org/overview. ↩
National Council of Teachers of English, “The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies,” NCTE, 2013, http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition. ↩
Cathy A. Pohan and Teresita E. Aguilar, “Measuring Educators’ Beliefs About Diversity in Personal and Professional Contexts,” American Educational Research Journal 38, no. 1 (2001): 159–182, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3202517. ↩
Helen A. Neville, Roderick L. Lilly, Georgia Duran, Richard M. Lee, and LaVonne Browne, “Construction and Initial Validation of the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (COBRAS),” Journal of Counseling Psychology 47, no. 1 (2000): 59-70, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037//0022-0167.47.1.59. ↩
Maria Jibaja-Rusth, Paul M. Kingery, David J. Holcomb, W.P. Buckner Jr. and B. E. Pruitt, “Development of a Multicultural Sensitivity Scale,” Journal of Health Education 25, no. 6 (1994): 350-357, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10556699.1994.10603060. ↩
Schofield, “Causes and Consequences of the Colorblind Perspective.” ↩
Helms, Black and White Racial Identity. ↩

Page 20

Comments

Comments are closed

5 Comments on the whole Page

Amanda Seligman October 9, 2013 at 7:15 am

What seems to me missing from this essay is a discussion of what students actually wrote, and how that writing transformed their views.
Amanda Seligman October 9, 2013 at 7:24 am

In a revision of this essay, I would like to see more about the web aspect of this assignment. Most of the paper focuses on the idea of identity exploration rather than its articulation with the web environment. There is a little bit of the digital aspect (Word Press blog), but for the most part, this paper could be about a conventional writing assignment.
1. Shelley Rodrigo October 9, 2013 at 8:21 am
  
  Amanda,
  
  We appreciate your feedback. I do, however, have to respectfully disagree about the comment that this could be a paper assignment. One of the blog functions that was critical to the students reading, responding, and learning from one another was the tagging function. That would have been almost impossible to do with larger numbers of students with paper projects.
  
  I, definitely Shelley!, also struggle when writing projects about technologically mediated pedagogies. I think the strength of this project is that the technology is used to better facilitate a specific learning objective and it is the success of that learning objective we discuss.
  
  We will definitely take your critically (good “critical”!) insightful comments into consideration while revising.
  
  Shelley
  1. Amanda Seligman October 9, 2013 at 4:17 pm
    
    What I was trying to say was that as far as you describe the assignment, the imperatives of the web platform are not apparent. I am sure that as you constructed the assignment and interpreted it to students, it had to be on the web–but those reasons are not transparent in the context of the essay.
by the Editors March 19, 2014 at 3:32 pm

The editors invite you to revise & resubmit your essay, “Getting Uncomfortable,” for the final draft of this volume. The topic of identity exploration through online writing with pre-service teachers clearly resonates with the “crossing boundaries” section of our book. But our readers suggested several ways that this essay could be revised to fit with the volume as a whole, and we welcome another draft.

As Amanda Selgiman observed, a stronger essay (for this particular volume) would explain more clearly why it was essential for this identity exploration exercise to be conducted as web-based writing, rather than a conventional assignment. We believe that your current draft approaches this issue in para 10 (“students might take their [web] writing more seriously”) and in para 28-29 (student comments about peer praise or apprehension). But it’s hard for readers to evaluate the centrality of the web on student identity formation unless we see more of what they wrote, and whether their views changed through reading and commenting online. On a related note, we appreciate your response to Hope Boyer’s comment that this assignment may have two separate objectives (creating better writers and culturally responsive teachers), and Ashieda McKoy’s question (whether participation on this identity topic varied in person vs online), and Kate Singer’s remark about tagging, as we also wondered about these issues.

Kate’s reflection on your conclusion raises a second area of revision for an essay intended for this volume. Based on what your survey results told you about students expressing “greater discomfort” with cross-racial interactions, what are your next steps, and to what extent does this involve writing (on the web, in particular)?

