The Writing Teacher

I am a writing teacher. I have studied the theories of Rhetoric and Composition, been trained to teach writing, been mentored in the art of teaching itself and written countless essays on the teaching and learning of writing over the past ten years. I am a writer.

I am also a researcher. I know how to find information on the Internet and use library materials and research databases, the differences between primary and secondary sources, the criteria for evaluating sources of information and the processes for incorporating, synthesizing and documenting information in writing in both MLA and APA form. However, the formal training that I received is limited to four courses: one quarter course on the “research paper” during my senior year of high school, two first-year composition courses and one graduate course on research methods. I have never studied the literature of library instruction, and I am certainly not versed in the disciplinary discussions of Library and Information Science. I don’t see myself as an information scientist.

I am a writing teacher, and I teach first-year composition. Since I teach first-year composition, I am responsible for teaching students how to conduct academic research and how to use their research in the process of writing essays. I am not alone in this responsibility, as composition courses and teachers across this country often find themselves as the teachers most responsible for training students to be savvy or at least competent researchers, to help students develop their information literacy skills.

Many first-year composition instructors have received training to be writing teachers, and nearly all of them I am sure are writers themselves. They practice the art of teaching and the craft of writing every time they step foot in a classroom or compose a text. Writing and the teaching of writing are their areas of expertise; however, the teaching of research is not. First-year composition teachers are regularly charged with training students to be researchers, but I would argue that they are not effectively prepared to do, that such teaching is outside their areas of expertise despite their abilities as researchers in their own right.

I have taught first-year composition for years, but I must admit that I do not do enough to prepare students to be effective researchers, especially now in the digital information age. My students do pass their “research paper” assignments, but they do not develop the information literacy skills they need to be successful students and citizens in the age of information. Further, students today have deeply ingrained search-engine researching practices and often uncritical stances toward both technology and information that cause significant interference with the teaching of research and the practice of information analysis, including research conducted on the Internet.

I believe that I am not alone in this frustration. Many of the first-year composition instructors I have supervised over the past five years as a writing program administrator have commented on their struggles to turn fledgling writers into competent researchers. In fact, I would argue that first-year composition courses and instructors might be in over their own heads. Without more attention to preparing students to locate, evaluate and use information, first-year composition courses and instructors might continue to fall short in one of their primary charges—help students become critical users of information, teach them to become information literate.

So, I come now to this collaboration. I am a writing teacher frustrated by the process of helping students understand the nuances and complexities of academic research, and I am looking for help.

The Academic Librarian

In my efforts to alleviate the frustrations writing teachers experience as they shepherd students through the research and writing process, I have looked to professional standards for guidance, specifically the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education developed by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and American Library Association (ALA). These standards integrate key components of the undergraduate curriculum identified by the Boyer Commission in their report entitled Reinventing Undergraduate Education: a Blueprint for America’s Research Universities. Accentuating recommendations of the Boyer Commission focusing on the inclusion of learning activities requiring students to draft research questions, access and analyze information, and effectively synthesize and communicate research results, the ACRL challenges librarians to incorporate “information literacy skills across curricula, in all programs and services, and throughout the administrative life of the university ….” To that end the ACRL strongly encourages librarians to collaborate with teaching faculty to develop instructional strategies and assessment measures for information literacy, a somewhat daunting task for me given the many obstacles this type of endeavor presents. Perhaps the most intimidating obstacle for me is addressing the level of skill incoming freshmen possess to conduct research or rather the differing degree of skill incoming freshmen have acquired in conducting research.

Unfortunately, as previously stated students entering college today do so with varying levels of ability to conduct research and apply critical thinking skills (Gordon, 2002; Hull & Taylor, 2003; Donham, 2003; Islam & Murno, 2006). Exacerbating this problem is the existing disparity between the knowledge and skills students have acquired upon graduation from high school and those college faculty members expect students to have mastered prior to starting college. The disconnect between “college-eligible and college-ready” has been well documented and addressed by David T. Conley in his book entitled College Knowledge: What It Really Takes for Students to Succeed and What We Can Do to Get Them Ready (2005). In his discourse, Conley explained the significance and importance of his research which was conducted to develop educational standards to prepare high school students for the rigors of entry-level university courses. In an attempt to mitigate the factors contributing to low retention rates among college students, basic knowledge and skills indicative of academic success were identified and articulated in Knowledge and Skills for University Success (KSUS), the culminating end product of Conley’s research project. Standards were established for each subject area and reflect a blueprint of the cognitive skills, habits of mind, learning dispositions, and core disciplinary content knowledge students need to master before entering college (Conley, 2005).

Conley’s report captured the very essence of the challenges I face today. Apart from cultivating and maintaining a working knowledge of ACRL standards, a familiarity with K-12 information literacy standards has become essential for me. The explicit and implicit link between Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning developed by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) has been in my observations an afterthought in most academic librarians’ minds despite the fact ACRL standards were developed to serve as an extension. Both the AALS/AECT and ACRL standards are designed to provide a metacognitive framework to assist students in interacting with information within an academic environment; however, neither standard clearly delineates the learning domains or hierarchical levels of intellectual ability required to demonstrate mastery of specific information literacy skills. In addition, none of these standards indicate how to scaffold information literacy skills to ease the transition from high school to college (Ercegovac, 2003; Carr & Rockman, 2003). Furthermore, it is difficult to discern what common set of information literacy skills graduating high school students have acquired, a problem very much akin to the “college-eligible and college-ready” disconnect identified by Conley. The failure to universally implement competency benchmarks for information literacy at the high school level (Islam & Murno, 2006) has created various and at time disparate perspectives from which I am obliged to design and deliver information literacy instruction for first-year college students.