One stylistic suggestion: since this subject matter is introspective and personal, we recommend writing more from the a first-person perspective (rather than “Assignment designers wanted. . .”).

Overall, we understand that our suggested revisions may not necessarily go in the direction you have planned for this line of research. Our motivation is to create a more coherent volume on web writing, and we will gladly work with you if our goals align. But doing so would require significant cuts to the current draft in order to expand elsewhere. The current draft word count is 4421 (as measured by WordPress), and the final version should not exceed 4000. The current count does NOT include the 1500-word assignment, which could be linked but cannot appear in the final volume due to contractual space limitations. You also have the option to link to your statistical tables, rather than including them in the final draft.

If you choose to revise, the deadline for submitting your final draft is Thursday May 15th, though sooner is always better. This is a firm deadline, and if you do not meet it, we cannot guarantee that your essay will advance to the final volume. In the next few days, we will post further instructions on how to resubmit and edit your text in our PressBooks/WordPress platform.

Kate Singer September 23, 2013 at 7:20 pm

This may be obvious to others, but are pre-service teachers those undergraduates getting a B.A. in Education?
Shelley Rodrigo September 24, 2013 at 7:34 am

Yes; thanks for the suggestion to more clearly articulate that!

Hope Boyer October 14, 2013 at 5:36 pm

While I agree with the information provided in the first paragraph about the presence of color-blindness and the discrepancy between minority students and white teachers, I did not initially make the connection of how this writing exercise was going to make students better writers and the teachers more culturally responsive. It seemed as though this assignment was trying to tackle two completely different and separate objectives that I felt did not easily tie in together. In terms of the improvement of their overall writing, I feel like this assignment would almost have the opposite effect in that students would have to think carefully about every word they were writing so as to not offend the audience. This could cause them to write for an audience instead of stay true to their own writing style. Maybe it is just my opinion that thoughtful writing is not necessarily always better writing.
Shelley Rodrigo October 27, 2013 at 4:33 pm

Hope,

You are correct, this assignment is trying to do two things at once. Once of the aspects of the “writing” improvement was to help students do lower stakes thinking “heavy” write-to-learn assignments that would then help them with the “going public” assignment where they would be focusing on careful articulation.
I sincerely appreciate your comment. It makes me think we need to revise to more carefully articulate how critically important the scaffolding of the assignment was to juggling both objectives.

Shelley

1 Comment on paragraph 7

Barbara Fister October 29, 2013 at 2:31 pm

So fascinating to see how web writing is explored in different disciplines. I think of teacher education as a realm where technology is playing a giant role, but not necessarily in public expression. I think of the ubiquity of interactive whiteboards and the kind of data-tracking platforms that seem in vogue right now – which seem counter to development of identity and of voice.

I also find myself wondering about a teacher’s public identity in that they may have a harder time than most professionals of presenting an identity as teacher and being publicly themselves. (I’m thinking of their need to protect themselves from charges of bias about everything from creationism to immigration or any hint that they drink or have cranky things to say about educational policy. It’s a dicey thing to be a teacher in public these days. There are also a lot of hero-teacher legends about individuals who inspired students against the rules and those often have weird identity issues of their own.) Is that issue addressed at all in this course? It’s tangential to what you’re trying to do, so it may be a total distraction, and may be more appropriate closer to graduation.

Another interesting effect of reading writing from so many disciplines is realizing how true the differences in disciplinary discourse are. I found myself (a humanities type) really taken aback by the use of “assignment designers” at the start of paragraphs 7-9. I realize that it’s an appropriate voice to have in scholarly writing in the field of education, but it seemed a fascinating rhetorical choice given that what you are describing is a kind of writing that is introspective and personal. I think it would be worth considering writing it from a more first-person perspective even if that goes against the discourse conventions for scholarship in the field.

0 Comments on paragraph 8

2 Comments on paragraph 9

Amanda Seligman October 9, 2013 at 7:10 am

The point about pseudonymous blogging and appropriate platforms for that choice is a helpful generality.
Shelley Rodrigo October 27, 2013 at 4:35 pm

Amanda,

I’m glad you thought it was helpful. I have found it interesting that a growing number of my students have opted to use pseudonyms to keep better control of their digital identities. It gives me hope that they are learning the importance controlling their identities. Then, of course, allowing pseudonyms also helps with FERPA.

Shelley

2 Comments on paragraph 10

Ashieda McKoy October 13, 2013 at 4:55 pm

To some extent, it seems that using a medium like the blog gives a number of students freedom of voice and expression where the pressure of face-to-face discussion or the classroom environment invites immediate judgment/hesitation, especially when commenting or responding. Consequently, did you also find that some of your students who were more reluctant to participate in class truly found expressing themselves easier through the online platform?
Shelley Rodrigo October 27, 2013 at 4:38 pm

Ashieda,

In this case, I can’t speak to the comparison of f2f class (hopefully Jennifer can); however, I can speak to the idea of students having more time to think through what they are going to say before saying it. Especially in terms of a topic that can be so contentious, providing students the opportunity to think through their responses prior to “voicing” them can make students feel more confident to share what they feel.

I especially think providing students scaffolded “thinking” activities to help them process their responses helps even more.

Shelley

3 Comments on paragraph 11

Kate Singer September 23, 2013 at 7:34 pm

These are great points about blogging’s propensity to offer students interactive scaffolding (post-and-response), a public forum both inside and outside the class, and a greater potential for diversity. Are these cross-cultural connections–and the tagging students did–to be found within the course or in the larger public space of the internet? I wonder too, in terms of the writing techniques the blog especially encourages, whether it does encourage students to slow down and reflect (vs spontaneously post and forget)? Or if there are specific types of blogs (or ways of instituting them) that offer this type of cross-cultural reflection?
1. Shelley Rodrigo September 24, 2013 at 7:39 am
  
  Kate,
  
  Great questions. In this case the tagging was done by the students (the system was not set up to allow readers to tag).
  
  As for your second question, I’m the HUGE fan of scaffolding to help slow students down. This assignment was scaffolded; however, I think they may have benefitted from a little more stretching (aka, time to think) between pieces. One of those “next time” possible changes.
  
  I don’t think the technology explicitly engages cross-cultural reflection; instead, I think you are looking at something that has functionalities/affordances that when incorporated with a specific assignment and/or specific groups of people (imagine having multiple classes, from multiple places participating) you are designing a learning environment where more robust cross-cultural reflection can occur.
Jennifer Kidd September 26, 2013 at 5:24 pm

Sorry to be late to the conversation. The pilot project described here included 5 course sections in a communal blog that was not advertised outside the university community. So the interaction was cross-course (125-150 students) but did not engage the wider web. The new implementation this fall involves 6 lead instructors and 6 different courses within a teacher preparation program so the opportunities for exchange with culturally different peers has increased but we still have yet to engage the broader internet community. One of the functions of the tagging is to have students seek out peers they perceive to be similar and peers they perceive to be different from themselves. This tagging allows students to hear stories from individuals they might not interact with face to face – due to lack of exposure or apprehension. The online and somewhat anonymous environment creates a safer environment for uncomfortable interactions. Students can share uncomfortable stories and reveal uncomfortable attitudes and ask uncomfortable questions. Specifically asking students to read and respond and then reflect on the similarities and differences they detected in the posts helps them slow down and think about what they are reading, but many students took the easier route of finding smiliaries rather than the more challenging journey of exploring differences. In the newest implementation I might require students to get more uncomfortable by leaving a comment or question for someone they disagree with.

Carson Gannon October 14, 2013 at 9:50 pm

I think that I would like to hear more about what students found to be a great learning experience since I was so surprised by the result of this study. I would think that intergration of races through web writing would present a more positive outcome. Although acknowledgement of discomfort may be a valuable part of the learning process I wonder what kept students from feeling more comfortable. In addition, why did students decrease in comfort rather than stay the same in terms of comfort level.

2 Comments on paragraph 28

Kate Singer September 23, 2013 at 9:07 pm

Was there anything within the narratives or the pre-writing that could be analyzed qualitatively to suggest not just that students were thinking differently about racial/ethnic interactions but how? Was there anything worth exploring (rhetorically, figuratively) in their writing?
Shelley Rodrigo October 27, 2013 at 4:45 pm

Kate, We don’t have easy access to their pre-writing work (at least not from this round) and we found that we would need to provide a bit more detailed promoting in the assignment where they

read and replies to four other students’ work, and
reflected on their learning in their original posting.

to really get at some of the “how” you are requesting. In short, we have lots of “I learned so much” but less in terms of qualitative demonstration of that learning. During the revision process we could try to incorporate some of those; however, they are definitely picked examples. The next time Jennifer runs this assignment we want/need to do a better job of collecting the pre-writing as well as prompting detailed reflection.

Thanks for asking for this type of data…I had hoped for a bit more of it as well.

0 Comments on paragraph 29

2 Comments on paragraph 30

Amanda Seligman October 9, 2013 at 7:14 am

1. end of the first sentence requires an S for “students.”

2. It is possible that the student mentioned in the first sentence didn’t miss the point so much as s/he objected to the objective.
Jennifer Kidd October 9, 2013 at 11:51 am

Interesting idea. I saw this comment as a reaction against the technology (another site to visit and login to) rather than a reaction against the requirement to share with others. I interpreted accordingly because the student mentioned Blackboard specifically (the tool) rather than expressing a desire to submit privately (the method/type of submission).

0 Comments on paragraph 31

3 Comments on paragraph 32

Hope Boyer October 14, 2013 at 6:13 pm

I think it is important that this section is added because it explains not just what happened in the study, but what subsequent efforts should be made. In general, i feel that this study draws attention to the grey area of differing cultures and identity but does not do anything to follow up or mitigate those uncomfortable feelings associated with the findings. Therefore, I would like to see another article added in addition to this one that looks at the growth of culture perception and how students, through writing and commenting on others’ blogs, were able to become somewhat more comfortable with expressing their own identity and accepting others.
Shelley Rodrigo October 27, 2013 at 4:46 pm

Hope,

What you are seeing is what we are wanting to revise both the assignment as well as the research towards as well.

Shelley
Barbara Fister October 29, 2013 at 1:44 pm

This is such a fascinating finding and so important – I think it would be useful to say a bit more about how students felt about their own discomfort, what role becoming uncomfortable (aware of privilege?) plays for teacher training, whether you all debriefed and discussed those emotions in class, and how you are responding to or planning to use that insight in revising the assignment.

3 Comments on paragraph 33

Kate Singer September 23, 2013 at 9:06 pm

The empirical results–and the finding that students became more uncomfortable with outside racial/ethnic interactions–is really intriguing. I wondered if there was anything (qualitative) in the personal essays or the pre-writing that could help to flesh out the statistics? Maybe more specifically, I wondered whether this question: “What is the main thing you will do to support your students’ racial identity and development….” led to any suggestions about what some next steps are, perhaps with other writing assignments?
1. Shelley Rodrigo September 24, 2013 at 7:42 am
  
  Working with student work (the students who gave us permission) is one of our next steps for data analysis. Jennifer noticed that the final reflection prompt could probably use some fine-tuning to help students better process and articulate some of what you are asking for.
Jennifer Kidd October 9, 2013 at 12:02 pm

As I head into round two for this assignment I think your question warrants consideration. Maybe I can ask students more directly what about identity and identity development makes interracial interactions challenging.

As Shelley mentioned, many students did not think deeply about how they would support identity development in their classrooms and provided only generalized answers e.g. always be there to listen. This is a complex question and without a required pre-writing activity, students may have been unable to articulate a fully developed response.

Contents

Search

Book in-progress

Special Pages

Comments

Comments are closed

Activity

Recent Comments on this Page

Recent Comments in this Document

Untitled Widget